Call Center Supervisors Not Getting Adequate Training, According to Study

Though much of the ‘90s, many industry pundits were predicting that supervisors would become less needed in call centers, and that their numbers would begin to drop proportionally. The conventional rationale – usually couched in discussions of flattened hierarchies and team-oriented structures – was that agents and teams were becoming more empowered, and the need for a layer between management and the front line would decline.

Just the opposite is happening, and in fact supervisor ratios of 10:1 to 12:1 ratios are fairly common today, whereas 15:1 or higher was more typical a decade ago. (Note, significant differences by type of call center remain; e.g., technical support centers may have as few as four or five staff per supervisor, while some order taking environments do fine with 20:1.)

The predictions were wrong primarily and perhaps predictably due to the growing complexity of customer contact workloads. But there are other reasons – e.g., call center supervisors are more involved in process improvement projects, liaison roles, and planning activities. In one sense, agents are increasingly enabled to do what supervisors used to do, and supervisors are spending more of their time in what used to be the realm of management.

It’s surprising, then, that according to ICMI’s recently released Contact Center Operations Report, nearly two in three centers (63.7%) do not provide any formal training for new supervisors before they assume their responsibilities. More than half of respondents feel that new supervisors do not receive enough training in their contact center, and more than two thirds feel that existing supervisors do not receive enough ongoing training.

This is an opportunity for improvement! Supervisors are more critical than ever to running successful operations. Giving them the skills and knowledge they need to face an increasingly challenging set of responsibilities just makes sense.

Brad Cleveland
Senior Advisor and Former President & CEO,
ICMI
bcleveland@think-services.com