Most contact centres are set up to develop their managers to drive metrics and to be coaches…but this is the wrong focus.
They’re actually talent scouts.
We’ve built entire management training programmes around motivation techniques, call monitoring, and performance dashboards. But recent research analysing 20 years of data from 200,000 employees reveals something different.
Something that changes everything.
The best managers don’t excel at motivating people. They excel at matching people to roles where they naturally thrive.
In contact centres, that means understanding which agents belong in technical support versus sales queues.
Who thrives in back-office versus frontline.
Who should move into quality assurance, workforce management, or training roles. It’s pattern recognition, not cheerleading.
The Strategic Placement Effect
High-performing managers boost their employees’ productivity and wages not through inspirational team huddles or gamification boards.
They do it by understanding each agent’s capabilities and strategically placing them where those capabilities matter most.
The impact lasts long after the manager has moved on.
Think about that agent who struggled with sales calls but excelled when you moved them to technical support. The benefit wasn’t in your ongoing coaching. It was in recognising where their analytical thinking and patience actually mattered. Get someone into the right queue, the right shift pattern, the right specialisation, and the productivity gains compound over time. Even under different management. Even years later.
The Conversation Gap
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable for contact centre leaders.
Nearly half of employees say their manager doesn’t know how to help them with career development. Another 46% say management simply doesn’t know how to help with career advancement.
Twenty-five percent will likely quit within six months because of this gap.
Read that again.
We’re not talking about unmotivated managers. We’re talking about team leads who’ve been promoted for their call handling skills, not their ability to identify where someone’s talents actually fit.
They know how to review call quality and deliver feedback.