Call Center Managers: Plugged In or Just Out of Control?

Call Center Managers: Plugged In or Just Out of Control?

By Gail Yahner

Blackberry users across North America were unable to receive messages for several hours Thursday.

You know what that means; millions of people in meetings were forced to actually pay attention to the speaker.                                                                               Janice Hough

When I saw this joke a while back I had to laugh at how true it was.

People are totally plugged in and tuned out… of your team meeting.

What can you do to improve meeting focus when your participants are texting, emailing, gaming, and surfing while you talk?

I have learned firsthand that Call Center Managers spend hours upon hours every week in meetings. Some would say we spend many unneeded hours in meetings but the fact remains:

Call Centers and meeting go hand in hand.

What’s a manager to do?

How can you reign in your fellow meeting participants (especially when they are fellow Call Center Managers) without becoming the meeting police?

My first thought is to be respectful of their time by being prepared for your meeting.

I have gathered a few tips below on managing meetings that just might make your meetings go a little smoother. Look them over and see if any might work for you and your team

Are the correct people in the meeting?

• Take a look at your invites and streamline the attendees by paring the list down to only the people that need to attend.

Now that the right people are attending, must everyone stay the entire time?

• By working through your agenda, can you cover general topics first? This will allow some members to drop out of the meeting after their relevant segments are covered.

If they are no longer needed in the meeting, why hold them hostage?

•  Send them on their way and you might become your sites Meeting Hero.

Set the agenda and stick to it. This includes meeting start and end times.

• Consider sending out the agenda 24 hours in advance (with all necessary documents) to allow the participants’ time to review and be prepared to discuss the topics.

Stay on topic and on schedule.

• Be respectful that the other managers have other tasks to complete and additional time spent in unorganized or unproductive meetings just adds to a Call Center Managers already long day.

Good Luck!

Gail is a contributing writer for Call Center Cafe, the Community for Call Center Professionals. As the self professed Call Center Quality Queen, Gail shares her experiences in Quality and Training with readers. If you would like to read more of Gail's articles please visit: http://www.callcentercafe.com and http://www.callcenterbestpractices.com

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