Communication Pitfalls Every Contact Centre Manager Should Avoid

Clear and consistent internal communication is the backbone of every high-performing contact centre. Yet even the most experienced managers can fall into familiar traps – missteps that lead to confused agents, frustrated customers, and operational inefficiencies.

That’s why we asked our consultants panel – featuring Jeremy Watkin, Alex McConville, Garry Gormley, Michael Clark, Neville Doughty, Rob Clarke, Adam Boelke, Jim Rembach, and Jon Edwards – for their top pitfalls to address.   

Scowling When Agents Interrupt With Important Questions

I’m reminded of the importance of good internal customer service and I want to focus primarily on attitude. For anyone who is not working the front lines, it’s essential that you always make yourself approachable.

Welcome interruptions with a smile and a helpful attitude!

I can’t tell you how many times I scowled at a team member because they were asking their 100th question of the day and I had 100 QAs to complete that day.

Sure, I have important work to do, but if my team members can’t get the information they need to do their job, both they and the customer suffer.

Contributed by: Jeremy Watkin, Director of Customer Experience and Support at NumberBarn

Making Changes Without Ever Fully Explaining the “Why” Behind Them

When agents don’t understand why a change is being made, it can lead to unsettled feelings across your teams and wider company.

For example, I remember when a particular energy client campaign at a BPO turned out to just not be a tenable relationship for the company.

With hard commission targets and strict rules, “we” the BPO finally ended the relationship, but failed to communicate to the teams why.

It was my responsibility at the time to manage the fallout of agents worrying that they would lose their jobs and thinking that the BPO was failing.

And whilst this decision was made with good intentions and should have been a real positive for staff, because of poor communications, it turned into a negative. We later had to address it, but it would have been better done pre-emptively. Pre-emptive is always better in my experience!

Contributed by: Alex McConville, Contact Centre Consultant and author of ‘Diary of a Call Centre Manager’

For top tips for managing changes well in the contact centre, read our article: How to Manage Big Changes Well in the Contact Centre

Turning a Blind Eye to Poor Behaviour Because You’re Just “Too Busy”

No one sets out to be a poor communicator but there are things that get in the way that cause us to communicate poorly – including time, attention, workload, emotions and stress levels.

As leaders of people, therefore, we often find ourselves torn between multiple projects and multiple demands, and everyone else’s stress and priorities just seeming to be more important than our own.

This is what starts to drive poor communication… We start taking shortcuts, we stop thinking about the impact our words have on others, we start to get a short fuse, and our empathy levels and tolerance levels start to drop. And, as a result, we stop thinking clearly!

For example, we start to turn a blind eye to someone’s behaviour because “I just can’t deal with that right now”, so when it finally comes time to have the conversation in the monthly 1-2-1, everything we’ve been holding onto and storing up for that right moment comes blurting out.

Then, that person is left feeling either demotivated or at worse defensive and disengaged, so our relationships begin to suffer. It’s a never-ending cycle that we have to address the root cause of!

Contributed by: Garry Gormley, Founder of FAB Solutions

Allowing Vital Messages to Get Lost in a Sea of Concurrent Chat Threads

Poor internal communication in a contact centre doesn’t always look chaotic at first glance, but beneath the surface, it quietly erodes performance, morale, and trust.

I’ve seen this first-hand in a 450-seat contact centre where Teams chat had become the default communication channel.

One team leader showed me over 20 concurrent chat threads running at once, including a single channel with more than 600 real-time schedule changes in a day.

The result? Leaders were exhausted, disengaged, and missing vital messages. Frontline staff couldn’t keep up, leading to adherence breaches and confusion about priorities.

It became a vicious cycle – as clarity declined, stress rose. Unsurprisingly, absenteeism and attrition followed suit.

Contributed by: Michael Clark, Co-Founder and Principal Consultant of CXTT Consulting

Making Assumptions That Somebody Else (or Even AI!) Is Handling It

With the adoption of AI, technology and automation, human-to-human communication in contact centres is at its most critical, so we must ensure assumptions that “the automation has handled it” aren’t made.

Whether that is coaching (really shouldn’t be left to the bot), checking advisors are confident and happy in their roles (again, mustn’t be exclusively automated), or making sure customer experiences are being considered for process enhancement, a HITL (Human in the Loop) approach is needed to ensure that human communication isn’t lost. 

To ensure appropriate communication is in place, always remember the story of Everybody, Somebody and Nobody… “Everybody thought Somebody was dealing with it, but Nobody did”. Keep in mind that increasingly “Somebody” may take the form of agentic AI.

