Call center frontline leaders are expected to be renaissance people who excel at a variety of roles and responsibilities. They must be excellent multi-taskers, combined with the ability to manage and coach agents, handle challenging customers, readily shift priorities, prepare management reports, and lead call center initiatives while ensuring that service level and quality objectives are achieved.
One such leader who has been achieving all these responsibilities is Miriam Thomas. She has been employed with Qualishore for the past three years. This budding team leader stated that her greatest accomplishment is being a Supervisor.
“The work we do as a team at Qualishore is exceptional and my greatest accomplishment is being a team leader. Taking the time to understand my team members and ensuring that they are comfortable and supported every day. This allows for a smooth communication flow” she cited.
She explained that understanding your team members will help you to work efficiently with your team because every Customer Service Representative (CSR) brings something different to the table.
“Everyone comes with a different personality, and one of the things that I take great pleasure in is making sure I understand each team member, individually, and [ensuring that] we have a common ground.”
Preparing her day
Supervisors set the tone for the day, and for Thomas, she tries to set her day in order to cater to each team member’s capabilities.
“I try to separate our tasks based on each team member’s capabilities. I would give them tasks that I know they would be able to complete,” this, she said, allows for her agents not to be exhausted and helps them to focus on their strengths as she works along with them to develop their areas of opportunity.
Motivation
An agent’s job can be demanding and stressful at times, but having a supervisor who does the trick can relieve the tension by creating a positive, supportive, and collaborative environment. Over the years, Thomas has been ensuring her agents feel valued, respected, and treated fairly by management- which has made her a top performer.
“I offer incentives, and one of the top lines would be attendance and punctuality. It is very competitive; I have one particular agent, he has been mastering attendance for the past few months, so [with him] I focus on attendance performance and punctuality but I also rely on him to coach and mentor those that are struggling in this area,” she added.
Advice to other frontline leaders
“The key to success starts with having a passion for what you do on a daily basis because you enjoy doing it so it becomes effortless. We are in a people business, therefore, the customer’s experience is a true reflection of how we treat our team members” Thomas noted.
Continued development
The contact center is a dynamic real-time environment where constant change is habitual. As such, we do bi-weekly training that introduces new content or reinforces the existing process.
“We believe in consistent one-on-one coaching sessions, so we spend a considerable amount of time focusing on strengths, wins, and opportunities.”
When asked to describe herself, Thomas responded in the positive, she added, “I would say definitely that I am a huge team player and I lead by example by meeting or exceeding expectations.” She disclosed that she tries to go above and beyond, which paves the way for her to be the top-performing supervisor. She believes that if you are performing well, it will motivate your team members as well.
“I must give credit to Dr. Ellis and Mr. Fraser for supporting and coaching me throughout the years to become the leader I am today,” Thomas concluded.
Now that you have met one of our leaders who has been driving success in our contact center, be sure to contact us at https://qualishore.com/contact/ if you would like us to deliver results that are in line with your business goals and strategic objectives.