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Author: Marc Carriere, Managing Director, Marketing Tactics Pty Ltd
Isn’t it frustrating when you have a really awesome team leader and they tell you that they’re moving on for whatever reason? Especially, if they don’t give you a lot of notice!
Then you’ve got all the stress and worry about how this is going to affect the team and the hassle of finding a suitable replacement either internally or hiring someone from outside, and all the training to get them up to speed.
You know it doesn’t have to be this way!
Having owned a call center myself and working all over the world for 35 years running marketing departments and call centers and consulting with businesses mentoring their call center managers and team leaders, I’m well aware of the challenges that come up when Team Leaders tell you out of the blue that they’re moving on.
After doing this over the years, the easiest way I’ve found to get ahead of this problem and limit any adverse affects on the team when a Team Leader decides to move on, or even if you decide to make a change, is to have a pipeline of future team leaders you can quickly draw on.
You do this by creating a Team Captain role within your existing teams. Team Captains are typically good team members who appear to have the characteristics and traits of really good Team Leaders and consistently reach or exceed their personal KPIs and targets.
Especially, those team members who have shown interest in learning new skills to advance their careers, and are generally respected by the other members on the team who recognize that they’re good operators. Someone they often ask for advice about how to do handle calls and objections and other things like that.
As you know in most call center there are plenty of team members who are eager to step up, although not all of them are ready to become an amazing Team Leader with some training, coaching and especially a little experience they can flourish.
In effect what you want to do is treat a Team Captain role as a Team Leader apprenticeship. This allows you to take some time to help them develop team leader skills and provide them with some practical on-the-job experience, so they can be ready to step into a team leader role whenever one comes up.
A big advantage Team Captains can bring to the team are filling in for the team leader whenever they’re sick, on holidays, at meetings or even when they’re coaching and training.
And, most times you don’t have to pay Team Captains anything extra because they see being a Team Captain as an opportunity to learn the skills and practical experience they need to be considered for a team leader role when one becomes available.
Now, to be fair to them you really need to provide the coaching and training and practical experience they need to develop these new skills, so they can be ready and confident to become an amazing Team Leader. Otherwise, they’ll soon feel that you’re taking advantage of them and probably leave!
This means taking them through your Team Leader Training Program incrementally, so they understand all the tasks involved with being a Team Leader, and help them develop skills like call monitoring and scoring, providing corrective feedback and on-the-job coaching.
To give them the practical experiences so they can hone these types of skills simply assign them one of the new or one of the newer operators to mentor and develop their coaching skills with.
And, don’t worry about your Team Leaders feeling threatened about the Team Captain role. If they’re a good team leader they will absolutely love the help and most often be invested in helping develop a future team leader.
After all, many of your Team Leaders want to step up themselves and they’ll see that developing team leaders is a skill they’ll need to do that!
About Marc Carriere:
With worldwide executive experience managing Call Centre teams that have won 3 Silver and 3 Gold ‘Ardy’ awards, consulting with businesses mentoring and coaching their Call Centre Leaders and having owned a call centre himself, Marc is well aware of the difficulties Call Centres face consistently meeting their monthly targets.
Published: Monday, July 26, 2021
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