Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

“I don't have time!” This is what we usually hear from most team leaders. Whatever the task may be, the answer is the same, even if it is part of their job duties. They seem to be busy bodies, and you're pretty sure they are doing something.

Most managers would turn to time and motion studies, assuming their supervisors are spending too much time on certain tasks. It is an effective tool, but if not done properly and if only used for time tracking, you will only frustrate your team. This even demoralizes them.

What you need to do is use the tool to identify what tasks are not part of their duties. Another question to ask is how much time is actually spent on their REAL duties, such as coaching and developing the agent.

Here is what you may find:

• Too many meetings
• Too many reports (shouldn't you be hiring someone else to do this?)
• Ad Hoc discussions with agents (why not schedule one-on-one sessions instead) 

One more thing, you have to do it on yourself too! We fail to see that there are times when we delegate too much, believing your objective is to develop them, but in reality you are only adding to their work load and hours, beyond the expected duties of a supervisor.