What to Look for When Hiring a Call Center Manager

You can’t just hire any call center manager.

Sure, their resume might look impressive and match your call center manager job description. They might have all the certifications in the world and a bachelor’s degree. But you need a strong leader with excellent communication and interpersonal skills along with a proven background in solving problems on the spot.

Poor-quality managers impact team engagement by as much as 70%, and we know disengaged employees are less productive.

On the other hand, high-quality managers motivate teams to do their best work and ensure everyone is working with your customers’ experience in mind.

When hiring a call center manager, make sure you check off these core skills. 👇

Essential Skills and Qualities When Hiring a Call Center Manager

Strong leadership

You’re not just looking for someone who can manage. You’re looking for someone who can lead.

It’s easy to find someone who can take action when things go wrong and who can control resources. That’s managing.

Key leadership characteristics include the ability to motivate, inspire, and drive continuous improvement. This is the type of person you’re looking for when hiring a call center manager.

Experience of call center coaching and previous examples of high performance are vital to look out for here. If you can find someone who’s been a mentor and a manager, you’re well on the way to finding an ideal candidate.

Excellent communication skills

Managing a contact center is all about communication and collaboration. That means communication with escalated customers, call center agents and supervisors, and other business stakeholders.

Look for previous examples of communication inside and outside the call center to uncover the strategies and methods of communication your customer service manager has exposure to.

Reporting upwards to a vice president of customer service might be the norm. But what happens if your new call center manager must now present to a board of directors and a wider management team? Make sure your candidate is confident talking — as well as emailing and presenting — to different types of audiences in your business.

Problem-solving abilities

Calls can quickly get out of hand. When call center representatives need urgent help from their manager, your candidate must be able to identify the problem, take control of the situation, and explain the next steps.

This might involve delegating new tasks to agents or subject matter experts. It could also mean thinking on their feet and getting their hands dirty to find the most efficient remedy.

Technical proficiency

When you hire a new call center manager, their likelihood of being hired increases if they’re familiar with your industry. For example, the years of experience gained by a hotel call center manager will likely transfer to your call center if you also run a chain of hotels. You’ll have niche systems, and they’ll be familiar with the dashboards, glitches, and workarounds.

However, you may also be seeking someone with a fresh approach from a different background. Here, the minimum requirement is that they have a good understanding of call center tools and software.

In a perfect world, their background includes working in a call center as an agent. If they’ve been there and done that in a pressurized working environment, they’ll better understand what it’s like for the people they’ll now be managing.

Customer service orientation

A call center manager should be committed to providing excellent customer service. This is the overriding goal for anyone in a leadership position charged with managing customer support.

Not only will they put the customer first (with some minor exceptions), but they’ll also see the bigger picture of menial tasks and routine operations. They should also have a thorough understanding of contact center workflows and process templates.

For example, knowing what happens when a caller hits a certain option on your interactive voice system and understanding where documents get saved when a customer uploads them via web chat means they can speak with authority when customers make complaints.

Top Skills and Qualities in a Call Center Manager

What makes a top-quality call center manager stand out from an average one? Average call center managers can talk their way through questions about leadership and problem-solving. But only high-quality candidates can provide real-life experiences when tasked with business-changing projects.

Strategic thinking

Your ideal hire should be able to develop and implement long-term call center strategies. While firefighting inbound problems and working on improvement plans for call center staff, there must always be a focus on the long term as well as immediate customer issues. This is a hard skill to develop and an even harder one to stick to.

Previous experience of successfully leading teams through new strategies is a must if you’re looking for a high-quality manager.

Change management

You could be forgiven for thinking that change management is a role only in large enterprises, where new technology and processes get approved and implemented through a change board.

However, contact centers must adapt to keep up with the pace of change and remain competitive. At this level, it’s essential for your call center manager to do several things:

• Be involved with planned changes: Input thoughts and feelings from the call center as well as from previous experiences.
• Fly the flag for change: Become a champion for change, communicating to agents and supervisors why new innovations and processes are important.
• Represent the call center: Present concerns and suggestions in a structured manner as the changes start to take place.

Innovation

Your new candidate must be willing to explore new ideas and technologies to improve call center operations.

Some managers can be stuck in their ways and lack a vision for future growth. If you experience immediate pushback when discussing innovation to improve your call center, it’s a red flag.

