Call Center Management: 10 Tips to Boost Agent Performance

How would you like to make your call center agents 8.5 times more likely to stay with your company and 16 times more likely to refer their friends? As a leader, you have the power to enact behaviors and policies that will do just that. By implementing effective call center management strategies, you can create a supportive and engaging work environment that boosts agent satisfaction and performance.

This includes utilizing advanced management tools, providing continuous training, and fostering open communication, all of which contribute to a more motivated and productive team.

The Power of Call Center Management Tools

Call center management refers to the way a call center structures its organization, leverages resources, handles employees, and optimizes processes. Call center management consists of roles such as directors, call center managers, supervisors, and team leads.

Call center management systems are sophisticated platforms that integrate various functionalities to manage inbound and outbound communications effectively. They help track performance, manage workflows, and ensure every customer interaction is handled efficiently. These tools provide real-time analytics and reporting, enabling managers to make data-driven decisions that optimize operations. Additionally, they facilitate seamless integration with other software, such as CRM systems, enhancing the overall customer experience. In this article, we’ll delve into the top ten tips using call center management tools to boost agent performance and tackle common challenges in call centers.

Be a Successful Call Center Manager

A successful contact center manager wears many hats and excels in several key areas. They are adept at monitoring and analyzing performance metrics to ensure that customer service goals are met. They possess strong leadership skills, enabling them to motivate and guide their teams effectively.

Call center managers do any of the following duties:

• Overseeing call center operations
• Setting and tracking KPIs and performance metrics
• Analyzing metrics and preparing reports
• Conducting performance reviews
• Auditing processes and looking for ways to improve efficiency
• Ensuring alignment between corporate goals (SLAs) and call center agent performance
• Evaluating and recommending new software to enhance productivity
• Forecasting 
• Scheduling
• Hiring and firing
• Coaching and training
• Creating SOPs and other documentation 
• Leading team meetings
• Approving certain agent actions, such as refunds
• Dealing with escalation requests

Do not underestimate the power of a manager to affect call center performance. As MetricNet CEO Jeff Rumburg, who has spent more than 30 years in the contact center industry, writes for ICMI: “I have seen contact centers transform, almost overnight, from poor performers to top quartile performers simply by replacing the manager of the center.”

10 Call Center Management Best Practices That’ll Empower Your Employees

Given how vital your role is as a leader of your company, below are 17 call center management best practices that can improve employee engagement, boost productivity, and make your center an empowering place to work.

1. Implement Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) Systems

ACD systems are crucial in managing large volumes of calls by automatically routing incoming calls to the most suitable agent based on predefined criteria. This ensures that customers are connected to the right person who can handle their queries efficiently, reducing wait times and improving overall satisfaction.

2. Improve call quality with AI-powered noise cancellation

Too many call center agents are being asked to do their jobs in noisy environments. In an office, they’re distracted by other agents talking on the phones around them, and even at home, their calls are interrupted by noisy neighbors, talkative family members, and vocal pets. One thing is clear: noise causes issues for your agents. 

But there’s a simple fix to all of those problems: the Krisp noise-cancelling app. With the click of a button, Krisp works in the background to eliminate all distracting sounds in real-time—on any communication app and with any headset that your agents use. The power lies in its deep neural network, which has been trained and knows which human voice to keep and which distracting sound to take out.

3. Optimize Workforce Management (WFM)

Call center workforce management (WFM) is the solution that can help organizations forecast staffing needs, manage payroll, deliver an outstanding customer experience (CX), and more.

WFM tools are designed to optimize agent scheduling, ensuring that the right number of agents are available to handle the call volume. These tools also help in forecasting demand, tracking performance, and managing workloads efficiently.

4. Get on the phones, gain respect

While many call center managers and supervisors start as agents, not all do, and it’s easy to grow disconnected from the front lines the longer you work in management.

One of the biggest complaints of call center agents is that management is out of touch with what goes on on the phones. This results in management implementing metrics and procedures that don’t make sense.

Easy fix? Take some calls yourself. Regularly. This serves two purposes:

1. You will feel the impact of the policies you’re putting in place. Are these policies helping or hurting your agents and customers? You’ll find out by taking some calls.
2. You’ll gain respect from your direct reports and improve performance. Research suggests that when leaders lead by example, followers are more likely to cooperate. 

5. Schedule regular one-on-ones

One-on-ones are regular meetings between managers and their direct reports to celebrate accomplishments, discuss career growth, convey feedback, and answer questions. According to the 2017 State of One-on-Ones report, the majority of managers and direct reports agree that one-on-one meetings are important to team performance. However, there is a disconnect between how helpful managers and employees think the one-on-ones are.

