A call center supervisor’s job involves much more than just managing a team of call center agents. You would expect any supervisor to manage his or her team by walking around the center, being alert to agents that appear to need assistance, answering questions and taking calls that their agents can’t handle.
Call center supervisors also monitor the queue and track inbound calls to keep their agents aware of inbound calls, calls waiting and the call abandonment rate. Good supervisors motivate and encourage their agents through positive feedback and effective communication. A call center supervisor does more than manage staff to keep things running smoothly.
Holding Meetings
At a minimum, a call center supervisor meets with his or her team at least once a week. Topics could include the following:
- the past week’s events, including statistics, results and industry news
- new product information that the agents need to know
- a sales theme or point-of-interest topic for the agents
- introducing new staff members
- presenting commendations and awards
- communicating company information
- answering questions and addressing comments or concerns
- providing agents with an indication of what’s coming up in future weeks
In addition, supervisors hold monthly meetings with other departments to review call center operations. They regularly meet with peer staff to organize new hire and training for product, computer and sales.
Monitor Agents
A call center supervisor spends 20 to 30 minutes reviewing an agent’s performance with the agent, using a formal monitoring checklist. The original checklist is given to the agent. Supervisors also create and maintain files on each agent as they relate to attendance, production and review. A copy of the monitoring checklist is put in this file.
The supervisor also keeps tract of attendance, daily statistics, paid time off, sick time and more, divides the team into three groups, i.e. top, middle and bottom and schedules existing staff to meet service level goals. It is part of the job of a supervisor to create channels for agent feedback.
At the end of each working day, the call center supervisor takes three minutes to log into the daily notebook any feedback, analysis or reflections from that day’s interaction with the agents.
Report to the Project Manager
At the end of each week, a call center supervisor presents a breakdown of the past week’s monitoring checklists and a written performance summary of the team to the project manager. The project manager also gets a breakdown of the following week’s monitoring assignments and a plan for the team.
Creating Plans
The call center supervisor is responsible for creating a forecast describing what each agent will be focused on and a detailed plan of the way in which they plan to influence their team’s day-to-day performance.
Other responsibilities include:
- Developing schedules with agents each month to ensure call center goals are met
- Scheduling residual training, departmental meetings, sales training, and computer training
- Spending four hours per month working the call center telephones
- Making sure that their staff recognizes that the supervisor can do their jobs, too
- Understanding what their call center agents deal with every day
- Developing training documents that support call center operations
- Creating additional training pieces to promote growth
- Developing contests and awards that increase agents’ loyalty and focus
It is also the call center supervisor’s responsibility to ensure that administrative bookkeeping is accurate and create performance reviews as set up by the project manager.
Recruiting and Training
A call center supervisor assesses needs and plans ahead. He or she meets with human resources to review staffing levels and employee issues and recruits, interviews and hires new staff. They also work with management on enhancing training, scheduling appropriate training sessions and managing the training programs for new hires, as well as existing staff.
Producing White Papers
Call center supervisors write quarterly white papers outlining their team’s performance and growth, including:
- Team performance for a three month period
- Individual performance of core, focus and new staff
- Team and individual analysis of upcoming quarter
- Supervisor disappointments of the past quarter
- Supervisor successes of the past quarter
- Any notable team and department information
People Skills Needed
Call center supervisors are the leaders of a call center. Call center agents look to their supervisor as an example. They act for management as the back bone of the company and are accountable for the overall success of their staff’s morale. It only makes sense that the vast majority of supervisors began their call center careers as frontline agents themselves.
The length of time a call center agent stays with a company and whether they give the work their all, is directly influenced by their supervisor. People management skills are the most important trait for a call center supervisor to have. Supervisors who lead by example and who provide coaching and performance feedback, create a greater sense of belonging for their employees and have a lower rate of staff turnover.
