Leadership 
Contact center managers provide the direction, experience, and leadership that contact centers need to be successful. Contact center managers oversee the entire operation and are responsible for people, processes, and technology, so getting the right person for the position is crucial for advancing any customer-facing operation.
Whether hiring for a contact center manager role or looking to step up from call center supervisor to manager, this guide aims to provide you with all the information you need.
Skills and Characteristics To Look for in Contact Center Managers
Contact center management experience involves more than someone simply showing they have worked in a contact center for a long time. The best contact center managers possess several skills developed during their tenure in contact centers, learned through real-world scenarios, and obtained across various training sessions and formal qualifications.
Tech-savvy leadership
Handling inbound calls is rarely the full scope of a call center these days. We’re now talking about email, web chat, social media, and SMS. Then, throw in CRM integration and staffing systems for good measure.
Contact center managers must be proficient in managing omnichannel contact center platforms and leveraging AI-powered tools for analytics and automation. This means they must have hands-on experience handling these types of interactions and be accustomed to dealing with the extra analytics and features modern contact center technology provides.
They must be comfortable (and have experience) integrating emerging technologies like predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, and chatbot management.
Data-driven decision-making
In both omnichannel contact centers and standard call centers, the amount of data you collect is sky-high. But what you do with that data separates great contact center managers from good supervisors.
The best ones are skilled in analyzing performance metrics (e.g., FCR, AHT, and NPS). They know how to break down metrics and use the information to create plans that improve the team’s performance.
Often, these individuals have a background in roles that don’t directly interact with customers as much, such as a workforce management specialist (who plans staffing and scheduling) or a quality assurance manager (who focuses on evaluating and improving service quality).
Emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills
A customer service manager must have strong empathy and active listening skills to support team members and customers. When a large part of the role includes not just people management but people interaction, soft skills like patient problem-solving, motivating staff, and using positive language in tricky situations are an absolute must.
The opposite — losing your temper or rushing when patience is key — are undesirable skills for any management position.
Adaptability
Every day is different in a contact center. Hoping for a calm and “normal” day isn’t a luxury a contact center manager can afford.
Instead, they must be able to lead through rapid change, including shifting customer expectations, hybrid work environments, and technological advancements. In these scenarios, leading includes embracing change, reinforcing the rationale behind change, and coaching others through challenging environments.
Coaching and development skills
As well as managing customer expectations and interpreting data and analytics, a key responsibility is nurturing call center agents’ skills.
Being able to promote career growth and create a positive work culture are vital traits of anyone looking to move into contact center management.
Customer-centric mindset
An overarching requirement of any contact center manager is the passion for delivering exceptional customer experiences. While removed from the day-to-day handling of calls, web chats, etc., there’s still a huge part to play when it comes to aligning team goals with broader customer experience objectives.
In a perfect world, the right contact center manager comes and is always searching for up-to-date customer experience insights. Relating what is happening in the wider world to the experience you provide puts your customer support team on the front foot.
How Have Expectations Changed in Recent Years?
Omnichannel mastery
Handling different types of customer interaction is one thing. But overseeing the integration of channels like chat, SMS, social media, and video support alongside voice is another challenge entirely.
Implementing a multichannel contact center (new digital channels stand-alone) is simple. However, creating and maintaining a unified customer experience across those channels is a comparatively new strategy.
The best contact center managers have experience handling requests that span multiple channels and have taken voice-only teams and turned them into omnichannel, customer-first businesses.
Increased focus on automation
When you’re an agent, it can be daunting to hear that automation can speed up work and remove the routine parts of your job.
As a supervisor or manager, you recognize the benefits and gains for the entire business and make it less about filling your own time. Managers must then understand how to implement and optimize artificial intelligence (AI) tools for efficiency while maintaining the human touch.
You can’t just replace humans with robots. There must be a balance between automation, human impact, and getting the two to work in a streamlined manner.
Hybrid work models
Even before the coronavirus pandemic — and certainly during it — contact centers were asked to implement home working. Some thrived, while some are still struggling to adapt even today.
Those with a great contact center manager benefit from expertise in managing remote and hybrid teams. This skill has become critical to the success of any team management role in recent years.
Daily operations include managing workloads, shifts, and flexible locations as well as the ability to use collaboration tools effectively and create models on how best to use them.
Higher stake in CX strategy
It was once the case that managers would be asked to run the contact center as a stand-alone business unit. Other factors contributed to how they ran it (online trends, budgets, etc.), but these sat outside the scope, and managers could do little to impact them.
Today, contact center managers are key contributors to broader customer experience best practices, working closely with marketing, product, and sales teams.
Viewed as the first line of defense, contact centers now provide feedback on what’s happening on the ground as well as being on the receiving end of initiatives from above.
Emphasis on employee retention
It turns out that when your employees are happier, they stay longer and progress up the career ladder. Simple, right? The best contact center managers know this and are actively doing something to combat rising turnover rates associated with the industry.
Managers must be skilled in prioritizing agent satisfaction through engagement programs, flexible scheduling, and clear career paths.
Sample Job Description for a Contact Center Manager
Title
Contact Center Manager
Location
Remote/Hybrid/On-site
Key responsibilities
- Oversee daily call center operations, managing a team of agents across multiple communication channels.
