Customer Service Buzz

Have you ever wondered what makes your best frontline supervisors tick? Can it be boiled down to the same thing that makes for a great frontline rep?

Most companies assume that star reps will make great supervisors, and promote them accordingly. Unfortunately, while these reps are great at handling customer issues themselves, not all of them want to share their knowledge and develop staff – a key activity for supervisors.

CCC has found that one in three contact center supervisors don’t want to coach.  That’s right – nearly one-third of your supervisors actively avoid coaching and development activities.  These ‘reluctant’ supervisors can even harm team performance with the poor quality, unfocused coaching sessions that they are forced to conduct.

Reluctance also poses a retention problem among both supervisors and frontline reps. Reluctant supervisors would ideally opt for and accept another role that does not involve developing people, while their reps are more likely to feel disengaged because they have a supervisor that simply doesn’t make their development a priority.    

So, what should you do about this? Most organizations take the traditional route of screening supervisor candidates for leadership qualities, but often the qualities of a strong leader are abstract and hard to measure.  Few screen for reluctance, which actually has an equal impact on team performance as compared to leadership – and, best of all, it can be concretely measured.

To make sure you are hiring the right candidates, I advise applying reluctance screens to the hiring process by: 

• Using behavior interview questions about past informal coaching opportunities
• Watching candidates coach in a controlled environment.

By screening for reluctance before fully investing in an individual, you can reduce the frequency of lower-performing supervisors while ensuring that those who are hired are sure to make coaching a priority. 

I’d love to know how you make sure you are hiring the right supervisor candidates. How do you know they will be effective coaches before you offer them the job?

CCC members, check out our coaching reluctance screening resources and see how one company is able to detect coaching reluctance through a screening program.

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