5 skills to be a good Call Center Manager

Managing a process in a call center is a hard nut to crack. Round the clock, you need to be on your toes to answer clients, satisfy customers, and handle agents. Hence every organization looks for an individual who should be able to handle the client in the most effective way and simultaneously can work on performance improvement as well as the development of subordinates.

5 skills to be a good call center manager

Here are the top 5 skills to be a good Call center manager, which is expected by every call center for a managerial position.

Client Management: 

This is one of the topmost skills for a call center manager. The call center runs as per the target or the expectation set by the client. However sometimes these targets are unreasonable and vexatious, but due to the "No denial" policy to the client, a call center has to accept these targets. This is where a call center manager's Client Management skills come into the picture, how well can he/she negotiate or interact with the client to make the target realistic.

This is called the Client Management Skills of a call center manager. Often Client management skills are associated with the extrovert nature of an individual, which means If an individual is extrovert in nature then he can better perpetuate or maintain the relationship with the client, however, this is only a myth. Client Management skills depend on an individual's discretion and experience.

You can often see whenever an organization requires a  Call Center Manager there primary requisite is that the Candidate should be extraordinary in Client Management skills.

Moreover, in the call center industry, it is a manager's Client Management skills primarily determine the future business and relationship of a call center with the client.

People Management:

The call center industry is a customer-centric industry. The more customer base a brand has the more manpower or employees are required to support the customers. In addition to this, every call center has certain metrics to be achieved on daily basis.

Controlling unplanned shrinkage is one of the major tasks and pain for every call center. Assume a specific day which is a festival day and you have rostered manpower as per the client requirement but what if your 50% of the total rostered did not reach to office ." Scolding" and "feedback sharing" could be a solution but this is not going to affect on real-time as the damage has already been done by the agents on this special day.

This is the reason why a call center manager should possess exceptional  People Management Skills. In the above assumption if there would have been a good bond between an agent and manager or team leader or if a manager would be good in people management he/she could have made the agent understand the importance of this special day or if required could have called to agents who are on scheduled off

Attrition has been a major concern in every industry, especially in the call center. There is no magic wand or other solution to control the Attrition but with only good People management skills a call center can retain the talent. Below quote you must have read on any social media platform while scrolling :

People don't leave bad jobs, they leave because of bad bosses and poor management

Presentation Skills:

The call center manager plays a pivotal role in the process. He/ She is the guardian of the process. So every credit or debit naturally comes to his account. As a call center manager, one of his primary KRA is to participate in monthly or quarterly reviews (MBR /QBR) with clients and should be able to answer the client's questions satisfactorily. However, sometimes it happens that as a team your performance is not good and that is where the presentation skills of a manager come into the picture.

A call center manager should be enough proficient in presentation skills that when he showcases the data he should be able to convince the client up to the satisfaction level despite poor performance.  

Communication Skills:

Most people relate Communication skills with the ability of English speaking. However, fluency in a language has nothing to do with Communication Skills. Primarily the term "Communication" means how well an individual can deliver a message to the audience, it can happen via any medium or in any language.

A call center manager should be highly skilled in effective communication because he/she is the only individual who interacts with clients and the higher management on daily basis regarding policies, new amendments, agent issues, and other process-related concerns. If the manager is not a clear communicator or is not able to understand the message properly then of course he would not be able to deliver it to the team which can result in agent or client dissatisfaction, attrition, business threat, agent to management altercations, etc

Good Leader:

"Leader creates another leader". This quote is enough to define the role of a leader or manager in the call center. Although an individual becomes a call center manager only after passing through the phase of a team leader, the question is about the good leader. Every team leader can not be a good leader. Hence a call center manager has all the characteristics of a good leader . Below are a few of them:

• He should never be bossy
• Lead by example 
• Integrity
• Creativity and flexibility
• Tenacity

Below  quote by John C Maxell, that summarises all the characteristics of a good leader

"A leader is the one, who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."

A call center manager's KRA and work area are extensive so a manager should not be confined to the above-mentioned skills.It also varies as per the job role and organization's requirement

I hope this article will help understand the key skills of a call center manager in a more granular manner. Please do share your feedback in the comment box

STAY SAFE , STAY HAPPY  😀