By Shannon Svasek, Operations Manager
With almost twenty years as an operations manager that is responsible for leading a team of business to business salespeople in an outbound and inbound call center setting, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on why I enjoy my work and see it as worthwhile work.
Worthwhile work in an outbound and inbound call center setting can mean lots of different things. The ability to work effectively, efficiently, swiftly, completely, whole heartedly and all the while displaying integrity and attention to detail. Does this sound like everything on your want list when hiring for Outbound or Inbound call center agents? Many other Outbound and Inbound call center managers would agree with you. But in the end…is all the work you are doing and the time you spend doing it worthwhile? Employees that display these traits day in and day out are hard to find. So, as management it is up to us to cultivate, display and enforce good work habits.
One of the best ways to cultivate and enforce good work habits are evaluations. How often do you evaluate your employees…Yearly, maybe monthly? Why not more often, how about weekly or bi-weekly? Some of us may think weekly evaluations and constant criticism weekly is too much. When really, it’s not, it’s all in the delivery, “how are you delivering your message of constructive criticism during evaluations to your employees?” Positivity is always the way to go here!
Believe it or not regular and positive criticism is actually desired by most employees! Many of us like to hear how we are doing and how we can become better at what we do. And a manager that wants to deliver these messages in a positive matter must be prepared to go into great detail. This will make all the work we put into the time of the evaluations worthwhile! Leaving out details will result in confusion and misunderstanding. I have learned the best way to deliver constant, constructive, positive, detailed, worthwhile evaluations to my employees is one on one.
Don’t wait until something turns up that had a less than desirable outcome (for instance a mistake on a customer’s account) to have a coaching moment with your employee. Be proactive, collect a random selection of recordings with interactions the employee had with customers, pick one and evaluate it in detail. Evaluate the good and be specific, outlining what was good and why. Evaluate the mistakes and again be specific but don’t stop there! Outline in detail how we as a team can correct the mistake next time. Next, lay out a solution to the employee so they fully understand what went wrong, why and the steps to fix it. Finally provide some examples of how the mistake can be corrected or changed for a different outcome next time. Be ready to brainstorm with your employees during this final step. Including their input and ideas is key to them owning, implementing and executing the solution for a better outcome next time.
As a contact center sales coach and manager, I’ve found that one on one interaction with my team members to discuss work habits and improvements is worthwhile work. It is involved and time consuming but yields great results which drives business success and customer satisfaction. And at the end of the day in my book satisfying work is worthwhile work.
Other Articles You Might Find Interesting:
Worthwhile Work = Success in Telemarketing Agencies
How to have Fun in Inbound and Outbound Telemarketing
Stay Up to Date on Telemarketing Services News from QCS
Shannon Svasek is an Operations Manager for Quality Contact Solutions, a leading outsourced telemarketing organization. With responsibility for overseeing the daily operations of client programs, and agent success. Shannon focus is that her client programs consistently reach the desired goals – every day. With nearly 20 years of experience in Telemarketing, Shannon has built her career on creating fun, open and respectful relationships between her team & her clients which drives unparalleled success. Shannon can be reached at shannon.svasek@qualitycontactsolutions.com or 516-656-5126.