Be clear what you are asking your team to do, or what you have agreed to do too – especially when implementing change.

I once had a client who had asked my MI Analyst “If I needed this report, how would you build it?” A week later I was challenged as to why the report hadn’t been provided. I went to find the Analyst, who said, “He never asked me to build it, he only asked how I’d build and what it would look like.”!

Contributed by: Neville Doughty, Partnerships & Growth Director at Customer Contact Panel

Letting Communication Slip Down the To-Do List (and Leaving Agents to Make Their Own Assumptions)

In today’s world of constant change and busyness, communication is more critical than ever, yet the paradox I often see in organizations is that the busier leaders become managing all that change, the more the task of communicating slips further down their to-do list.

That’s when a cycle of miscommunication begins, which ironically creates more fires to put out, making it even harder to remain effective. 

The impact on performance, employee morale and even attrition is real.  When people lack clear information, they fill in any gaps with their own assumptions, often fear-based, and perceptions get created that may have nothing to do with reality.

Take AI, for example. Many employees worry that automation will replace their jobs. When leaders avoid addressing the elephant in the room, people may assume the worst and act accordingly.

It’s no surprise that in a recent study, 31% of employees admitted to actively sabotaging their company’s AI projects, and 16% said they purposely withheld reporting AI-related security issues. 

Poor internal communication is ultimately a culture issue and affects performance in ways that many leaders underestimate!

Contributed by: Adam Boelke, Founder of the Alignment Advantage Group, and author of the “7 Cs to Success” mastermind course on leadership & culture

If you want to improve how you communicate in your contact centre, read our article: The 7 Cs of Effective Communication

Treating Every Message in the Same Way

I learned the hard way that poor internal communication starts if I skip categorization. I must not treat every message the same!

Every message has a purpose, and as a leader, my most common communications are:

• Informational – Quick update, needs brevity and ownership.
• Instructional – Teaches or directs action, needs examples and confirmation.
• Collaborative – Builds solutions, needs listening and closure.
• Emotional – Connects to purpose, needs empathy and trust.

Once the type is clear, it’s time to apply CLARITY:

• Common meaning
• Listen and playback
• Assign ownership
• Right-size messages
• Improve trust
• Turn words into work
• Yield and learn.

This sequence helps to match human interpretation with the organizational need for speed, so communication converts quickly into consistent execution.

Contributed by: Jim Rembach, President of Call Centre Coach

Holding Meetings Without an Agenda

In one organization I worked for, meetings were often held without an agenda. This meant discussions drifted and those who were off sick or on holiday missed key updates.

When they returned, they were often working from outdated processes while others had moved ahead, creating an unfair playing field and unnecessary tension between teams.

A simple fix is structure:

• Always send an agenda 24 hours before meetings, so people can prepare.
• Secondly, schedule a short catch-up for anyone who has missed important updates.

Clarity and inclusion make people feel respected, and that builds trust.

Contributed by: Jon Edwards, Managing Director at The Lion Consultancy Ltd.

For more advice to improve the quality of your meetings, read our article: 12 Ideas to Keep Agents Engaged During Meetings and Training Sessions

Soley Relying on Newsletters and Noise (Instead of Talking to People!)

Poor internal communication is a bit like static on the line (for those who remember analogue radio!). The message technically goes out, but nobody’s quite sure what was said.

BUT you can ‘feel’ it on the floor. Advisors are second-guessing scripts. Team leaders are firefighting confusion that started three links up the chain.

The same customer query gets three different answers depending on who picks up. And somewhere between the meeting and the inbox…? The point gets lost completely!

This kind of noise doesn’t just slow things down, it erodes trust. When people don’t feel informed, they don’t feel valued. And when they stop feeling valued, they stop showing up with energy and care. That’s how poor comms quietly becomes poor culture.

So how do you stop the static? Make great conversations your leadership superpower!

The best leaders don’t rely on newsletters and noise… They simply talk to people! They listen, check understanding, and close the loop. Two-way dialogue turns communication into connection.

Contributed by: Rob Clarke, Director and Co-Founder of Elev-8 Performance

Have You Experienced Any of These Communication Issues First-Hand?

Click here to join our NEW Readers Panel to share your experiences and feature in future Call Centre Helper articles.

For more advice to help you avoid problems in your contact centre, read these articles next:

• The Little Things That “Make or Break” a Contact Centre
• 35 Surefire Ways to Demotivate Your Best Agents
• How to Fight the “We Don’t Have Time” Mindset

Author: Megan Jones
Reviewed by: Xander Freeman