Contact Centres: The Future Team Leader - CX & Performance Coach

What does a contact centre team leader need to focus on today?

In this episode - the second part of our contact centre series - Bob and Jeremy explore how contact centre leadership is evolving. As AI and automation take on more of the reporting and admin, team leaders are being asked to focus more on coaching, performance management and customer experience.

They discuss common challenges in contact centres, from stepping into a team leader role and managing former peers, to balancing targets, quality and employee wellbeing.

There’s also a practical look at hybrid and remote teams, omni-channel working, and how strong coaching skills can improve performance across contact centre teams.

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Transcript

Jeremy Blake 0:28

Welcome back to part two. Part two of what, Bobby Boy?

Bob Morrell 0:30

Part two of our series on the world of contact centers, call centers, customer experience. In our last episode, we talked about the broader contact center industry and some of our work in it. And we very much focused on the individual, the operator, the frontline person, and how their roles are changing in the current climate. And so for today's episode, we're going to think a little bit more about team leaders in contact centers because the vast majority of contact centers that we've worked in have groups of nine, 10, up to 14 sometimes individuals, and each team is run by a team leader, and they are there to generate a great performance from their teams. And of course, what they're also having to do is cope with the massive changes that are taking place in the marketplace right now. Jeremy, can you give us a snapshot of some of your experiences of working with team leaders in contact centers?

Jeremy Blake 1:42

Yes, I suppose the first obvious fact of most team leaders is they've done the job of the operator before they become a team leader. So you have a sort of awkward initial step-up process where they are managing their mates, their ex-colleagues very often. And it's very often their very first foray into leadership. And the other thing is they're very often not given any leadership development or training. So by the time we turn up, they are largely administratively scared. They're trying to manage the numbers of the 15 in their pack, hitting a certain target, but also managing quality is always high up on their agenda. Have we not upset the customer? Did we mention this? Did we mention that? Um, and also the stuff that you covered in the first episode. Have we even remembered name, address, telephone, number? Have you updated their details so that our marketing channels can reach them in every possible channel? Um, they generally seem overwhelmed, and we take them off, we do some work with them, and they generally drop their shoulders a bit and relax and realize that that isn't their job. That actually, if you just focus on your team and you get away from your screen and you coach your team, performance grows, and then actually you're not scurring around so much to try to hit one more number and drag your lowest performer up to the line. That's a sort of negative outlook. Some of them are marvelous.

Admin Versus Performance Focus

Bob Morrell 3:07

Well, I I would say that broadly we have two types that we come across. We have team leaders who are excellent administrators, so they keep their teams up to speed and all the data and uh get them uh working on the facts and they administer that very, very well. And then you get the other type who are much more concerned with performance. Now, I think in the modern world and with the advancement of technology, the administration part more and more will become automated. I'm not going to need someone walking up with a little report and putting it in front of me every day to show me my performance. I'm going to get a thing flashing up on my screen saying, this is your performance and this is what you're doing. And, you know, the automation of that will become more and more. We really want team leaders to focus on performance management. That's where they can make a massive difference.

Jeremy Blake 4:04

Even though you say that, and if AI took it on, I nearly said A and E. That's quite an interesting slip, isn't it? Um, there's the desire, there's still a sort of inherent learned behavior where their previous manager looked carefully at the screen, saw what people are on, looked at their call times. And there's a belief that by staring at that long enough, performance might get better if I understand and get under the nails of the numbers. The numbers don't ever change performance and behavior. So, just as Bob said, the brilliant contemporary leader will become a coach and learn how to lift their people and make them not feel that the work is mundane and not purposeful. And everything else that you said and we went through in the first episode.

Coaching Beats Watching The Numbers

Bob Morrell 4:48

Well, there's a few little additional elements we can add to that. So there's this whole point of moving from voice to other channels. Okay. So as a team leader, if you're just managing voice people, I would say that's quite absurd these days, where so many people want to use chat or messaging or email or whatever it may be. So the upskilling of your of your team so that they are truly um omni-channel and can work in different channels, that would be an important strategy, uh, especially at the moment.

