Lead and They Will Follow: Strong Leadership in the Contact Centre

Find out what leadership in the contact centre means and how to exercise it.

Leadership is one of those often-touted, yet ill-understood principles. When it comes to contact centres, the concept of leadership is even more vague. Yet, practicing excellent leadership skills can not only advance your sense of personal fulfillment, but also help transform your contact centre into a positive, successful environment.

Leadership versus Management

Napoleon Bonaparte famously said, “A leader is a dealer in hope.” To this extent, a true leader is someone who can seek out the strengths of others and encourage their development.

A successful leader in the contact centre can balance leadership skills with management skills, knowing when and how to use each. While management will always be necessary in any place of employment, leadership is also essential when it comes to bringing out the best in your agents. Here is a closer look at some important ways true leaders can aid in the success of contact centres:

Know the Heart and Soul of Your Company

If you haven’t already, it’s time to develop your company’s organizing principle. This is the mission of your company that customers will be drawn to and employees must emanate. For example, the Ritz-Carlton boasts the organizing principle, “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”

Your one-liner should express the fundamental importance of your industry in a manner with which people can easily identify. Once you’ve found the right expression for the heart and soul of your company, be enthusiastic about the message so that agents pick up on the core principles that their position serves. J.P. Blackard reports in a 2014 infographic that only 40 percent of surveyed workforce was actually aware of their company’s goals. This can negatively affect contact centre performance as employees who are disconnected from a company’s goals are less likely to perform in a way that reflects your organizing principle.

Do the Right Hiring

Once you know your company’s mission, hire based on those same principles. Never hire someone who seems just good enough, no matter how much of a squeeze you might be in at the time. Each addition to your team should be an asset, and every new hire should reflect the best values and characteristics of your company.

Remember that contact centre agents interact with more customers in a day than most managers will in a week or longer, and are in a position to create a lasting impression. Make them the best face your company can offer. While you can coach agents to express the right ideas, you can’t coach them to develop the right personalities to reflect your company’s character. This is something you must find.

Contact Centre Leaders Focus on Solving Problems

While managers assign tasks, leaders focus on connecting problems with solutions. If a customer has a problem, who is the best equipped agent in your contact centre to connect them to a quick, easy and effective solution? On the other hand, if an agent has a problem, how can you provide a prompt solution?

By maintaining a focus on problem-solving rather than minimizing agent handling time or making sure that everyone is back on time from their lunch break, you may find that not only can you accomplish more as a manager and leader, but also that your agents feel empowered and able to deliver a higher quality of customer service.

Pay for the Quality You Ask For

While saving on overhead costs is always at the top of any business’s priority list, it pays off in the long run to pay your employees for the quality you ask of them. Keep up-to-date on what other companies in the industry are offering for similar positions and make sure that what you’re offering is in the same range.

Also be sure to keep pay relatively equal for relatively equal work within the company. Although it may be taboo for employees to discuss their earnings, you don’t want to bank on the assumption that it will never come up. The last thing you need in the customer service industry is a disgruntled employee who feels underpaid and underappreciated.

By adopting these practices, you can balance the skills associated with managers and those associated with inspiring leaders. Being a manager and a leader requires knowing when to push your agents, when to reward and when to trust them to solve a problem on their own. Still unsure about how to use leadership skills in the contact centre? Download our free white paper to learn more!