Contact Center Team Leads

 

Summary:

Title: Importance of Contact Center Team Leads & Coaches: Best Practices, Responsibilities, and Standards for Success

Importance of team leads in a contact center

• - Team leads play a crucial role in the contact center floor, defining best practices, responsibilities, and standards.
• - Ideally, a team lead should manage 5 to 6 call center reps, with going over 10 being considered ridiculous.

Start the week with check-ins and goal setting

• - Connect with team members individually for rapport building and goal setting.
• - Review previous week's reports for performance analysis and to identify any red flags.

Daily monitoring and feedback for CSR performance

• - Regularly review CSR stats, look for red flags like low booking rates or high cancellations
• - Perform call audits throughout the day, provide constructive feedback to improve performance

Maintain active and engaging Discord channels for team communication

• - Daily check-ins to ensure team well-being and share success stories
• - Encourage knowledge sharing, fun activities, feedback, and regular updates

Addressing attendance issues in contact center team leads

• - Emphasizing the importance of punctuality and reliability, offering support for underlying reasons
• - Implementing coaching styles: directive, facilitative, collaborative for performance improvement

Different coaching styles for contact center team leads

• - Directive coaching provides clear guidance for improvement focusing on specific aspects of performance
• - Facilitative coaching allows CSRs to identify and solve problems with guidance, potential for future team leads
• - Collaborative coaching involves both coach and CSR contributing ideas for a comprehensive improvement plan

Key performance indicators for coaching team leads

• - KPIs for coaching team leads include coach-listening, caring about opinions, regular check-ins, and coachings.
• - Coaches should allocate time to take calls to maintain credibility and product/service knowledge.

Don't be afraid to ask for help or advice

• - Ensure your knowledge is top tier to benefit from help
• - If you don't click with your team leader, don't hesitate to seek assistance elsewhere

Full Transcript

welcome back to yet another episode of
caffeinated CX where we talk about
customer experience and stuff all in a
hyper caffeinated
state I'm David the caffeinated cxo and
before we begin today's episode I'd like
to ask you to do The Stereotype like
review rate comment and share the show
so we can make the show grow that's
right growth today we're going to be
talking about the importance of your
team leads or coaches on your contact
center floor the best practices what
their responsibilities are and to what
standards you need to hold them to they
are one of if not the most important
roles in your contact center so you have
to get this right this your Tech stack
your training curriculum and your
culture are all pillars that hold your
contact center up without these your
Center will fall and that ain't good in
fact that's bad wait a minute this voice
doesn't feel right wait oh no help cough
cough there we go

[Music]

