Call Center Management
Elevate your contact center strategy with our trusted contact center solution.
Call center management involves the use of various strategies to achieve one common goal; delivering customer service experiences that exceed expectations. In order for these strategies to be effective, they need to address every facet of managing a call center, which includes:
- Hiring and training agents
- Ensuring agents stay engaged
- Allocating workload
- Generating call center improvement ideas
- Analyzing customer behavior
- Using technology to streamline call center operations
- Allocating call center resources effectively
But where do some call centers fall short? Why do lots of companies outsource their customer service department? Most importantly of all, what makes an effective call center? Let’s explore the complex but rewarding world of call center performance management.
What is call center management?
Call center management refers to the way businesses manage their daily call or contact center operations. It covers employee hiring and training, workforce scheduling, and customer interactions, among other things.
How your team handles these call center processes contributes to your call center’s performance.
How your team handles these call center processes contributes to your call center’s performance.
So, how does a call center work?
Managing the daily operations of a call center demands significant effort and coordination. To clarify how customer concerns are addressed, inbound call centers focus on assisting customers who reach out for help, while outbound contact center specialize in proactively engaging with customers. Both play a vital role in delivering exceptional customer service.
Inbound call center
The customer calls the company’s customer service department to raise his or her concern.
The inbound call center agent answers and tries to address the customer’s needs.
If the resolution doesn’t meet the customer’s standards, the customer can make a follow-up call or use another communication channel.
The inbound call center agent answers and tries to address the customer’s needs.
If the resolution doesn’t meet the customer’s standards, the customer can make a follow-up call or use another communication channel.
Outbound call center
The agent calls the customer and makes their motives known.
The customer listens and, depending on the situation, can make a purchase, answer a survey, or simply learn about new products.
The agent closes the call and thanks the customer, whether or not their goals were met.
The customer listens and, depending on the situation, can make a purchase, answer a survey, or simply learn about new products.
The agent closes the call and thanks the customer, whether or not their goals were met.
A call center can handle both inbound and outbound customer calls. It’s also possible to have an entire call center workforce based in different locations; in which case, it’s called a remote call center.
What makes a successful call center?
When it comes to call center success, there’s no definitive formula that ensures a call center performs well. But when the entire customer service team is working together, using the right call center technology, and integrating advanced AI solutions like AI receptionists, it's a great first step. Successful call centers often leverage these AI technologies to enhance efficiency, improve response times, and provide a better overall customer experience.
Let’s take a close look at the two key roles in a company’s customer service department—call center manager (or supervisor) and call center agent.
Let’s take a close look at the two key roles in a company’s customer service department—call center manager (or supervisor) and call center agent.
What is a call center supervisor?
Call center supervisors are people who are responsible for managing a call center’s operations in order to support the company’s customer service goals.
They may also be responsible for applying relevant call center improvement strategies such as leveraging technology like sales dialers to increase agent productivity, minimize downtime, and ensure outbound campaigns are executed effectively.
Let’s find out exactly what their role entails.
They may also be responsible for applying relevant call center improvement strategies such as leveraging technology like sales dialers to increase agent productivity, minimize downtime, and ensure outbound campaigns are executed effectively.
Let’s find out exactly what their role entails.
A supervisor or other contact center management role involves a variety of tasks, which include:
- Managing, guiding, and motivating team members
- Overseeing hiring and onboarding processes
- Promoting agent engagement and retention and helping reduce turnover rates
- Creating and maintaining a harmonious culture
- Setting call center performance goals, typically with the senior manager
- Identifying key performance drivers that affect contact center goals
- Assigning responsibilities necessary to achieve goals
- Speaking with dissatisfied customers and coming up with satisfactory solutions
- Preparing and evaluating call center performance reports
- Identifying and resolving call center efficiency issues
- Helping optimize the call center’s processes to improve efficiency
What is a call center agent?
A call center agent is responsible for managing inbound and outbound customer calls for a business. They operate as the company’s front line, handling issues like product complaints, billing concerns, support requests, and more.
Call center agents may also go by names like customer service representatives, customer care representatives, telephone service attendants, or telesales agents. You’ve probably heard of the term contact center agent—contact center agents handle emails, live chats, social media messages, and other interactions via digital channels on top of traditional phone calls.
Call center agents may also go by names like customer service representatives, customer care representatives, telephone service attendants, or telesales agents. You’ve probably heard of the term contact center agent—contact center agents handle emails, live chats, social media messages, and other interactions via digital channels on top of traditional phone calls.
What do call center agents do?
The main duties of a call center agent are to answer and dial out customer calls. Incoming calls usually mean responding to queries, addressing complaints, taking orders, and troubleshooting problems.
