What is the Work of a Call Center?

Not everyone wants a career in call centres. But for those that do, there are great opportunities for promotion. From roles within the call centre including leadership (e.g Team Leaders, Operations Manager) through to a range of other roles including Quality, Training, HR, Workforce Management, Reporting there is wide range of opportunities.

And call centre staff are highly sought after for other roles within your organisation. Its well known that the call centre now serves as an internal recruitment pool full of great talent that know the products and have a customer focus. From roles in marketing, accounting, sales etc clocking up some time in the call centre is a great launching pad for your career.

Nearly all call centres have training that forms part of your induction program that normally consists of product training and customer service/sales skills. But outside of that, call centres typically offer a range of additional training opportunities for staff that are keen on developing themselves further.

From leadership, project management, computer skills and specialist call centre skills like Workforce Management there is typically some great courses available.

Being a good call centre agent is no fluke. The skills required to be successful agent are typically honed over a period of time. Learning how to deal with difficult customers, turn a negative into a positive, resilience, sell or upsell a product all require specialist skills that not everyone possesses. Thats right, you are a professional!

The good news is those skills are in demand. Not just here in your home country, but across the globe. So if you are good at your job there are other organisations that will want those skills and might even pay you a little bit more for them. And who doesn’t love a pay rise after all!

Most call centres have a range of different shifts to cover peak periods that customers attempt to contact them. This is typically forecasted down to 15 minute increments for each day of the year and allows for seasonal variances like holidays, weather, sporting events etc.

Call centres then create rosters to meet that demand. The good call centres allow their staff to swap shifts with others, work part time or casual etc as long as those roster periods are filled.

Whilst each call centre is different, most are willing to hold on to their good staff and will be happy to provide you with some flexibility as long as it still suits business requirements.

Whilst most people don’t typically view a call centre job as a career choice, it has certainly proven to be a great career for a surprisingly large number of people.

From starting on the phones there are now literally hundreds of different roles that are either directly in, or have contact centres as part of their portfolio. Most large companies now have a Chief Customer Officer role (CCO) that sits as part of the executive team and directly within the call centre space there are Head of Contact Centres/Customer Experience that can earn well in excess of $200k. Not bad for just starting out on the phones with no formal qualifications hey?

There are an incredibly diverse range of call centres within our community. From the ‘common’ call centres that take orders, complaints, help desks, general enquiries etc through to life critical centres such as emergency assist (000) and Lifeline.

Each one of them can provide an enormous amount of satisfaction for the call centre agent from literally saving someones life, turning an angry customer into a happy one or helping to sell a product you know will benefit a customer, working in a call centre can be a truly rewarding experience.

These days its hard to recruit and retain call centre agents (and its expensive) so call centres are typically at the forefront of staff engagement initiatives to hang onto their staff. This means that senior leaders within the business right down to Team Leaders are committed to ensuring that staff enjoy coming to work and they often have targets on staff satisfaction/engagement as part of the leadership Key Performance Indicators.

From structured Reward and Recognition programs, fitness programs and charity days through to dress up days, food days and more there is always something going on to ensure you are having fun! Check out the articles in our Staff Engagement category for some ideas.

OK perhaps a bit cheeky but with such a diverse range of people working in a call centre and the sheer number of functions, fun days etc its inevitable you are going to make some great friends.

And who knows some of those friendships might lead to something more. Having worked in contact centres for over 25 years I’ve been fortunate enough to attend multiple weddings and met many children that all started from a friendship in a call centre!

I lasted four months before chucking my headset unceremoniously down and making a diva strop exit from the building. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t pick up a few experiences that I just know anyone who has had to endure call centre work can relate to.

Having to be at your desk half an hour early to load up and log in to the twelve different programs needed for your working day before you go live at 9am.

Knowing the running order of the hold music and the crushing disappointment of hearing the song you know comes after your favourite.

The thrill of finally being granted a wireless headset and skipping merrily to the coffee machine while on a call only for the reception to give out.

The customer’s rage at having had a long wait time meaning that no matter what you say, you have no chance of success in getting this call to go well.

The ping pong of a customer between departments. ‘Sorry, we only deal with X here, you need to call Y.’ When it was Y that put me through to X. SOMEONE TAKE MY CUSTOMER.

The cringeworthy passwords like ‘IAMHOT’ and ‘POOBUM1985’ and having to sound non-judgemental when asking for them.

Realising you have five minutes of hold time left to use up and taking a 10 second break in between calls.