well well well ladies and gentlemen
boys and girls ghosts and ghouls
squirrels and lemur and everybody in
between it's good to be back it's good
to have my voice back isn't it I think
so I think so if you're watching it on
YouTube or Spotify with their video
option you can see some uh footage of
the original Guild Wars
2005 why something to look at something
to do some something to have and to hold
and just see how utterly mediocre I am
at one of my favorite
games so today like promised in the
intro we are going to talk about the
importance of your team lead or coaches
or whatever it is that you call them now
typically a team lead or a coach will
have a few call center reps right the
custom customer service reps or your
sales reps or whoever depends on your
contact Cent right under them usually
this number is 5 to six can get up to 10
uh anything more than that is a little
ridiculous and you shouldn't do that
right you should uh either Elevate
somebody else up to a team lead so they
don't go over 10
or don't have that many people I I don't
know um so we're gonna start with
the what does their week look like how
should they start their week and let's
talk about it the first step is when
they come in for the
week the first thing they should do is
individual check-ins with their team
members right
so uh connect with each team member
individually through a voice call using
dialpad Discord voice chat Zoom
Microsoft teams even over the phone
works uh because this Personal Touch
builds rapport with your team members
and allows you to address any immediate
concerns or questions also on this call
you should set weekly goals
so individual goals probably decided in
last week's coaching right you just want
to reiterate those you want to hammer
down on those you want to reexpress
those so they're top of mind
right so you want to also stay updated
so scan your Discord or slack channels
to see if you missed anything on your
days off um you want to be the best
informed person out on the floor this is
definitely going to help you when you
transition over into your floor support
time of the day
right now at the beginning of the week
after you've done your check-ins and
youve said hi to everybody and you've
reviewed everything um you want to
review the previous week's uh reports
right you want to see where everybody
ended up how the center ended up what
the kpis are looking like um you also
want to look for any red flags and this
comes from a uh trades call
center specific thing here but you you
have your own that you know uh our red
flags would be like low booking rates
High cancellation rates or anomalies in
call counts like someone took a buttload
of calls but
only said that five of those calls were
leads right and booked all five that's
that's great but if you took 60 calls in
a day and five of those were leads
something's either up with the your
account or the marketing both of which
are essential to know
so um you have to start the week with a
thorough review and setting clear goals
which sets the tone for a productive and
successful work uh week ahead so pretty
standard stuff there let's talk about
daily
routines uh morning routine you want to
review your weekly stats begin each day
by reviewing the previous day uh CSR
stats and the cancellation rates this is
again specific um look for red flag such
as those low uh booking rates High
cancellations rates or discrepancies in
call counts uh again check for
announcements things can change in any
contact center within minutes let alone
hours or the you know the 16 hours
between your shifts right
so you want to individual check-ins just
you know just reach out to your
team right whatever the daily goals are
and then you want to get into some of
the following your call audits right um
throughout the day perform call audits
to ensure quality and adherance to
protocols provide constructive feedback
to csrs to improve their performance now
this can be done through chat right
through a DM uh it doesn't need to be
anything specific you don't need to get
on video chat every time that you do a
call audit and it was a bad call right
save that for the weekly
coaching
um now for the weekly coachings you want
to get those done every week at the same
time the same day of every week
consistency is your best practice there
uh at the end of the day review The
Daily performance uh review the day's
performance metrics note any
achievements or areas for improvement to
discuss on the next coaching
session uh plan for tomorrow set
priorities and objectives for the next
day ensure that the that any pending
issues or follow-ups are addressed
promptly uh Team engagement engage with
the team through the team channels
either on slack or Discord or if you're
in person in person do it up uh provide
encouragement and recognize individual
and team achievements uh I'm going to
get into the the uh Team specific
channel in just a little bit
here all right so now we use Discord in
our in our Center uh I know a lot of
other people use slack or Microsoft
teams we chose Discord why because it's
fun it's
easy it looks better the aesthetic is a
bit better than slack in my humble
opinion hash tag not
sponsored so team Discord channels are
the heartbeat of your team's
communication and collaboration they
serve as a virtual space where team
members can connect share ideas ask
questions and support each other these
channels play a crucial role in
fostering a sense of community and
belonging among team members which is
essential for positive work environment
and team morale I am reading verbatim
from a training manual that I wrote up
today um idea is to keep your team
Discord channels Lively because there is
nothing worse or more
disconcerting than a team channel that
is a literal uh ghost town or just a
copy paste of the general announcements
channel right no you want to keep these
as Lively as possible um so daily
check-ins again check in with the entire
team uh make sure everything everything
and everyone is doing well uh share
success stories celebrate individual and
team achievements whether it's hitting a
Target resolving a challenging uh
customer issue or learning a new skill
sharing success stories boost morale and
motivates others uh knowledge sharing
encourage team members to share tips
tricks and best practices hey have you
tried this rebuttal on
X stuff like that right um fun
activities you can have trivia um um
photo contest virtual team building
activities um all of that stuff is good
and keeps the conversation going
um you can have it for feedback and
suggestions that's always welcome uh
theme days you can do that
um and you know of course regular
updates of course because why not so uh
weekly coaching for
csrs
so now the coaching Focus areas usually
are something of the following right
call Quality score uh review recent call
recordings to assess the csr's call
Quality score provide specific feedback
on areas of improvement such as Clarity
professionalism adherence to scripts or
guidelines uh booking rate uh discuss
the csr's booking rate and identify