A background in introducing and integrating new call center solutions is a bonus. Someone who’s lived and breathed change and process improvements will likely embrace new technology and working methods.

Emotional intelligence

The ability to understand and manage emotions effectively is what separates the best people managers from the rest.

When dealing with customers and agents, it’s vital to appreciate that people are also humans. A call into your call center, for example, might only represent a broadband fault. But what is the consequence to that person if their business’s broadband is down for half an hour?

If they selected you as a supplier or have an important function happening in-flight, they may be under excess stress or even fear for their job. This extends to employee engagement and even onboarding. Spotting and managing burnout and stress are key to becoming a genuinely successful people leader.

Interview Questions to Assess Skill Set

Once you know the key skills your next call center manager should have, it’s time to get interviewing. As your candidates progress through their interview, call out these questions specific to each skill set and customize them to your business as needed.

Area	Call Center Management Questions
Leadership	How do you motivate and inspire your call center team to perform well? What initiatives have worked for you in the past?
Communication	Describe a time when you had to communicate a difficult message to your team. How did you handle it?
Conflict resolution	Can you share an example of a challenging problem you faced in a previous role and how you solved it?
Technical proficiency	What experience do you have with call center technology and workforce management software? (You’re looking for more than Excel and Word here.)
Customer service	How do you ensure that your team provides excellent customer service?
Strategic thinking	What is your vision for the future of call centers, and what call center metrics will become important?
Financial acumen	How do you measure the success of a call center? What agent performance metrics and KPIs have you used in the past?
Change management	How do you prepare your team for organizational changes?
Innovation	Can you describe a time when you implemented a new idea, workflow, or automation to improve call center operations?
Emotional intelligence	How do you handle stress and pressure in a fast-paced call center environment?

Career Paths for Top-Notch Call Center Managers

At this stage, you’ve found out what’s in it for you. You’re hiring a call center manager who can transform your organization and provide a new generation of customer service.

But what’s in it for them?

It’s important to highlight during the interview where this position could lead, especially if this is a sideways move for the candidate. They don’t want to move companies, keep the same role, and never progress.

Vice president of customer service

This role involves overseeing customer service operations, which might include multiple directors within a contact center. You’ll be focused on setting targets, budgets, and hitting objectives for business growth and support. Here, you’ll have overall responsibility for the customer service function.

Customer experience manager

Focusing on improving the overall customer experience across the organization, you’ll be removed from daily operations. Instead, this role spends most of its time planning and executing new processes and workflows, so you’re always providing the highest level of customer satisfaction most efficiently.

Operations manager

Managing various operational functions, such as supply chain, human resources, or logistics, is a common move up the chain for call center managers. When you manage a call center, you become aware of many different components of your business. Choosing to specialize in one area and become a subject matter expert can be a satisfying career move.

Business development manager

As you become aware of what customers want and how they respond to different scenarios and their problems, you’re armed with significant insider knowledge. This could be used to identify new business opportunities and grow the call center. They say the best sales talent comes from within. It’s never truer than when call center managers take a step into sales.

Consultant

Another avenue to use all this proven experience with customers, workflows, and inner workings is to start advising other businesses. When a company hires an external consultant to review its processes and technology, it wants someone who’s been there, done that, and got the T-shirt. On-the-ground experience of what it’s aiming to improve is vital when it comes to call center transformation.

🖋️ Author Note: This is my story. Following six years of working in and managing a call center, I became a pre-sales consultant and then a business consultant for the technologies I used to handle queries for. Today, I work with billion-dollar organizations all over the world!

The Best Call Center Managers Use Technology Like Nextiva

When looking for your next call center manager, it is vital to hire a candidate with leadership skills and a holistic view of the business. High-quality managers understand the mixed-bag reality of leading a call center, including building long-term plans and understanding how their team members are feeling.

The best call center managers aren’t just great team motivators. They use technology to set their agents up for success. This is a large part of day-to-day operations — from handling escalations and staffing to reviewing calls and quality assurance — that your manager needs best-in-class call center technology.

Nextiva is the preferred contact center platform for high-performing call center managers today. Not only can you streamline workflows and automations that make your team more efficient, but you can also introduce self-service and omnichannel interactions to put your customers at the heart of your strategy.

Equip your team with a proven call center solution — Nextiva. Book your demo today. 👇