Team climate is one of the most powerful – yet most misunderstood – drivers of performance in the contact centre.
In their new book Dropping the C-Bomb, Elev-8 Performance explores why climate often collapses long before culture does, and why leaders must focus on what their teams experience every day.
One of the biggest themes?
Friction, those invisible and visible barriers that drag down performance, slow momentum, and exhaust frontline teams.
In a recent conversation with Call Centre Helper Editor Megan Jones, Sean Spurgin, Learning Director at Elev-8 Performance, unpacked exactly what that friction looks like and how leaders can remove it.
Video: Stop Friction Being a Hidden Performance Killer
Watch the video below to hear Sean explain how to stop friction being a hidden performance killer:
With thanks to Sean Spurgin, Learning Director at Elev-8 Performance, for contributing to this video.
This video was originally published in our article ‘What Great Leaders Know About Team Climate and Results’
Understanding and Eliminating Friction in the Contact Centre
Friction is any factor (big or small) that slows performance or prevents advisors from delivering their best work.
“Friction is effectively anything that slows down performance and sometimes it’s invisible, sometimes it’s visible.”
It shows up in these three core areas:
1. Management Practices That Drive the Wrong Behaviour
Some of the biggest blockers come from the structures meant to guide performance – KPIs, quality frameworks, and bonus schemes.
Targets like Average Handling Time (AHT) are designed to control cost and efficiency, but they often unintentionally encourage advisors to rush calls or avoid meaningful conversations, as Sean explains:
“There’s management practices, so things like KPIs, quality frameworks, bonus schemes and those things can drive certain behaviours and get in the way of performance.
So, for example, if you look at KPIs, the classic AHT will drive certain behaviours within contact centres and that slows the pace of performance.”
Bonus schemes can also send mixed signals: leaders may want high CSAT and lower customer effort, yet incentives pull advisors toward behaviours that undermine those very outcomes.
Great leaders spot these contradictions early, and they challenge outdated practices, flag unintended consequences, and advocate for changes that support – not sabotage – customer experience.
2. Processes and Systems That Slow Teams Down
Every contact centre carries some operational weight: complex systems, clunky processes, and outdated tools that interrupt flow and frustrate staff.
These operational friction points create drag, as they reduce speed, weaken consistency, and make delivering great service harder than it needs to be.
“The second thing is processes and systems. So again, within a contact centre environment, regardless of the type of contacts or calls that people take, there will be many processes and systems that are getting in the way of the frontline teams delivering a great service or delivering sales growth or whatever the metrics might be.”
While not every system can be fixed at team-leader level, frontline leaders can still improve the day-to-day experience by identifying blockers, escalating what requires investment, and simplifying what they can control.
3. Mindsets and Confidence on the Frontline
Not all friction is external. Much of it comes from how advisors feel when they show up to a call, such as confidence levels, limiting beliefs, and comfort with challenging or vulnerable conversations, Sean continued:
“Then there’s a third element which is the mindset, so if you think about how people on the frontlines show up to their customer conversations, there’ll be things that get in the way, whether it be limiting beliefs, or lack of confidence around their ability to answer a certain call, or deal with certain customer types, or more challenging customers, or vulnerable customers, etc.”
For example, an advisor may have the technical ability to resolve an issue but lack confidence with certain customer types.
These internal friction points quietly erode performance just as much as slow systems or poorly designed KPIs.
Leaders can directly influence this space through coaching, skill-building, and creating an environment where advisors feel supported, and not judged, when facing difficult situations.
“So, these are sort of barriers that get in the way of delivering excellence within a contact centre, and they can cause friction – whether that’s friction in terms of slowing the pace of growth or slowing the pace of efficiency within a contact centre, whatever the metrics might be.
And from a leader perspective, their job – you’re a team leader or an operations leader or a senior leader within a contact centre environment or call centre – it’s about noticing those friction points that really slow performance.”
Knowing What Leaders Can and Can’t Influence
A core message is that leaders at any level can remove some friction, but not all, as Sean explained:
“And the second thing for us that we talk a lot about in the book is how do you clear the path? So how do you make it easy for those frontline advisors to deliver a great service? How do you remove those blockers?
Whether they are mindset blockers within individuals, whether they be process systems, or whether they be sort of management practices that are getting in the way.”
Team leaders may not be able to change an organization-wide AHT target; however, they can influence how advisors structure conversations so calls are both more effective and naturally more efficient.
The key is focus as Sean continued:
“I can give you an example of the management practice. We’re working with a client at the moment – won’t name them – but their bonus scheme as an example is driving a certain behaviour.
On one hand they want to deliver a great service for the client, and they want to drive the NPS and the CSAT scores up and they want to drive customer effort down, but the bonus scheme that they have in place currently is driving a certain behaviour that isn’t driving a great customer outcome.
That is an example of a friction point that great leaders will notice and clear the path and make those changes. Now some of those things for team leaders sit outside of their circle of influence.
We also talk a lot about actually it doesn’t matter what level you’re at, there’s going to be barriers and blockers that you can remove those friction points for the frontline advisors, but there’s always going to be some of those things that you can’t impact, because they’re more systemic and more, you know, cultural if you like or they need bigger investment to make the changes.
So it’s also about focusing on the stuff that you can influence.”
- Influence what you can: skills coaching, mindset development, supportive climate, day-to-day blockers.
- Escalate what you can’t: structural misalignments, broken incentives, systemic process issues.
Leaders don’t need control over everything, they need clarity on where their effort will make the biggest difference, as Sean concludes:
“Well, I think a good example of that is if we go back to AHT and we talk about management practices, so those sort of frameworks if you like, that sit around a contact centre like QA and your KPIs.
But if you look at AHT there may be a call centre-wide average handling time that everyone needs to achieve, and that is set because there is also an efficiency metric that the call centre is trying to hit, and a cost to serve as well in terms of that.
But what you can influence and help if an advisor is struggling to meet the target is actually how do you actually have a better, more effective call.
That’s within a team leader’s gift to impart the right skills, the right mindsets that drive a great outcome for customers but also is an efficient call. So that’s something they can influence.
What they can’t change necessarily is the target that’s been set but what they can influence is how you actually have that conversation.”
Remember: Performance Gradually Erodes
Performance doesn’t fall apart because of one big issue, it erodes gradually through small friction points that accumulate over time.
When leaders learn to spot these barriers and clear the path, they create a positive team climate where advisors can thrive, and when climate improves, culture follows.
Author: Robyn Coppell
Published On: 1st Jan 2026
Read more about - Video, Agent Performance, Culture, Employee Engagement, Employee Experience (EX), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Management Strategies, Performance Management, Sean Spurgin, Team Management, Videos