strategies to improve it this could
include refining their pitch overcoming
objections or leveraging customer
insights to personalize their approach
this is very very easily done with most
crms um focus on developing soft skills
such as empathy Rapport building active
listening uh role playay a little role
play should be in part of every
coaching regardless um work on sales
skills like uh rebuttal objection
handling building value uh provide real
life examples and scen scarios and
roleplay um attendance address any
attendance issues and emphasize The
Importance of Being punctual and
reliable offer support if there are any
underlying reasons for attendance issues
there is only a few reasons that people
are late or absent a lot right most of
those can be changed with a simple
schedule change maybe something happened
in their life that they don't want to
bring forward and they can no longer
make it at nine on the dot but they can
make it right on time at
9:30 right that works that's the easy
fix sometimes you do that right and uh
there's still like 10 minutes late each
shift and at that point that's where a
pip would come in cuz yeah with uh some
jobs like knowledge work something like
that it doesn't really matter does it
when you stroll into the office as long
as you get all your work done when it's
customer care when you're dealing with
customers and as rigid as call center
schedules are that 10 15 minutes makes a
huge difference especially if someone
else is waiting to go on break Don't Be
a Jerk Beyond Time have some respect for
yourself and for your other co-workers
okay um but yeah and the team lead coach
is definitely the first line of defense
when it comes to that uh it need after
that it needs to be kicked up to
supervisor manager director whoever
right if it becomes
egregious uh there's uh three different
coaching styles that I want to kind of
cover here before this gets too long
because I do want to also do one more
thing at the end of this um directive
coaching is providing Specific
Instructions and guidance on how to
improve performance this style useful
for addressing specific issues that
require clear Direction then there's I'm
going to butcher the pr anunciation of
this
cuz I why not facilitative coaching
encourage csrs to find Solutions
themselves by asking open-ended
questions and guiding them through the
problem solving process this style
promotes self-discovery and ownership of
improvement and then there's
collaborative coaching work together
with the CSR to set goals and develop
action plans this style Fosters a sense
of partnership and shared accountability
for
improvement when to use each style use
directive coaching when the CSR needs
clear guidance on how to improve a
specific aspect of their
performance facilitative coaching is
effective when the CSR has the potential
to identify and solve problems
themselves with the right guidance these
are the ones the ones that take more to
that one they're the ones that your next
pool of Team leading coaches probably
are coming from right and then there's
collaborative coaching uh works well
when both the coach and the CSR can
contribute their ideas and insights to
create a comprehensive Improvement
plan
so again there is
uh there is much to be said about
consistency and coaching it should be at
the same time on the same day of every
week um if that's not possible let's say
the team lead is out
for that week or that day they can
delegate it to either someone from the
quality assurance team or a supervisor
or even another team lead so that the
CSR does not miss out on that training
cuz that's bad if the CSR is out then
schedule it for the next available time
uh so that it still happens that week if
the CSR is out that week while they're
out that week it it's fine it's fine all
right so now what metrics or kpis should
you hold your team leaders up to all
right so now you already should know
your target metrics for your center
right you can mirror those to your team
lead if all of their agents are meeting
their metrics they're good to go if on
average all the agents are
meeting their minimum standards then
that's okay um you just want to deal
with those other those people that are
dragging it down because even even if
they got up to the minimal standards
they'd be above minimal standards just
going by the average right and then so
that's probably the best one to hold
them up to uh that making sure that all
the coachings happen on time I would
send out a random or an anonymous survey
uh to their team
members just to get some feedback on
them that you can share with a team lead
since they're Anonymous right it's it
should be fine um
so if you're watching Guild Wars here
I'm about to die I think so yeah I took
out some Char at too low of a level um
that's fine that's fine so it is what it
is y um anyway um but yeah and you want
to have that as a kpi as well you want
passing right and on this uh
survey you can have things like my coach
listens to me my coach uh cares about my
opinion my coach has regular check-ins
and coachings with me things like that
so there you go those are some kpis that
you can hold them up to there's some
other ones too but those are the ones
that we mostly do
um I also would have them uh take calls
as well you can't coach what you don't
do at least that's my opinion so it's
really hard to coach somebody if you
haven't taken a call in a year right so
on that I would either allocate like two
hours a day to be on the phones or 10
hours a week and they can split it up
any way they want
right so that's
uh that's that
um but yeah it's hard to coach what you
don't do with and you know letting
having them listen to you so CU that's a
whole other thing right so you want you
want them to listen to you right you you
want to be credible and when you're on
the phones you have to be at or above
preferably above the metric standards
for the Department uh there's no reason
not to uh be if you're a team lead coach
you should know every trick of the trade
your product or service knowledge should
be top tier uh the only person that
should know more than you honestly might
be the owner of the company right uh you
should know just as much as your manager
or director or
supervisor and uh if you don't know what
that is then uh you have to uh learn
right how do you learn you can either
look it up most likely your company has
a database a knowledge base or you can
simply ask right and anybody who's worth
their uh weight in salt what Worth or
salt will uh be able to help you and
point you in the right direction so but
your knowledge and
your your knowledge should be topped
here and if it's not get it top tier so
there's
that yeah
so do all that and uh don't be afraid to
ask for help if you need it don't be
afraid to ask for advice if you need it
right don't be afraid to be like hey I
can't coach this person can you please
help right cuz some people they don't
mesh with their team leaders coach and
that's neither the team leads or the
csr's fault they just don't mesh there's
no chemistry and that's okay it happens
so it is what it is 

