For most workers, it’s been almost a year away from the office — and morale is high: 86 percent of remote workers feel less stressed.
But for call center leaders it’s been a year of tirelessly onboarding new tools and deploying new strategies catered to remote work.
Luckily, 2021 is projected to be a promising year for call centers, with agents performing at a high level. But to truly succeed, call centers need to empower supervisors with training to support their agents.
And it’s only gotten harder for supervisors to effectively coach their agents with the shift to remote work.
One of easiest ways to elevate your leaders, reduce agent churn, and improve your labor ROI, is by empowering your supervisors to help them train quality, long-term agents.
Here are three “I”s that are essential for call center success in 2021.
Innovation — Key to Building Better Call Centers
In order to make sure agent supervisors have adequate training, BPO providers need to make frequent reviews of their technology and programs. While that has always been important, the fact that everything is now executed virtually makes it critical in 2021.
Call center providers that are focused on innovation will outperform the BPOs that stick to the status quo.
Simply put, at-home or hybrid models require different training methodologies than before — and even if your call center model hasn’t changed, your business surely has.
Areas of innovation your BPO should already offer supervisors:
- LMS solutions to replace or supplement in-person training.
- Business intelligence to help supervisors target productivity hacks.
- Workforce management to add efficiency across your agent pool.
Influence — How Great Managers Create Great Agents
Chances are your call center’s best supervisor was once a very skilled agent. And it makes sense that committed agents often become great supervisors. Their experience will help influence your entire call center operation.
So why not just trust your call center to select their top-performing agents and wait for newly-minted supervisors to transform your customer experience?
Because you need more than high performers; you need influential leaders!
Remote workforces require special qualities from their leaders. And the best call centers are already building supervisory best practices around specific soft skills:
- Trustworthiness
- Empathy
- Patience
- Humility
- Generosity
Well-trained supervisors — especially those trained to manage fully-remote teams — will influence your agents to create better customer experiences.
Incentives — Guiding Supervisors Toward Success
At-home work has shifted the paradigm of work incentives.
Call centers that can deploy at-home incentives have a huge advantage over BPO providers that are handcuffed to email or phone to develop their agents’ skills.
Luckily, solutions have emerged, like gamification, to give supervisors fun and motivating incentives that target key performance metrics, such as:
- Best CSAT agent score
- Lowest AHT
- Highest FCR
These incentives can be shared with all your agents and integrated into existing solutions and third-party tools. Call center gamification helps supervisors understand performance insights — and fast — to help coach, encourage, and promote agents.
Quite simply, agents enjoy competing against one another and your customer experience improves.
Does Your Call Center Provider Have Their “I”s on the Prize?
Call center supervisors must empower agents to tackle new, emerging challenges — but they can’t do it alone.
Does your call center invest in their supervisors in a way that can elevate their training and help them conquer your business challenges? They should.
As one of the fastest growing call center consultancies, Outsource Consultants offers expert insights for businesses of all sizes. Get your no-risk, no-cost consultation today.
