As a manager, it’s always helpful to understand how your employees feel in the workplace and what improvements could be made. As a call center manager, your team’s happiness and job satisfaction are critical for performance levels.
A bad attitude won’t translate well with the customers they’re dealing with on a daily basis. With that being said, it’s good to have communication between yourself and the employees you manage.
The usage of customer service is an essential part of customer interaction with the business. According to one survey 66% of both B2B and B2C companies use live chat for customer support. It’s important, therefore, for call center managers to value insightful feedback for improvements that benefit the company in their customer/client relationships.
What is more, there are many benefits of employee feedback and in this guide, we’ll provide you with some top tips on how to retrieve honest feedback from your staff. Not only that but you’ll get some handy tips on improving your skills as a call center manager too.
Unlocking the Power of Call Center Management
What benefits do you get from employee feedback? Within any team, being valued and appreciated is partly what keeps an employee within the business.
Employee feedback is a great way to monitor how your employees feel and what pain points there are. With 1 in 6 employees actively looking to leave their current role, it’s useful to acquire more employee feedback.
Some of the benefits of employee feedback include:
- Gives more confidence to the employee
- Provides a sense of value and team-building within the department
- Improves performance of staff
- Diffuses any team conflicts
- Leads to a happier working environment
Without employee feedback tools, you create a rod for your own back. It makes everything a lot harder to manage when you’re not aware of how or what your employees are feeling.
Tips for Honest Feedback and Lasting Success
It is the responsibility of the manager to ensure that your employees are performing their duties efficiently and in a safe working environment. It is essential to make sure that the team is motivated and productive, while also ensuring that the workplace is conducive to their well-being. Otherwise, this may result in productivity levels decline or non-satisfaction when the job is impacted.
It’s important to be seen as a manager, to do all you are able to do to help keep them happy in their job and to perform at their best. With that being said, let’s dive into the tips that will help you retrieve this valuable, honest feedback.
Utilize Employee Feedback to Maximize your Team’s Potential
To help make it easier for you, there’s an abundance of employee feedback out there that’s useful to take advantage of. Employee feedback tools help in managing the employees you have in your call center that are under your management.
In order to help promote rapid development and productivity within a team, you need to be able to provide regular feedback as a manager. A platform like Leapsome offers all that you need, all in one place. Offering instant, real-time feedback whether they’re based in the office or working remotely, is highly effective.
In return, your employees are able to provide the same feedback in return through these collaborative tools.
Strengthen Connections
Meetings between employees are highly valuable as an investment in the employee-manager relationship. Ideally, you want to organize weekly or monthly 1-2-1 meetings whereby you catch up with employees whether it’s to do with the job or not.
Consider what you want to gain from each meeting, perhaps filling in feedback forms that are shared with the employees. These regular meetings are much appreciated by employees who may not be feeling their best currently or are in need of some guidance from their manager or supervisor.
When conducting these meetings, encourage feedback from your employees with the right questions and subject matters.
Open the Door Policy for New Possibilities
It is essential to promote an open-door policy in order to foster a positive work environment and ensure that employees feel confident in you as their leader. An open-door policy allows employees to come to you with any questions or concerns they may have, which helps build trust and create an atmosphere of transparency. It also encourages employees to take initiative and be proactive in their roles, which can lead to improved performance. Additionally, if an employee is experiencing any issues, they are more willing to talk openly with you about them and swiftly come up with a better solution for both parties.
Stepping into managers shoes you need to be more efficient on your own time so that you have time for your staff. If you’re not able to give time to those who are needing reactive assistance then that’s going to cause problems in work relationships.
Try to be as transparent and available as possible. This is super helpful when you’re trying to gain feedback from your employees.
Relationships Built on Honesty
Feedback that’s honest, comes with the development of your relationships with staff members. The closer you are to your working relationship, the more reliable and honest the feedback will be.
Investing that time and effort in building relationships isn’t easy but it is useful to do. In one survey of US employees, it was found that 89% of respondents found their professional relationships impacted their quality of life.
The power of non-verbal body language
Non-verbal body language is the communication your employees give without having to say anything. Sometimes we’re able to spot problems simply by gauging the atmosphere of a room or the body language of a person.
This is crucial when dealing with employees because they frequently struggle to vocally convey their views and feelings. Managers can better comprehend what their employees may not be saying but still want to communicate by being mindful of subtle body language indicators. As a result, the workplace may become more productive and managers and employees may develop stronger relationships.
For example, a distressed employee may say they’re fine after a particularly tough call but their body language says otherwise. As a manager, it’s beneficial to know they need a quick timeout to calm down before jumping on their next call.
Unlock your potential with Retrieval Knowledge
When it comes to getting honest employee feedback, you need to be well-versed in how to retrieve it.
Managers at call centers are always looking for methods to enhance customer service and raise customer satisfaction. Increasing the effectiveness of the retrieval techniques used to gather employee feedback is one of the best ways to accomplish this. The first step toward achieving this goal is to develop your own knowledge and training. Call center managers can better evaluate employee performance and make necessary adjustments by understanding how to use retrieval techniques successfully. As a result, there will be better customer service and greater satisfaction because personnel will be receiving the finest feedback from clients.
How to improve your skills as a call center manager?
There are always new suggestions for developing your abilities and knowledge as a call center manager. This is for the benefit of those you manage as well as for yourself and your professional development. Here are some helpful hints to assist you in improving your job performance.
Empower Your Team with Empathy
Similar to responsibilities in customer service, managers need to be emotionally intelligent to recognize an employee’s feelings and know how to respond to them. Being accommodating to your staff means being emotionally accessible to them.
Invest in Your Employees’ Success
To help with the workforce as a whole, staff training is an absolute must-do. Training is useful to help develop the employee’s confidence in the role, improve their productivity levels and ensure they handle their responsibilities. What is more, with the right training, employees can develop their confidence and hone their skills in order to improve overall performance. Training also helps to keep staff up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices, allowing them to stay competitive in a rapidly changing environment.
Adapt to Succeed
The world of business is forever changing, whether that’s trends within society in general, to technology advancements. As a call center manager, you must also be able to anticipate future needs and trends in order to ensure that employees’ operations are staying ahead of the competition. With this knowledge, your agents can create strategies that will allow businesses to remain competitive while still providing excellent customer service.
If you’re not able to adapt to new technologies or ways of working – such as hybrid environments that are currently popular since the pandemic – you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Being able to adapt to the new changes and trends is crucial for management
Build a Team That Resolves Conflict Effectively
Not everyone is going to get along with their peers, which is why they need management in place to help manage any conflicts. As a manager, it’s important to master conflict management and resolution in order to keep the peace.
A toxic or negative working environment, after all, will have a wider impact on the team. As a manager, being able to correct this is important.
Retain and Reward
Appreciating and providing rewards for your employees helps improve the retention of staff within the company.
Did you know that a lack of appropriate management skills makes employees 4x more likely to quit? A TINYpulse Employee Retention Report found that 40% of employees that don’t rate their supervisor’s performance highly, were interviewed for a new job in the last three months.
Hear the Voice of Your Employees
Gathering feedback from call center managers and implementing the relevant changes is an important step in improving working relationships. Call center managers are responsible for managing a team of customer service representatives, so it’s essential that they have the tools and resources to be able to provide their team with the best possible working environment. Furthermore, implementing the relevant changes will improve working relationships, drive productivity levels up and retain workers for the long run.
Natalie Redman
Webpage copywriter and Youtube content creator
