Introduction

The growth of Call Centres in emerging markets will continue apace for the next few years. The economic downturn will potentially accelerate investment, especially for those companies who can see the opportunities to re-organise their activities and move more customer contact to multi-media Contact Centres and away from more expensive channels such as direct field sales, branches and retail outlets.

There is no shortage of technology available for the modern Conact Centres. There is no doubt that Technology plays a key part in the overall success of a Call Centre – but without good management in place plus a commitment to ongoing development of management there will be less success.

This paper sets out some of the key issues in terms of Management Development and urges Executives to objectively evaluate their commitment and philosophy towards the ongoing development of management teams that will allow Contact Centres deliver sustainable competitive advantage to the organisation.

The changing nature and role of Contact Centres

Modern day contact centres are a long way from the 'telemarketing' centres of a few years ago. Technology developments have allowed for tremendous productivity and efficiency gains and also in most cases improving the customer experience. Contact Centres are now very often at the very heart of managing Customer Interactions and at the heart of CRM implementations. In my view, Contact Centres have moved from the 'Borders of many organisations to the Boardroom'.

Inbound centres have deployed more sophisticated ACD systems for call routing based on skills, languages, customer-value etc. CTI has been deployed to allow 'screen-pops' of customer information direct to the agent desktop.

Additional channels have been introduced to allow customers have a wider choice of ways to interact with organisations. In most cases these channels have become part of the existing Call Centres and this, indeed, is why they became referred to as Contact Centres – or Customer Interaction Centres, Customer Communication Centres and a whole host of other buzz-words.

Organisations began to embrace the rush to 'Customer Relationship Management' strategies and of course the Call Centre was a central component in the early implementations.

Meanwhile, as customers were becoming more sophisticated and demanding in their expectations of quality service, Call Centre management had to learn that 'managing by the numbers' was no longer good enough. Pressure was on to focus on customer loyalty and rentention. 

The changing role of the Contact Centre has of course resulted in a changing role for the management of the Contact Centre and, inevitably, a change in the skills and competencies needed to be successful.

The Changing Role of the Conact Centre Manager

As the role of the Call Centre has changed and become more strategic in the life of most organisations, so too has the role of the Conact Centre Manager changed. The traditional 'Call Centre Manager' – if we can generalise – was typically required to manage a Call Centre to very specific standards which usually were expressed in terms of Service Levels, Abandon Rates, Sales Conversion Rates or Revenue to be achieved.

In many ways these were easier times to be a Call Centre Manager as you knew exactly where you were positioned in terms of your objectives at any point in time – literally at any point in a given day.

The Contact Centre Manager of today (and tomorrow) needs to balance 'people management' skills with an ability to think and operate more strategically as well as to become more financially focused. They need to understand what it is that customers want in terms of excellent service – not just fast answers to phone calls and agents with happy voices. The need for greater co-ordination within organisations requires enhanced communication skills – not to mention being able to deal with internal politics. And they need to lead their teams of increasingly skilled staff with strong and visible leadership. 

And where do we find these leaders of the future?

If we analyse what can differentiate the performance of one Conact Centre over another (say a competitor), then generally speaking the technology can be similar, or exactly the same in many cases. Generally speaking buildings and offices plus furniture typically does not provide any competitive advantage. Within each industry customer needs and behaviours can be generally alike. 

So, what is left to make one Contact Centre more successful than the others – it must be the people. But the 'people' will only make the real difference in my view if that small subset of the people (i.e. the management) are the top performers in their category. Bad managers can make the most technically advanced and environmentally well designed Contact Centres unsuccessful. 

Where such 'ready-made' leaders do exist they are in scarce supply. What is needed most of all is a commitment by Organisations to develop and educate existing (or new) management so that they can become the real leaders of the future. We expect our Contact Centre Executives to manage the operations to 'world class' or 'best practice' standards. But how can we expect them to deliver when we do not invest in their personal development?

Best Practice operations will have a strong commitment to ongoing coaching and evaluation of the agents and supervisory staff. That commitment however must be extended to the top of the Organisation so that the Executive in charge has the opportunity to grow and develop also.

Some Key Steps to Improve Management Development

• Clear Job Descriptions and related Personal Profiles (to help select the right person for the job)
• Personal Development plans which focus on the skills and competencies needed to be successful and an Action Plan to improve these skills and competencies.
• Opportunities to network so that they can learn and understand from Peers in other companies and/or industries.
• Participation in relevant Internal or External training courses to help develop skills
• Coaching and Mentoring on an individual basis so they can develop and learn from experience and focus on specific problems and issues that they need to address (use external support if necessary)
• Succession Plans should be in place and monitored
• Regular Performance Appraisals and Action Plans
• Budget for attendance at Conferences or subscriptions to Publications
• Listen to the needs and expectations of Managers you select to lead and develop your Contact Centres - then you can customise development to build on their strengths and fills any skills gaps that they have 
• Demonstrate the commitment of Executive Management in visible ways – behave towards your Contact Centre Managers the same way that you want them to behave towards their teams. 

Summary

Contact Centres are becoming a more strategic asset in most organisations and this will continue for some time. The core components of a Contact Centre such as technology, processes and facilities can be easily replicated by any competitor. The 'people factor' can be the single biggest contibuting factor to success – and within the 'people factor' the selection and investment in the management will potentially generate your greatest long-term return. Developing the future Leadership of your Contact Centre must be high on the Agenda of all CEOs.

About The Author

Dermot Lawton, has over 12 years international management experience of Call Centres in Ireland, UK, US and Turkey and he has worked across industries including Banking , Insurance, Telecommunications, subscription-TV and ISP and was also General Manager of a large Call Centre Outsource Company.

About Mukuda

Mukuda is a Consultancy and Support Services company which provides advice and support to organisations that wish to implement or improve Customer Contact Centres and CRM Programmes.They provide advice covering Strategy & Planning, Start-ups and Operational Management, Recruitment and Training, and an Operational Audit Review Service where they benchmark and evaluate performance against a range of measures.