8 Top Call Center Management Best Practices You Should Implement

Call centers have a lot of moving parts and a lot of shifting responsibilities. To run your call center successfully, you have to implement and follow key practices that ensure smooth operations and a positive workplace culture.

If you’re not sure where to start, read on. This article will break down 8 call center management best practices you should aim to implement at your facility starting today.

Stellar Call Center Management Best Practices

When it comes to managing a call center wisely and successfully, some best practices are more important than others. Let’s start with people-focused practices, as your call center will only be as good as the people staffing it.

Hire the Right People

Firstly, make sure to hire the right people for the job. Working at a call center isn’t for everyone. Generally, the best call center staff members are personable, highly communicative, and enthusiastic.

When you interview staff members for open positions, make sure they love talking to people and providing social help. Bubbly, warm, inviting people will do wonders for the reputation of your call center, plus lead to benefits in terms of workplace culture later down the road.

Structure Employee Roles

That said, your people should be assigned to specific roles so that employees don’t trip over each other or spend time doing the same work twice.

Be sure to define key roles and responsibilities for everyone at your call center. You should specify manager duties, for example, as well as specify call agent and supervisor roles.

In doing this, everyone will know their place and know exactly what is expected of them. Not only will this result in better productivity, but it will minimize workplace friction, which can lead to negative workplace culture development.

Maintain an Open-Door Policy

As a call center manager, you should aim to maintain an open-door policy at all times. Allow your staff members and call center agents to come to you whenever they have questions, concerns, or even complaints about other staff members.

An open-door policy is crucial to foster and maintain a culture of trust in your call center. By allowing employees to come to you with concerns, you can alleviate those concerns and will always understand how things are going outside your office. That's key to being a good leader in any profession, not just call center management.

Offer Incentives for Top Performers

As your workers perform their daily duties, be sure to identify top-performing supervisors and call center agents. Those top performers should be incentivized by methods like:

• Employee of the month programs
• Bonuses for employees who perform the best or who have the best reviews from customers/clients

By recognizing and rewarding high performance among your employees, you’ll incentivize ever-better work. 

Enable Good Work/Life Balances

However, you should also not push your call center workers too hard. In fact, you should try to enable as good of a work/life balance as you can.

Offer schedule flexibility to your employees if possible, particularly working parents who may need to care for or pick up their children. Furthermore, try to schedule things so that no one works too hard or too many hours in a single week.

If there's too much work to go around, hire new employees rather than shifting the burden onto your current staff members.

Track Your Metrics & Analyze

Certain metrics and KPIs/key performance indicators are vital for understanding how your call center is performing and where you should improve. The most important KPIs you should track and analyze include:

• First call resolution (FCR) rates, or the percentage of customer complaints that a result of the first point of contact with call center agents
• Cost per call (CPC), or the average operational cost per call center agent
• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) rates, which measure how many customers have their needs and expectations met
• Net promoter score (NPS), which is the likelihood that previous customers or users will recommend your call center service to someone else

Once you analyze these KPIs, take lessons from them to improve your facility and the services you offer your customers.

Leverage New Technology to Streamline Workflows

Your call center will perform better than ever if it has the best technology. To that end, try to invest in technology where you can, acquiring and implementing tech tools like:

• Call recording software and hardware
• Call monitoring software
• Interactive voice response technology
• Ring groups
• And more

The more advanced technology you provide to your call center agents, the better they'll be able to perform, and the more satisfied your clients will be in the long run.

Keep Abreast of Legal Requirements

Lastly, don’t forget to keep track of laws and local regulations in your area. For example, when you reach out to customers for a client, make sure that you pay attention to the NDNCR or National Do Not Call Registry. This lists people who don’t want telemarketers to contact them.

Keeping track of local laws and regulations will help you avoid major fines and penalties that your call center might have to pay otherwise.

Summary

Overall, these call center management best practices will help you run a much better facility than ever before. Your employees will feel confident and capable, and you’ll always be able to provide great service to your clients and customers.

The information in this blog post is for reference only and not legal advice. As such, you should not decide whether to contact a lawyer based on the information in this blog post. Moreover, there is no lawyer-client relationship resulting from this blog post, nor should any such relationship be implied. If you need legal counsel, please consult a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.