Once you’ve been a live agent for a while, you will be in a position to move up. As we discussed before, you might become a Subject Matter Expert and play a more valuable role in the chat team. 

If you get the chance to act as Deputy Team Leader or to help train new agents, so much the better. Then you will be in pole position to get the advanced position of Chat Team Leader.

As the name suggests, a Team Leader is responsible for managing a whole team of live chat agents. In a small business, there might be just one team with a few agents. In a large business, there may be multiple large teams. 

It’s worth working to get this promotion, because you can earn even more money as a Team Leader. Typical pay is in the region of $1500 per week, but top companies will pay more. Demand is outpacing supply, which is pushing pay higher and higher. Who knows how much you could make next year!

Of course, you need to be good enough to earn the money. You must be reliable, responsible and professional. Be prepared to learn, and get ready for an exciting ride!

If you get a Team Leader position, you will do much less live chat work, and much more managing. Your job will be to ensure the team runs smoothly and efficiently, and that customers queries are answered in a timely manner. 

Don’t worry, though. Taking on a management role doesn’t mean you have to go and work in an office. You can do the Team Leader role from wherever you are in the world, using collaboration tools to help you. 

Let’s take a look at the kind of work you will do…

Your key priority is ensuring that your team of live chat agents gets the job done right. Luckily, you will have lots of great tools available to help you. 

Your first task will be to get up to speed with the admin functions of the live chat software used by your company. These give you a big picture view of what’s happening, so you can identify any problem areas that need to be addressed.

You can check on how many chats are taking place, how many people are in the queue and what the visitor satisfaction level is. And that’s just for starters. You will find a wealth of information in the admin panel to help you.

You may be able to see what countries visitors come from, how they found the website and how many chats are happening per hour. All of this gives you insights to help you allocate resources and manage your team.

It’s not all technical, though. You will also need to deal with more mundane issues, such as team members who want to swap shifts. You will need to organize an employee roster and schedule in vacations. 

It’s a varied job that’s never boring. There will always be new people and new issues to deal with, and each one helps you become more skilled and valuable.

Recruiting new agents is an important role for a Team Leader. Some existing agents may leave and need to be replaced, while a growing team may just need more people. 

Here are some of the tasks you may be responsible for:

You will often have help from more senior managers, so none of this is difficult. And once you have been through the process once, you will find the second time is easy. This is another great chance to meet lots of new people—and get to choose who you work with in the future! 

Once new agents have been recruited, they will need to be onboarded. That is, they will go through an induction process to introduce them to the company. 

As the team leader, it will naturally be your job to handle this very important role. Get this part right, and your new team members will integrate readily into your team. 

Here are the tasks involved in a typical onboarding process:

Onboarding is sometimes overlooked, but it is an important role that must be done right. After all, you don’t want untrained newbies chatting to customers, saying the wrong things and making stupid mistakes.

When done right, employee onboarding helps to create a more cohesive and effective live chat team. And that’s to everyone’s benefit.