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Articles
- Call Center Employment (An Overview)
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Author: Antoniette L. Nakama
Posted on: Monday Feb 04, 08 - 03:06 pm
A call center is used as a generic term for contact center, customer service/support center, sales center, etc. There are tons of call center worldwide. In the Philippines this has been a very popular workplace where everybody wants to be in. They say call centers offer higher salary than any other companies. No wonder why thousands of newly graduates are targeting call centers for their job application.
Call center for big companies are all in a centralized location which may be located in the city or overseas. Some companies have call centers in India, China, Spain etc.
Ms. Molly Flanagan of the United States have 25 years of experience in call center and customer service management. She successfully created her own call center in 1985 and owned it for 14 years. She then accepted a position at Microsoft Inc. as Group Manager for their Product Support Call Center in Los Colinas, Texas prior to them outsourcing their call center to Bangalore, India. Her latest project was creating a call center for an non-profit international women's healthcare organization (Planned Parenthood).
Based on her long years of experience in this field, Ms. Flanagan shares her overview of a call center workplace. "A call center is a central office which is created to answer a large volume of calls. There are two basic types of call centers - Incoming and Outgoing. Incoming are generally calls regarding software support, hardware support, customer service, complaints, etc. Outgoing are generally telemarketing solicitation calls, debt collection calls, etc."
"The physical appearance of a call center is generally a large room filled with cubicles or work stations. Each work stations consists of a desk, computer and telephone with a headset. The computers are connected by a LAN (local area network) and the telephones are part of a CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) system. This phone system allows management to control call distribution and it also gives management statistical data (both real time and historical) so that they can better manage and staff their center. Call centers are labor intensive and it is a management balancing act between staffing levels and call volumes. Because employees represent 70% to 80% of the overhead costs of a call center it's imperative that management endeavor to maintain an 85% talk ratio (which means that for every hour an employee is at work they are taking calls for approximately 50 minutes). This is usually consider optimal - any less and the employee is not being fully utilized and any more the employee will suffer from burnout," Ms. Flanagan adds.
Filipinos are known to be good in speaking the English language as it is considered our second language. Because of this, there are lots of companies that find Filipinos efficient in performing the tasks of a call center agent as compared to other nationalities.
In her desire to help those who are planning to pursue a career in call centers, Ms. Flanagan answered the following questions. Read on...
What does it take to be a good call center agent? "They need to have good computer skills and excellent telephone skills. They must truly enjoy helping people and understand the basics of customer service. They also must be resilient and understand that if the customer is angry or frustrated over an issue or product defect that they should not take it personally. They need to have an empathy for other peoples problems and genuinely enjoy being a problem solver."
What can an applicant expect in a call center workplace? The atmosphere? The pressure? "The new employee can expect at least a week or longer of training before they are put on the phones. They can expect to have a team manager who will closely monitor their job performance and coach them to improve any issues that they may have. The atmosphere is generally noisy and fun. Management generally has incentive programs that are fun and management also promotes a little friendly rivalry between teams. Pressure comes from matrix requirements for job performance (number of calls taken, length of call, schedule adherence, call ratios and call monitoring)."
What advice can you give to young people who wants to work in a call center? "Relax and enjoy the job - keep a positive attitude. Don't stress out about meeting your daily and weekly matrix requirements - just do your very best - everyone has an "off" day once in awhile. Assume that every call you take is going to be monitored - that way you'll always be prepared. Learn as much as you can about the product or service that your center is supporting so that you can offer the best customer service to the caller."
So for those who are interested or planning to pursue a career in call centers, you now have enough tips to carry on and start everything right. You now have the edge among others keeping in mind and heart all these ideas and tips from the expert. Goodluck!
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