Q: With the volume of calls we handle, there’s no time to get the team together. Are there things we can do to substitute for team meetings?

A: During my assessments with various call centers, I am hearing the constant theme of not enough time for team meetings, one-on-ones or even 10-minute huddles. In the same breath, I am also hearing the importance of being customer-centric. But it’s impossible to be truly customer centric unless every single agent is aware of and focused on customer concerns and needs. To keep the entire agent team marching in the right direction toward a common goal – complete and consistent customer satisfaction – there’s no substitute for regular face-to-face time and coaching.

Customer service agents are the core of your call center, and they’re worth any time investment in them that you make. Don’t fit in meetings here and there, or wait for call volumes to drop or for free time to miraculously appear before you sit down with your agents. Instead, focus on your core by setting a fixed schedule of weekly team meetings and one-on-ones, as well as brief daily huddles. In fact, these should go on the manager’s calendar before anything else because there’s nothing more important a contact manager can do than guide and develop the team.

I’m going to steal a few wisdom nuggets from Wells Fargo’s John Hueg to share with you:

1. Management consistency drives agent consistency.
2. Leaders support agents, not the other way around
3. Change requires an emotional investment.
4. All work is done to serve the customer better!