Many organizations utilize the role of team lead in order to
provide a management career path for their internal agents. These agents
already know the ins and outs of their company’s call center and can be a great
resource for their peers. However, the transition from being an agent to
leading a team can sometimes be a stressful and challenging one as the team
lead has to find a way to balance their management responsibilities with their
responsibilities as an agent. Having made this transition myself, here are some
tips for new call center team leads or those interested in the role:
Look out for your team
Sometimes it can be difficult to
get buy-in from your team as a new team lead, especially if you were promoted from within and they
are still used to seeing you as a fellow agent. With your new responsibilities,
you probably won’t be able to spend as much time on the phone, putting a
greater weight on your team. It’s important to acknowledge that and use your
new role to help relieve them whenever possible. If you can jump in and
take some calls, great, but maybe you won’t always be able to. In that case,
get creative. Find them projects or training time that will get them some
relief from the phone while still contributing to the department. If you can
get them an extra break on a slow Friday afternoon or let them go home early,
go for it. Just make sure you keep your manager in the loop with whatever you
choose to do, leading into tip #2…
Stay on the same page with your manager
The team lead role is often a
hybrid position between manager and agent. Thus, it is important to make sure
you discuss with your manager what their expectations are for balancing your
role. Sometimes a team lead might be 80% manager, 20% agent and sometimes they
might be 80% agent, 20% manager, and it’s important to know where you are on
the spectrum. I’m fortunate to be in a position where my manager takes a fairly
hands-off approach due to the very technical nature of my team’s job duties. I
am empowered to make management-level decisions as long as I keep my manager posted
on any actions I take and can explain the rationale behind my decisions. If I
make the wrong decision, it is OK as long as I learn from it and can grow. And
as any manager could tell you, there usually aren’t clear ‘right’ and ‘wrong’
decisions. But even in my role, the amount of responsibility I have has
increased substantially from when I started as team lead, so it’s important to
have ongoing dialogue to make sure you and your manager are in sync.
The customer is still your top stakeholder
The ultimate purpose of the call
center is outstanding customer service. It’s easy to focus on winning approval
from above and below (your direct reports and your direct manager), but don’t
lose sight of the bigger picture. Make sure your actions and decisions start
with the customer first. As team lead, you may be the escalation point for
dissatisfied customers or difficult to resolve issues. This is a great
opportunity to set the customer service standard for the rest of the business. If
there’s a policy or problem that’s resulting in customer dissatisfaction, try
to correct it! This will lead to both internal and external recognition of your
efforts and inspire those around you to focus on their customer service as
well.
Jeremiah Methven is the Team Lead for iContact's Support Engineering team, who handles support for the iContact API, the iContact for Salesforce integration and social media channels, all while documenting product bugs and issues and assisting internal agents. Follow Jeremiah on Twitter at @methvenj
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