so let's go
ahead and there is one other thing that
I wanted to show you so let's do that
while we still have time together okay
okay this
isso doai and we're going to make a
song
okay okay we're going to go to create
and we can do one of two
things
uh we can do one of two things we can
make custom mode and write our own
lyrics and everything or we can have it
doing it what kind of music do you want
to listen
to
a an epic
fantasy
symphonic power metal
song
and then we hit
create and through the magic of time it
finished Beyond the Veil dramatic epic
symphonic power metal so let's click on
this one and it has lyrics here in the
realm of Dreams where Sorrows lie a
Journey Begins from Realms up high we
soar through Skies to a world unknown
where Legends are born and heroes are
shown with swords of steel and fire a
blaze we battle the darkness in Endless
days through perilous paths we march
with might and the name of Honor we
stand and fight thank you for listening
our tale Untold through our words and
music our story unfolds with every chord
and note we summon the powers of
caffeinated CX our hearts forever
empowered those are those are crap
lyrics Right but it's fine let's see
what it sounds
like
of
Dreams begin High We
the leg are
show with SK and fire we fell the
endless
days Mar name and fight thank you for
listening your tail
un
the music power
story song the
[Music]
power our heart forever
[Music]
power
[Music]
oh
well that was neat all right so that was
version one there's two versions that
come with it so we played this one let's
play this one same lyrics slightly
different style so let's give that one a
whirl
dreams the r up high we fall the
SK the legends of a
show with and fire we the darkless
days Mar with name of one we stand and
fight thank you for listening your tail
un told through music power
St
every the power so is our hearts forever
[Music]
power
[Music]
all right well there you go this is
sunno
aai so you get uh like you can make 10
songs for free or you can do what
I did and spend $10 and get
2,000 or however many uh credits a month
so which is like 200 songs so they're
really fun to make it's uh really fun to
make like songs out of customer reviews
so do what you will with that
information it's just a fun thing um but
that's it I just wanted to show you that
I do have an
album um I'll put it down in the little
link description that I made with it uh
using custom and honestly this is the
first AI platform I've actually spent
money on so there you go have fun guys
I'll see you next time time
[Music]