Call center career
Under the call center structure, we mean main roles and positions inside the call center team. If we talk about a call center as a separate entity, then there are three main roles you have to hire for your contact center to be all set.
Call center agents
First of all, we all know who call center agents are. Call center agents are those who answer customer calls or communicate with potential customers during outbound calling campaigns – in this case, they are often called sales representatives. There are also many other synonymous terms used to describe call center agents: customer service reps, customer support representatives, and operators.
Call center agents make up the majority of the entire team, and their main responsibilities include: providing customer service, processing sales calls, filling up support tickets, making changes in customer cards, performing callbacks, and doing all other work concerning customer service and communication with the customers. In other words, call center agents are the only people in a call center who really communicate with your buyers in 99% of all cases. The main skills agents should have are stress resistance, empathy, multitasking, and communication skills.
Team leaders
Team leaders, or supervisors, are the second key role in a call center. The name of this job refers to the main responsibility of those specialists: they control and lead agents’ work. Team leaders make agent schedules, track agent performance and provide feedback, control the process of achieving KPIs, motivate the team, build a healthy working atmosphere and environment, and they also prepare reports for call center managers. In rare cases, supervisors communicate with clients, for instance, in a case of call escalation. One team leader mentors a team of 8 to 12 agents. Main skills supervisors should have are organizational skills, self-confidence, accuracy, powerful motivational and communication skills, and finally, ability to lead the team made up of different people.
Call center managers
Call center managers are the highest position in a call center hierarchy. Call center managers are the only ones from the call center team who work on strategic level, which means they plan long-term strategies and make operational decisions. Also, call center managers always cooperate closely with managers from other departments of a company. They communicate mostly with team leaders to deliver their strategies, set short-term and long-range goals and make sure that team leaders will be able to explain these goals to agents. Main responsibilities include strategic planning, communication with stakeholders, HR management, organizational issues resolution, financial decisions, and other management duties. The main skills call center managers must have are time management skills, analytical skills, leadership skills, confidence, and other skills which help them lead the entire team.
Customer service director
Customer service director is a man who is responsible for creating and implementing the customer service strategy, its regular revision and improvement.
Customer service director is responsible for:
- Regular meetings with stakeholders regarding the customer service strategy and its implementation, plans, and objectives.
- Regular monitoring of strategy implementation, including making changes if necessary.
- Cooperation with other departments to build collaborative environment.
- Creating customer experience improvement strategy.
Customer service director should have following skills: strategic vision, multitasking, relevant practical experience, deep understanding of the industry and current trends, ability to analyze huge amounts of data.
Quality control specialists
Quality control specialists monitor agents’ work and performance, provide quality assurance control and make reports and recommendations about improvement of agents’ productivity and quality of their work.
Responsible for:
- Designing agent evaluation programs.
- Creation of criteria used to evaluate agents.
- