Contact-center managers are responsible for delivering high standards of service to customers by making the most effective and efficient use of Contact-center staff and technology resources. They use a range of measurements to monitor, analyze and plan improvements to Contact-center performance. To meet these responsibilities, the manager must be a combination of expert service provider, coach, trainer, mentor, motivator and manager, according to DMG Consulting.

Customer Service :

Contact-center managers identified customer service as their main management responsibility, according to a 2009 survey by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Managers are responsible for ensuring that agents have the knowledge and skills to answer customers’ inquiries, requests for support or problems quickly and effectively. If a call center also operates an outbound service – contacting customers or prospects to sell products or services – the manager has additional responsibility for meeting sales and profitability targets.

Agent Performance :

The performance of individual agents is essential to the success of a call center. Managers are responsible for recruiting, training, managing and monitoring agents so that they have the skills and knowledge to meet customer service or outbound sales objectives. Training programs must ensure that agents have good product and service knowledge, as well as customer handling skills. Managers use various metrics to assess agents’ performance. For example, if metrics show that a customer makes repeated calls with the same inquiry or problem, this indicates that an agent does not have the knowledge to handle the issue. Further training is essential.

Balancing Resources :

Contact centers require a significant investment in technology and people. The manager is responsible for using those resources efficiently and cost-effectively. The challenge for many managers is to ensure that the right level of resources are available to meet customer demand. By analyzing records of incoming Contact, managers can identify peak times and quiet times. At peak times they must ensure that they have enough agents on duty to minimize call-waiting time – the time customers have to wait on hold to speak to an agent. During quiet times, managers can either reduce the number of agents on duty or allocate agents to other productive duties such as making sales calls or follow-up calls to customers who have experienced problems.