When you see a commercial with an announcer stating, “Call now, operators are standing by,” your call is being answered by a call center. Call centers are locations that can perform a variety of tasks for a business. According to Wikipedia.com, A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving or transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone.” An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers.
Outbound call centers are operated for telemarketing, soliciting charitable or political donations, debt collection, and market research (source). Call center staffing is as important as any other job within a business. Often, the call center is the first point of contact for customers interacting with a company. Finding employees with the right set of skills for this crucial role can be challenging.
Employees in call centers must possess good customer service skills and knowledge of the product they are supporting or selling. Below is a sample job description for a senior call center operator at ViewPoint Bank in Plano, Texas. (https://www5.recruitingcenter.net/Clients/ViewPointBank/PublicJobs/controller.cfm?jbaction=JobProfile&Job_Id=11756&esid=az) This position is similar to that of a senior teller at a traditional bank.
Summary: The senior call center operator will be responsible for providing customer service to clients and assisting with administrative functions.
Assists Call Center Managers in executing daily activities to ensure customer service objectives are met, clients are served professionally, and team members comply with all policies and procedures. Takes the lead in the office when Customer Service Managers are absent.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Oversees projects related to the Call Center.
- Reinforces superior customer service through their example, appropriate observations, and follow-through with customers and employees.
- Conducts periodic training to ensure optimal knowledge for all staff.
Responsibilities:
- Maintain knowledge of phone system and reporting capabilities.
- Provide supervision, guidance, coaching, recognition, motivation and training to department personnel.
- Accept and resolve escalated customer calls.
- Ensure audit compliance and quality control of all work processed within the department.
- Attend various product knowledge and customer service training presentations.
- Ensure effective communication to staff and implementation of all policy and procedure changes as approved by Senior Management.
- Consistently answer questions and recommend solutions regarding customer inquiries.
Responsibilities:
- Obtain approvals and process requests in accordance with established policies and procedures.
- Assume responsibility for various department functions when managers or staff members are absent.
- Be flexible to work alternate schedules as needed.
- Perform other duties as assigned within assigned limits.
Requirements/Qualifications:
- The ability to multitask and pay close attention to detail is a must-have skill.
- Demonstrate excellent proficiency in personal computer applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
- A minimum of three years of related experience and/or training is required.
Work related experience must consist of call center and/or financial industry. The ideal candidate should possess organizational and time management skills, along with the ability to provide leadership, supervision, and training. They should have a demonstrated ability in organization and delegation skills. Additionally, they should have excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills with the ability to carry out instructions and instruct others. The candidate should also be able to train personnel effectively, read, analyze and interpret documents accurately while understanding procedures well enough to write reports clearly. They must be able to speak clearly to customers and employees as well.
The ideal candidate for this position should also possess the ability to deal with problems involving multiple facets and variables in non-standardized situations.
A high school diploma or GED is required for this job, with some college education preferred. One may question how businesses can offshore this type of skill set based on the job description. However, many American manufacturing jobs have been outsourced and moved overseas, and call centers reflect a major industry that has also made the shift. Companies should approach this move with caution as there can be a negative impact if it is solely based on profit. According to the textbook (page 144), As of 2011, entry-level customer service representatives in India earn between $4,200 and $5,200 per year,” which is considered a good salary by India’s standards.
However, in a 2010 article posted on NPR.com, Carolyn Beeler stated that high inflation and double-digit annual raises in some sectors were pushing up the cost of labor in India. At the same time, wages in the U.S. were falling and companies were rethinking the trade-offs associated with outsourcing (source). In 2004, HP Computers opened a call center in India despite other tech companies such as Dell pulling out of these operations due to their impact on customers (source).
A recent article on HP’s decision to set up a call center in India (source: cnet.com) has led to customer dissatisfaction with the level of service. This raises the question: what skills are necessary for a call center employee? According to an article on MotherJones.com, it seems that only having a non-Indian or American accent is required for employment at Indian call centers (source: motherjones.com). This article provides insight into how Indian call centers choose and train their employees. Salary information was not provided.
According to http://www1.salary.com/Call-Center-Representative-I-Inbound-Salary.html, the median salary range for a U.S. call center representative – inbound is around $30,000. This number is nowhere near the double-digit raise stated. However, perhaps that amount can be resolved by a statement on call center representatives working at home from the same NPR.com article: “It provides a lower cost point than other traditional means of onshore customer service,” says Chris Carrington, who runs Alpine Access, the Denver-based company that Quigley-Hogan works for.
Carrington states that the low overhead of having home-based workers enables him to charge 20% less for the same services provided by brick-and-mortar call centers in the U.S. Alpine Access is not alone in following this trend. According to the textbook (page 162), JetBlue and American Airlines are also implementing this strategy for their call centers. This trend has been shown to increase retention, and performance is comparable to that of traditional call centers.
