If you’ve worked in a contact center for more than five minutes, you’ll have heard someone say, “It’s all about people.”
Yet, despite this being one of the most frequently repeated mantras in our industry, we continue to overcomplicate people management, drown our teams in processes, and turn leadership into a box-ticking exercise.
This is why I wrote the book It’s Just People: A Manager’s Toolkit to cut through the jargon, ditch the corporate clichés, and to remind us all of what great leadership really looks like.
What is Leadership?
Leadership is not about motivational posters or endless KPIs. It is about showing up consistently for your people, creating safe spaces, and building cultures where trust and growth matter more than micro-measuring call lengths.
In this article, I’ll share some of the book’s key messages that directly resonate with today’s contact center environment: from recruitment to coaching to culture. And why adopting a simple and human-first approach will always deliver the best results for your customers, your teams, and your business.
Contact centers are often the heartbeats of customer experience (CX). But they’re also tough places to lead. High attrition rates, relentless performance targets, and the daily balancing act between people and metrics can quickly reduce even the most passionate leaders to clipboard managers.
...we continue to overcomplicate people management, drown our teams in processes, and turn leadership into a box-ticking exercise.
We need then to simplify leadership, focusing on what actually works: hiring well, onboarding with care, coaching consistently, building trust, and shaping strong, inclusive cultures.
I built the book around a simple principle I learned studying design: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). For in management, simplicity doesn’t mean lacking rigor. It means stripping away the nonsense so people can flourish.
Key Messages for Contact Center Leaders
Let’s explore four core messages.
1. Recruitment Isn’t About Filling Seats
Contact centers often fall into the trap of speed hiring: fill the seat, get them on the phones, and hope for the best. This is a false economy: you spend more time onboarding, training, and coaching, and see a loss in efficiency and quality with a higher risk of drop out!
If you get recruitment right, every subsequent aspect of management - from development to performance to engagement - becomes easier.
Hiring isn’t about finding someone who can answer a call. It’s about finding people who fit your culture, align with your purpose, and have the right mindset. Skills can be taught. Willingness, curiosity, and attitude cannot.
Contact Center Takeaway:
Stop writing job ads full of clichés about “rockstars” and “dynamic go-getters.” Craft purposeful, authentic role profiles. Sell your culture, not your vacancies. And interview with the aim of discovering who candidates are, not just what they’ve done.
2. First Impressions Shape Retention
Your onboarding experience isn’t admin. It’s a loyalty moment. New hires decide within the first days and weeks whether they see a future with you.
In the book, I share the story of how one company sent me a photo and bio of each team member before I joined. It was simple, personal, and made me feel part of the team before I’d even started.
...culture happens every day in team huddles, one-to-ones, call calibrations, and lunch breaks. And it starts with you.
In contact centers - where the work can be intense and isolating - creating a welcoming, structured, and human onboarding process makes all the difference. It reduces anxiety, embeds your values, and builds belonging from day one.
Contact Center Takeaway:
Get the basics right: working tech on day one, clear schedules, meet-and-greets, and early conversations about your team values. Show new starters that you care: before and after they walk through the door.
3. Focus on Growth, Not Just Results
One of the most damaging things I’ve seen in contact centers is over-prioritizing results at the expense of people. Metrics matter. But how you achieve them matters more.
Contact center performance obsession can lead to toxic environments where agents chase bonuses, hit targets, and burn out in the process. Leaders fall into the trap of believing that performance management is about discipline.
But it isn’t.
It’s not about pushing for today’s numbers, planning ahead for the quarterly business review, or meeting financial markets. It’s about investing in your people’s growth, so tomorrow’s (or next quarter’s) numbers take care of themselves.
Contact Center Takeaway:
Use frameworks like the GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Will) model, which is a really easy structure for holding coaching conversations. Have them in that order and you can’t go wrong. Regularly coach behaviors, not just outputs. Recognize when people show initiative, resilience, or kindness: not just when they exceed their call handling targets.
4. Culture is Not an HR Poster. It’s How You Show Up
In contact centers, culture happens every day in team huddles, one-to-ones, call calibrations, and lunch breaks. And it starts with you.
But too often, culture is reduced to corporate statements on wall decals. These decals can help imbed mission statements and ideologies, but by themselves are worthless. Culture isn’t pictures on your walls; it’s how you treat each other: your integrity.
If you say you are a motivated team, be a motivated team. If you say your company cares about people show it.
Culture lives in the small, consistent actions leaders can take: celebrating wins, making time for check-ins, calling out good behaviors, and showing vulnerability when it’s needed.
In a world of hybrid working and remote teams, your presence and authenticity as a leader is more important than ever.
Contact Center Takeaway:
Don’t rely on annual engagement surveys to tell you about your culture. Ask your people. Every week. Create rituals of connection. Celebrate effort as much as outcome. And be willing to own your mistakes.
Why Simplicity Wins in Contact Centers
I wrote this book because I saw too many managers overcomplicating people leadership, turning it into a rigid process of appraisals, RAG (red/amber/green) KPI statuses, and compliance conversations.
Contact centers thrive when leaders simplify. When they stop obsessing over dashboards and start focusing on creating safe, empowered environments where people feel trusted and respected.
Because here’s the truth...
People don’t leave contact centers because the targets are too high. They leave because nobody checked in, nobody listened, and nobody noticed when they stayed late to help a struggling colleague.
If you create an environment where your people feel cared for, involved, and safe to fail they’ll stay, thrive, and outperform every target you set them.
Final Thought: It’s Just People
As contact centers embrace AI, automation, and digital transformation, one thing will never change: the success of your business depends on your people.
CX is delivered through thousands of micro-moments created by frontline advisors and team leaders every single day. The quality of those moments - and their ripple effect on customer satisfaction and brand loyalty - comes down to how well we lead, nurture, and value our teams.
If you create an environment where your people feel cared for, involved, and safe to fail they’ll stay, thrive, and outperform every target you set them.
Let’s return to basics. To remember that behind every headset is a human being with fears, hopes, and ambitions.
And that the best leaders aren’t the ones chasing reports: they’re the ones building teams that feel like families, where people want to show up, do their best, and leave proud of what they achieved.