One-on-one Do’s and Don’ts

• DO share an agenda ahead of time so the direct report knows what to expect. In the meeting agenda, be sure to add a clear objective to focus the conversation.

• DON’T use this time to micromanage. While you may choose to go over the employee’s metrics during a one-on-one, this isn’t the time to obsess over the numbers or try to micromanage. Instead, try to find good work to highlight and praise before going into areas of improvement.

• DO discuss career growth and development. As you saw above, promotion opportunities are a big motivator for call center employees. Be sure to focus on career growth so the direct report sees a future with your company.
• DON’T do all the talking. The purpose of a one-on-one is not for the manager to lecture; instead, it should be an opportunity for the direct report to talk about concerns and get answers to questions they might not otherwise have brought up. 

6. Encourage a sense of community

Friends and community were the fourth most important driver of employee retention in the McKinsey report. Your agents want to feel like they belong, and they achieve that through having work friends and having comfortable spaces for socializing in the office, such as break rooms and lounges.

7. Stop obsessing over metrics

Call center metrics are a key way to ensure your team is doing a good job—but they’re not the only way. Don’t become so distracted by a single metric that you fail to look at the whole picture.

For example, are hold times still too long despite training your team as best as possible? Look at other factors: Is call volume going up while the number of agents remains the same? Then expecting them to answer faster is unrealistic. Use metrics, but also think holistically.

8. Cultivate a culture of appreciation

In its most recent Global Culture Report, O.C. Tanner found a direct link between peer recognition and a feeling of connection: When an employee gave recognition to a peer, the connection between the two became 55% stronger. Peer recognition can contribute to a stronger community, which, as we know, makes it more likely that an employee will stick around.

So how can you enhance peer recognition? One way is to have a “shoutouts” segment during your team huddle, where employees can announce their gratitude for a peer’s help.

9. Invest in frequent training

Training is not a one-and-done deal for any call center agent. Industry regulations and organizational goals constantly change. As you take more calls, you get more customer feedback that should inform changes at your call center. Make sure to keep your agents up to date on training so they can perform at their best. 

10. Instill a mission and tie it to the agents’ work

Human beings are meaning-makers by nature. Without meaning, a job will feel pointless and an employee’s morale will decrease, lowering their performance and eventually causing them to seek another job.

Your organization likely has a mission statement. Find ways to tie that mission statement directly to what your call center team does. You can even create a modified mission statement specifically for your call center.

This mission should be reiterated during team huddles and in performance reviews. That way, agents will always see how the work they’re doing is contributing to the mission. For example, consider reading positive customer feedback (taken from surveys) at the start of every team huddle. This will motivate your agents because they’ll see that their work is appreciated by callers.

10. Choose the best call center software for your organization

If you’re still using outdated software, no amount of call center management tweaks will fix your agents’ performance. The right call center software will automate mindless tasks (giving you and your agents more time to attend to important matters), track metrics and provide performance reports to help your team get better, and even use artificial intelligence to give real-time tips on how to improve a call.

Bonus Tip: Krisp as Contact Center On-Device Transcription Software

We’ve discussed how Krisp is the best noise cancellation tool for your call center, but did you know you can also leverage Krisp for its on-device transcription solution? This powerful feature not only enhances communication clarity but also boosts efficiency by converting speech to text in real-time.

Krisp converts speech to text, allowing agents to focus on the conversation rather than note-taking. This tool is invaluable for managing large amounts of user data and maintaining a smooth workflow. By providing real-time transcription, Krisp not only enhances agent productivity but also ensures accurate and accessible records of customer interactions. This leads to improved data management, better compliance with regulations, and a more streamlined and efficient call center operation.

With Krisp, call centers can enjoy:

• Superior Transcription Accuracy 96% : Leveraging cutting-edge AI, Krisp ensures high-quality transcriptions, even in noisy environments. Furthermore, Krisp CCT delivers unmatched transcription accuracy with a WER (Word Error Rate) of only 4%.
• On Device Processing: Krisp’s desktop app processes transcriptions and noise cancellation directly on your device, thereby keeping sensitive info secure and compliant with strict security standards.
• Unmatched privacy: Krisp ensures the utmost privacy by redacting PII and PCI in real-time, storing transcripts in a private cloud owned by customers with write-only access.
• A single solution across all platforms: By centralizing call transcriptions across all platforms, Krisp CCT optimizes costs and simplifies data management, eliminating the need for multiple transcription services.
• No additional integrations required: Krisp’s plug-and-play setup integrates effortlessly with major CCaaS and UCaaS platforms. Requiring no additional configurations, Krisp ensures your operations run smoothly and securely.

See Krisp Call Center Transcription in action

Call Center Management FAQ