- Monitor key performance indicators like average speed of answer, FCR, and CSAT and develop strategies to meet or exceed targets.
- Leverage AI and analytics tools to optimize workflows, enhance customer experiences, and improve agent productivity.
- Conduct regular performance reviews, provide coaching, and implement training programs for agents and supervisors.
- Collaborate with customer experience, marketing, and IT teams to align contact center strategies with business goals.
Required skills
- Strong understanding of contact center technologies, including CCaaS systems and omnichannel platforms.
- Strong leadership, communication, and problem-solving abilities.
- Proven ability to manage and motivate teams in remote or hybrid work environments.
Interview Questions To Find Top Candidates
Technical expertise
- Can you describe your experience managing omnichannel contact centers?
- Which tools have you used?
- How have you implemented automation or AI to improve customer experiences?
A strong answer includes: I’ve been using and managing teams who use omnichannel solutions like Nextiva, Five9, and Microsoft Teams for many years. My current team supports web chat, email, SMS, and social media as well as voice. We lean on features like sentiment analysis to understand what makes our customers tick so we can make the right decision in near real time.
Customer focus
- How do you ensure your team consistently delivers exceptional customer service?
- Can you share a time when you turned a dissatisfied customer into a loyal advocate?
A strong answer includes: We measure Net Promoter Score and customer satisfaction every quarter. More granularly, I keep a keen eye on any changes in average handle time and first-contact resolution rate. When figures change, my quality assurance team reviews patterns and issues.
When we have new information, we act on it by providing the right agent training. For shorter-term resolution, like with ACME Solutions, we started with what we thought was an outage and didn’t troubleshoot as we should have. This then escalated to a wider issue and a long fix time.
To get the customer back on the side, I created a communication plan, engaged senior advisors, and went above and beyond to meet new expectations. Once the problem was solved, our contact was back on the side and left us a glowing reference.
Leadership and team management
- How do you handle underperforming agents?
- Can you provide an example?
- What strategies do you use to keep remote or hybrid teams engaged?
A strong answer includes: I lean on my supervisors to be an ear to the ground while monitoring agent performance metrics over time. When Jimmy in my current team was struggling with call times and FCR rates, I took him aside and had an open and honest conversation with him to find out the cause of his dip in performance.
It turns out that the introduction of our SMS channel was eating into his time, and he couldn’t be productive handling both that and voice. Often, it boils down to the support we should have already been providing. We changed the way we engage employees, introduced gamification for camaraderie, and created a skills matrix to ensure all staff get the appropriate training.
Salary Ranges for Contact Center Managers
According to ZipRecruiter, here’s how contact center and call center manager jobs pay in the United States:
- Average Annual Salary: $63,834
- Hourly Rate: Approximately $30.69
- Weekly Salary: Approximately $1,227
- Monthly Salary: Approximately $5,319
- 25th Percentile: $48,000
- 75th Percentile: $75,000
- 90th Percentile: $93,500
It’s important to note that many factors may influence the salary of a contact center manager. For example, geography still plays a large part, despite the potential for remote work. Metropolitan areas, like California, typically pay a higher salary due to the increased living costs.
Industry variance is a key contributor, too. In healthcare companies, where social care or emergency services are involved, for instance, expect these salaries to lie in the higher percentiles compared with, say, retail.
Future Career Paths for Contact Center Managers
It’s important for a contact center manager, present or future, to have an understanding of where this role may take them. Some may be happy to stay running the contact center for many years. Others may view this as a stepping stone to bigger or different roles.
Here are some of the most common career paths for contact center managers.
Director of customer experience
As a director of customer experience, you will oversee customer experience initiatives across multiple touchpoints, aligning contact center goals with overall business strategies. This role doesn’t concern itself with day-to-day customer issues but instead defines how a company should present itself to and handle customers. This might be face-to-face, over the phone, via web interfaces, or even self-service.
Vice president of operations / Operations manager
With the overall goal of continuous improvement, expect to take on broader organizational efficiency and operational excellence responsibilities. While the contact center falls under this remit, wider non-sales teams (and sometimes sales teams) get included here, too.
Technology specialist or consultant
It’s not unheard of for call center reps or managers to leverage their expertise and start to help organizations with optimization strategies. Armed with years of experience and success, who better to lead change programs in this niche field? You might join businesses to work on temporary projects when they need to lean on your mentoring, leadership skills, and experience in your related field.
Customer success leader
The difference between customer service and customer success is reactive as opposed to proactive. Some contact center managers transition into roles focused on driving customer retention, loyalty, and success metrics. Expect to lead projects and incentives designed to retain customers over a long period, similar to an account management role.
Entrepreneurship in CX solutions
Like Justin Robbins, you might start a consultancy or technology firm specializing in innovative customer experience solutions. Once upon a time, Robbins was an entry-level call center representative. Today, he advises some of the largest businesses in the world on how to implement new solutions and processes.
Looking To Be a Leader? Stay Up On These CX Trends
The best contact center managers come with not just years of experience but also a depth of skills and characteristics. It’s a quality game — rather than quantity.
Look out for traits like:
- Tech-savvy leadership
- Data-driven decision-making
- Emotional intelligence and communication skills
- Adaptability
- Coaching and development experience
- A customer-centric mindset
Are you a contact center manager looking to take your next step into a leadership role?
Make sure you check out these customer service trends.
