Team leaders and quality analysts, in that order. In a contact centre, team leaders approve the agent's held actions and coach the advisers around it, and quality analysts already review conversations for a living. Train both before the agent takes a single customer contact. Workforce planners come next, then the advisers who take over conversations the agent hands off.
Why team leaders first?
Team leaders are where held actions land. A refund above the limit, a cancellation with a fee, a customer who mentions a complaint: the agent drafts the action and leaves it for a named person, and that person is usually the team leader on shift. They also set the tone for advisers. If a team leader treats every hold as friction, advisers learn to work around the agent.
Quality analysts are a close second because their job changes most. They used to sample calls; now they must also sample agent conversations and agent verdicts. They are the people best placed to spot drift, and the first who need to know how to read the record.
What order works for most contact centres?
| Order | Role | What they need |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Team leaders | Reviewer track: depth, the bound that held an action, approve or reject with a reason |
| 1 | Quality analysts | Reviewer track plus how to sample verdicts and read the record |
| 2 | Workforce planners | How held actions create a queue that must be staffed on every shift |
| 2 | Operations and site managers | Common grounding: limits they own, what to report upwards |
| 3 | Advisers who take hand-offs | Common grounding and practice picking up a conversation mid-stream |
| 3 | Complaints handlers | Reviewer track focused on what must never be closed by an agent |
Advisers are third not because they matter less, but because they work under team leaders who must already know the answers to their questions.
What may the agent do, and what stays with people?
- Depth 2: draft replies to emails and messages; an adviser sends them.
- Depth 3: handle routine chats end to end, update addresses, issue refunds below the business's own limit.
- Depth 4: larger refunds, cancellations with fees, account changes that are hard to undo; held for a team leader.
- Stays with a person: complaints, customers who say they are in difficulty, threats of harm, and anything the customer asks to escalate.
An example: a refund chat that was really a complaint
Take a retail contact centre where the agent handles refund chats at depth 3. A customer asks for a refund on a broken kettle and adds, two lines later, that this is the third one and they intend to take it further. The refund itself is within limits. The agent issues it, but because the centre's own limits treat "take it further" as complaint language, it also opens a complaint case and holds the closing message.
A trained team leader reads the held message, sees the complaint flag and passes it to the complaints team. An untrained one sees a resolved refund and sends the friendly close. The customer gets a cheerful goodbye and no complaint reference. The quality analyst, if trained, finds this in the weekly sample; if not, the regulator or the ombudsman may find it first.
How do you keep the first wave sharp?
Contact centres lose people fast, so the reviewer layer has to be replenished constantly. Three habits help:
- Certify more team leaders than the rota strictly needs, so a resignation does not leave a shift uncovered.
- Run a weekly calibration: two team leaders decide the same held actions and discuss every difference.
- Rehearse incidents. An agent drops to depth 1 the same day a run clears no depth, and certificates lapse after 90 days. Advisers must be able to take over every chat at once.
For the full reviewer method, see how to train the contact centre to review AI agent decisions. The AI agent incident drill for the contact centre covers the takeover rehearsal, and the AI agent training plan template for contact centre managers sets a schedule. Contact centres inside a bank or a lender add a further layer of accountability. The full approach is in training teams for AI agents.
Pryme Intelligence Academy's lessons can be listened to as audio, which helps team leaders study around a shift pattern.
Questions people ask
Should advisers be certified as reviewers?
Senior advisers who approve agent actions should be. Most advisers need the common grounding and practice taking hand-offs.
How does agent work change quality scoring?
Quality analysts score the whole conversation, including the agent's part and the hand-off. They also check that held actions were decided with a reason.
What if the centre is outsourced?
The provider's team leaders need the same training, and the client should be able to check their certificates at source.