How to Evaluate Call Center Manager Performance

As a call center leader, you rely on your call center managers to ensure everything runs smoothly. But call center managers don’t have easy jobs — reviewing metrics, engaging employees, onboarding new talent, researching the latest call center technology, and keeping customers happy are only a few parts of a call center manager’s day.

All companies have different methods for measuring call center performance, including productivity and efficacy of operations. Call center managers have many tools to evaluate call center performance, including call center agent performance evaluations.

But, who evaluates the call center manager? That falls on everyone – the executive team, the agents, and sometimes the call center manager themself.

Why performance evaluations are important.

Performance evaluations are necessary for any contact center’s quality assurance program. At the end of the day, the main goal for performance evaluation is to improve customer experience.

Customer experience is a top priority for call centers, and maintaining a high standard requires you to evaluate call center performance. Did you know it takes 12 positive interactions for a customer to get over one bad interaction? Running smooth operations ensures customer satisfaction scores are up, and both agents and managers must consistently maintain or improve their skills and knowledge to satisfy customers.

Performance evaluations increase manager and agent productivity. By regularly assessing performance, call center staff can stay relevant in their knowledge and plan a course of action for any performance shortcomings.

Manager-agent relationships should be positive, and performance evaluations build trust between the two parties. Agents feel more empowered and eager to improve if they see manager evaluations. Additionally, strong connections and conversations can take place in performance evaluation chats, which builds trust and overall engagement.

Top KPIs for call center managers.

KPIs, or key performance indicators, help you measure performance using data. Here are some top KPIs for call center manager evaluation:

Abandonment Rate.

Abandonment rate measures how often a customer hangs up the call before speaking with an agent. High abandonment rates may be a result of ineffective scheduling — however, there are many other factors that play into this metric, so be aware of that. Most often, abandonment is a symptom of long hold times.

Average Handle Time (AHT).

This shows the average amount of time each call takes. If AHT is high, it might show some inexperience or lack of knowledge in certain agents. This KPI could indicate that a call center manager needs to invest more time in training agents.

First Call Resolution (FCR).

First-call resolution, or FCR, measures how often a call center resolves a customer inquiry within one call. Success for this metric is driven by how knowledgeable your staff is, how efficiently they work, and your quality of customer service. High FCR rates indicate strong agent and manager performance.

Best practices for call center manager evaluations.

Here are some quick tips for a great performance review for a contact center manager:

Allow agents to evaluate managers.

Did you know that managers are responsible for 70% of employee engagement? Call center managers evaluate agents’ performance, so why shouldn’t agents do the same?

By inviting feedback from agents, you improve their engagement by making them feel heard. Additionally, agents have more insight into a manager’s performance than an executive team does. While the higher-ups can use KPIs and other documented resources, it’s the agents who see managers in their day-to-day.

Measure the right KPIs.

Not every KPI is indicative of a manager’s poor or great performance. Make sure you’re using the right KPIs to evaluate them. For example, if your company is notoriously short-staffed, long wait times might not be the right KPI or call center metric to assess your manager.

Create a structured plan of action.

Performance evaluations aren’t just about feedback. Successful call centers use feedback to take action. Call center manager evaluation should identify a manager’s strengths and areas for improvement. Structured plans of action might include coaching, training, and an increased budget for call center technology.