Comments on: Answers: How many agents can one Team Leader effectively supervise?

By: Mukesh

Mukesh — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 17:23:55 +0000

I have handled 39 agents in my team for 6 months. We were working for a technical helpline(airtel gprs connectivity). Most important factor is relationships with the team member, if your team supports u can handle this amount very easily. In every team you will get 50% agent smart n rest need to make smart, Agents make mistake, but in this situation when they think TL in no more gonna leave me, on this situation u need to treat them smiling n caring, makes you more than a TL.

By: wendy

wendy — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:51:14 +0000

i am a new teamleader of 15 in a call centre the problem is i dont seen to have enough hours in the day to manage all my team,i am at the moment learning as i was a tele agent and was scounded, could anyone give me some tips on how to manage my time effectively and what makes a good teamleader the other teamleaders seem to resent me as i am into my 3rd week without help and have managed to increase my teams appointment and performace,we are at the moment for the 4rd week running the best team befor i took over as teamleaser we were the worse team can anyone give advise on how to stay at the top

By: jonty pearce

jonty pearce — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:26:47 +0000

Yes the formula is called Erlang B. You can look it up on Google. A simple rule of thumb is 1.5 times the number of agents, so 75 lines.

By: Ezzat

Ezzat — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:00:03 +0000

I have project for call center 50 agents.
How many PSTN lines I need for them.
and what is the mechanism to know the requirements.

Is there any Mathematical Formula

By: Yasser Altaf (Mark James)

Yasser Altaf (Mark James) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:43:11 +0000

I was fortunate to recently manage a company call centre where the team leader to agent was 1:6 and what a big difference it made in morale, motivation and performance. If a TL has 100% of his time dedicated to leading the team you could probably do 1:15 but in my experience you get dragged into projects and other distractions. So, a team lead can easily manage a team of 8-10 agents with his/her full attention.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:46:20 +0000

To answer the original question, after seeing what everyone else wrote, I just wish I had an opportunity to work in those situations. I started as a TL for Convergys corp and worked up to Operations Manager. For most clients, the ratio tends to hang around 1 TL for every 15 agents. What you will find, centers will push for more agents per TL, thus reducing costs. Effectively, 18 agents should be max. For a new TL, I would suggest 12, but we don’t live in Disney World.

Anyone that says less than 1:12 is not or has not really worked as a traditional team leader in leading outsourcing centers such as Convergys, Sitel, West, Teletech, Sykes, etc. Granted, KUDOS to those guys that got easy street with 5 or 8!

I managed effectively because of the relationship I built with my team, it boils down to just that. Anyone that says otherwise is a fool. You get more work out of your team if you assist them and help them when needed. TL’s that tend to hang out in the coffee/break room and sit and complain about the workload aren’t really doing their jobs. Been there, done that.

Now, what will you do as a TL one poster asked. I can’t say for every single call center out there, but expect a lot of call monitoring for quality, a lot of coaching and a lot of systems/reports. More than likely, you will run some sort of program/s that monitor efficiency on a day to day basis. You will also obtain reports regarding their efficiencies. Universally speaking, there is always things such as PTV (phone time variance), Schedule Adherence, AHT (average handle time) and probably most important, quality. Depending on what type of business it is, this is going to be the big thing there. Monitoring the calls, scoring the calls, coaching the agents for performance. Build a good relationship with your agents, let them know you care, and most of these fall in to place. Let them know what the metrics for your site are, show them where they are at, where they need to be and most importantly, HOW to get there. They will do it. Hope any of this helps…

By: Brett

Brett — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:24:21 +0000

Well I’m a supervisor who manages a team of 9 Advisors while we have one manager who oversees the 2 sets of teams and that works out great My manager only gets involved if need be.

The moral on my team is great we laugh and joke but they know the line and not to cross it which is the main thing

By: Gilbert

Gilbert — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:15:16 +0000

What do call center team leads do in details?

By: Darryn Havenga

Darryn Havenga — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:49:09 +0000

The standards any benchmarking exercise offers is purely what the majority companies do, or the average of all parties evaluated. The reality is that companies budgets determine the ratio – and in traditional customer service call centres where the area is seen primarily as a cost centre and not profit centre, scenarios such as 1:15 exist.

I was fortunate to recently manage a company call centre where the team leader to agent was 1:5 and what a big difference it made in morale, motivation and performance.

Mike B. most probably comes closest to given a balanced figure 1:8 and no more than 1:12 (although more than 10 is pushing it) – however it all comes down to the bean counters and how much you can push them – the less agents per manager the better the management and performance.

Observation – where I have seen 1:25 these have been where agents work shifts out of sync with each other and not simultaneously.

By: jonty pearce

jonty pearce — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:07:34 +0000

There are some interesting stats in an article that Mats Rennstam http://www.callcentrehelper.com/what-to-measure-and-manage-in-your-call-centre-6447.htm

This shows that the average is typically a ratio of 1:15. It also shows that The top performers all have between 8 and 15 agents per coach. This results in:

* 10% higher ready time
* 5% higher availability
* 5% higher FCR
* Lower absence
* More satisfied agents
* Higher competency