Outgoing calls, on the other hand, normally come in the form of gathering survey data, setting appointments, and relaying promotional offers.
Outgoing calls, on the other hand, normally come in the form of gathering survey data, setting appointments, and relaying promotional offers.
Here’s a list of typical call center agent duties:
- Answering and initiating customer calls in a professional manner
- Obtaining, recording, verifying, and updating customer information and other data to efficiently handle conversations
- Identifying and escalating priority issues if needed
- Keeping records of conversations
- Finding opportunities to upsell or cross-sell if needed
- Building strong customer relationships
- Meeting personal and team targets
It’s a given that call center agents must have exceptional communication skills. Apart from that, they have to be empathetic, organized, able to retain information well, and keep calm under pressure.
Why do successful call center operations matter?
The success of a business depends not only on sales reps closing deals but also on call center agents delivering great after-sales care. And that’s where successful call center operations play a vital role.
With effective call center management, any issues or questions that customers have can be dealt with efficiently and satisfactorily, meaning that customers are more likely to stay with your business.
When call center management is done correctly, the benefits for call centers include:
With effective call center management, any issues or questions that customers have can be dealt with efficiently and satisfactorily, meaning that customers are more likely to stay with your business.
When call center management is done correctly, the benefits for call centers include:
- Increased customer loyalty
- Positive customer reviews about customer service and the company as a whole
- Ability to improve based on customer feedback
- Reduction in agent turnover rate
How do you effectively manage a call center?
Knowing how to manage a call center effectively is vital for delivering optimum customer service. Let’s take a look at areas that you should focus on for call center management success before finding out the best practices to follow:
Areas to focus on for call center management success
To achieve call center management success, areas that you should focus on include:
A vital component of successful call center management is quality management. All staff should be trained on the level of quality that they should deliver when in contact with customers, and how to achieve it.
Calls should be monitored to ensure that this level of quality is always being achieved, and staff should receive further training where necessary.
Calls should be monitored to ensure that this level of quality is always being achieved, and staff should receive further training where necessary.
Call center best practices
Following these best practices for call centers can help ensure your operations run smoothly.
Call center management best practices begin with hiring a special group of people. Apart from the technical skills, you want to go for those who have a genuine passion for customer service. Take the time to screen new employees both for know-how and character.
All the call center management tips mentioned above deliver a positive impact on both customer and employee engagement. Add a good customer experience platform into the mix, and you have a call center that’s built for success.
See RingCX in action
Call center metrics: Essential KPIs a call center manager should take note of
A call center manager is expected to monitor customer behavior and help enhance the performance of their staff.
They should be able to gather data and analyze metrics to identify trends, create reports, and refine processes—all for the purpose of improving customer experience, agent performance, and ultimately, call center performance.
Below are some important call center metrics that provide great value when you’re measuring performance.
They should be able to gather data and analyze metrics to identify trends, create reports, and refine processes—all for the purpose of improving customer experience, agent performance, and ultimately, call center performance.
Below are some important call center metrics that provide great value when you’re measuring performance.
First-call resolution rates show how many issues were fixed at the first time of asking. Companies use it to evaluate their service level standards. A high FCR rate (around 90%) means agents are efficient at resolving issues at the first point of contact.
Customers don’t need to make follow-up calls or switch to digital channels like chat, email, or social media.
Let’s look at the two ways you can measure FCR:
Gross FCR is measured by dividing the number of cases resolved in a single call—those that can actually be resolved in the first call, including cancellations, upgrades, and booking changes—by the total number of incoming calls you received.
| Gross FCR = | Number of cases resolved on the first call |
| All incoming calls |
Of course, not all cases can be addressed in one call. If you don’t factor that into your equation, you might get a distorted picture of your call center’s performance. This is why many companies prefer to use net FCR.
Net FCR takes cases that can’t be resolved on the first call (e.g., support issues and hardware repair) into account. That number is subtracted from the total number of incoming calls received.
| Net FCR = | Number of cases resolved on the first call |
| All incoming calls - Cases that can’t be resolved at the first call |
To get the gross FCR or net FCR rate, you just have to multiply the quotient by 100.
Getting the right call center management solution
As a company, you need to be able to serve every type of customer, from young people who spend lots of time on social media and messaging platforms to professionals who want fast, straightforward replies over the phone.
The right call or contact center solution empowers agents, enhances customer experience, and drives successful call center strategies—all of which are crucial for successful call center management.
The right call or contact center solution empowers agents, enhances customer experience, and drives successful call center strategies—all of which are crucial for successful call center management.