Jeremy Blake 5:25

I think we should just say before you carry on, we the biggest pushback that we have experienced, and it's not going anywhere, is a lot of people who have chosen to work, not even chosen, fallen into working context, they do not want to be seen on camera. They don't like themselves, they don't want to be seen. There's a there's a huge challenge in that. Oh, there is. There's some people who just want to be secret. I don't want customers to see me. Um they want privacy. And that is still going to be the greatest challenge to allow somebody to allow a camera to be on them to be seen. That's the channel of you know, some consumers don't want to be do that either. But there is evidence showing that when we connect on a screen, we reduce the distance between us.

Building Omni‑Channel Teams

Bob Morrell 6:12

Well, I think the other point is that if you are a team leader or a manager, your job is to look at the processes for each channel and work out where the coaching and training is required to reach the sufficient level that you need. That would be your absolute uh primary goal. Um, now that moves us on onto this whole element of AI because we know that AI is making a a big difference to contact centers. And we talked in the first episode about AI is not just managing calls now, but is also helping individuals on their calls by analysing what they're saying. Now, as a manager, I can look at that analytics and go, right, there's a training need here. This person keeps saying this, I can identify that, or there's a process issue here in how we are working with our customers, we need to solve that. Um, and also if you're losing customers because of either the process, the training need, a knowledge gap, a skills gap, whatever it may be, you can then absolutely make a case to say, look, here is some really important data and the language and the behavior that supports the development in this area to stop it. From that, you can then redesign the roles of your team, allow the AI environment to take over the bits which it is quite capable of taking of taking over, but then you know that the elements of quality, empathy, technical resolution, et cetera, that's going to be the thing that you can help your people to achieve whilst the AI does the mundane data stuff. So that's a great job, I think, for a team leader to make that shift. Do you not think?

Jeremy Blake 8:02

Yeah, I mean, I'm just sort of thinking about to make that really that shift actually, you know, when that day arrives, when that really comes, the pull is to then almost reinduct them into what their role is now. It's quite a sort of mental shift, isn't it?

Camera Shyness And Video Channels

Bob Morrell 8:20

Or do you start the whole process by saying, this is the trend, this is what's happening. And our job as a as a leader is to take you from this to where it's going to go. And we are going to work on that as a continual process. Now that is the next element because once you've established that, you can think, okay, um, I need to think about that customer experience. So can I build build a career pathway from the entry level to a specialist role? You know, what is that pathway in the current climate? Yeah. Um, and then from your whatever vertical you're in, so if you're in software or products or financial services or whatever it may be, can you then create your team as a center of excellence in the channels that they're in, but also excellence in understanding where the customer comes to them and how they can best serve that person. That is a really motivational thing as an overall strategy to have up your sleeve, I think. That would be that would look really good, wouldn't it? If you if you were to say, look, yes, we started here, AI took over these elements, uh, we then developed our people to the point where we were delivering these sorts of results. That's fantastic leadership.

Jeremy Blake 9:36

Well, it is fantastic. You you've just got a a more of a classic learned behavior type who's thought the role is largely administrative, who it probably won't suit. No, absolutely. Who doesn't really want to think massively about behavior, coaching, performance, growth. Those are those are behaviors that that wasn't what I did, and now I I'm gonna find the switch hard.

Using AI To Target Training

Bob Morrell 9:59

That they're gonna like the next next bit even less then, because um we know that we are gonna be having more and more remote and hybrid teams. Yeah, we need a really, really good digital dashboard that shows everyone where they are and what they're doing. And as a team leader, I need to be very comfortable with all of that and understand how to manage a remote team effectively, which is a training issue. But then that then allows me to use tools to improve the forecasting, the scheduling, the performance tracking of each individual. You know, we can continue to do that all the time. And I think that's that's an another great way of using technology.

