What Are the Most Common Challenges in Contact Centre Management?

No one said management was easy, but what are the most common challenges in contact centre management?

Gabriela recently asked our LinkedIn Community professionals for their insights on this, and they delivered with a variety of responses.

The Most Common Challenges in Contact Centre Management

Some common challenges in contact centre management include:

• Managing and reducing response and handle times.
• Ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Managing a large and potentially dispersed team of agents.
• Maintaining a good work–life balance for agents.
• Meeting and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs) with customers.
• Keeping up with evolving customer expectations and preferences.
• Ensuring that agents have the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively handle customer enquiries.
• Managing and reducing operational costs, such as those associated with technology and infrastructure.
• Dealing with high levels of turnover among agents.
• Providing effective training and support for agents to help them improve their skills and knowledge.

Thanks to Paul

Additional Challenges in Contact Centre Management

Staff morale.

Maintaining staff morale in both good and bad times.

Thanks to Wayne

Managing Financials

At a high level:

• Reduction of calls/tickets
• Improvement of response/resolve times
• Improvement of client experience

All these lead to the attainment of Financials (lowered costs), Service Levels, etc.

Thanks to Imad

Turnover and Burnout… Just to Name a Few!

• Training programme
• Knowledge base resources
• Staff turnover (18-36 months is a typical lifecycle)
• Metric expectations balanced with morale
• Phone system
• Lack of analytics and tech
• Outdated customer service approaches…. disjointed client experiences
• Upper management that believes anyone can manage a contact centre
• Metric expectations not customized (using industry standards)
• Capturing customer feedback without fatiguing customers
• Getting enough data
• Revenue vs. cost centre
• Efficiency ratio impact
• Equipment
• Burnout

Thanks to Shaye

Balancing CX and EX

In my experience:

• Engaging the workforce/keeping the morale up (not to mention just finding and retaining top talent in this day and age.)
• Ensuring consistency of information and understanding (training), especially in industries with high turnover or a high pace of change in product knowledge, etc.
• Integration with the rest of the organization. Contact centre teams do something a little different than most other departments and often feel forgotten or left out, no matter how much their contributions are truly valued!

Thanks to Meggyn

WFM Optimization

Optimization of WFM software to truly show value.

Thanks to Mellissah

Bringing People and Processes Together

Bringing people and processes together for the mutual benefit of customers and the company.

People are key to success.

EVERYONE continues to search for that holy grail or automation process that will change everything
We are not there yet.

Thanks to Michael

Consistent Performance Management

Maintaining consistent performance management to meet or exceed expected targets, agent attrition, adopting standard operating procedures, and optimization of systems.

Thanks to Sam

24/7 Contact Centre Challenges

My group is 24/7 so the challenges we typically face are:

1. Scheduling – You have to uberize your WFM in order to ensure that this doesn’t become overwhelming.
2. Team Engagement – This has to be part of your daily routine, checking and making sure you are visible.
3. Stakeholder Alignment – Ensuring that they have enough information on how the centre is performing and engaging with them when it makes sense.

Thanks to Jason

Contact centre managers looking to discover more great advice should read these articles next:

• How to Combat Quiet Quitting in the Call Centre
• 23 Things Every Contact Centre Manager Needs to STOP Doing in 2023
• How to Identify and Manage Toxic Employees

Author: Robyn Coppell