Jeremy Blake 10:40

I think the ultimate evolution of that was maybe it's at a bar at a higher level of operator who then moves to self-management. And I think some firms have almost got that. I spoke to a mortgage company a couple of years back. This person worked from home, they'd elected to do it. They literally ran their own kind of I was one of their mortgage customers in a sense, you know. And they had that mindset, and they were already using an AI tool to improve their conversations that they listened back to to see where they were getting better. So we've often talked about the evolution is a as an individual is bothered about their own behavior and performance. You could argue that once we lose the chains of an environment, a building, the management as we get more remote, remote management's tough anyway. You're almost, apart from coaching, going to be into the requirement for certain levels of self-development, aren't you? Absolutely.

Redesigning Roles With AI Support

Bob Morrell 11:35

Now, that leads us on to the last element, really, which is if we are going towards this hybrid working culture global, I mean, that's the key point, then as a manager, I shouldn't let things like my employees' well-being and their work and their experience dip as a result of that change. I have to embrace it. And one of the biggest things is advocating a coaching leadership style, moving away from that sort of command and control thing onto a coaching leadership. And if I've got really good data now that's, you know, really monitoring what's going on, I can also proactively stop people burning out. I can make sure they get a work-life balance that works for them, I can help them with their career progression. That should be the other thing which AI allows me to make calls on and go, right, this person's ready for the next level, or this person needs some help, or or whatever it may be. Now, some people listening to this will go, well, our data kind of shows us that already. But I don't think in it, you know, in the kind of global idea that you've got 15 people in four or five different locations, and that data can tell you lots of different things

Speaker 12:56

that you can then act on. And um, that's the the more uh interventionist coaching style that the that the people are gonna have to adopt to make those things work and and to keep up that that contact.

Jeremy Blake 13:10

I think one thing as you're as we're you know talking through, I am seeing a type of person who must be out of the house. Um I don't think it's generational. I don't think it's I think it's personality type almost. I think the one challenge you're gonna have is that you you may get higher performance, it'd be very interesting to run a trial, you may get higher performing, happier people who are in a building as a team and a unit. So I'm I we can't stop the way the world is going post-COVID and so on and so on, and hybrid and all of that. But you might have a higher performing, happier bunch of people who come to a workplace together and get on and a dynamic team in the same building.

Bob Morrell 13:51

Yeah.

Jeremy Blake 13:52

We don't know that.

Bob Morrell 13:53

No, we don't. Now we're gonna come on to that in more detail when we go to episode three, where we focus on um contact center companies and senior managers and how they run things. But for now, there's lots of things there um for for team leaders and managers to think about. Um, I think what I've liked about doing the research for these episodes is that if you didn't do this research, you'd think, oh, contact centers are a dying business and you know eventually AI will get rid of them completely. It can't. It can't do that. There's there's too much sophistication required at certain levels where humans will always be needed. And also the skill of that manager is to make that migration work for everyone. And if you can do that again, great opportunities as this whole thing develops.

Career Paths And Centres Of Excellence

Jeremy Blake 14:46

I think I think humans will always want conversations with customers. Uh, customers want conversations with the brand, with the company and the representative of it. And the other thing I think isn't going anywhere either, which we've just talked about this whole episode, is a human will still need somebody who's got more experience, different set of skills, my leader to really help me do that. Those two relationships, if you go to a completely uh somebody who doesn't have that, then they're running their own business, aren't they? They're a contractor. That's a different thing. Um, you know, I think that's a further evolution that would imagine outsourcing individual contracts from a contracts from a contact center. You were and you do whatever you want as long as you you these are your customers. We haven't got to that.

Bob Morrell 15:30

So we will see you in episode three, um, where we will look at contact center companies and what's happening with them. This podcast comes from reality training. For the last 25 years, we've transformed the customer interactions of many leading UK businesses and developed thousands of managers to be better at what they do. To find out more about our work, to see what we could do to help your organization, go to realitytraining.com.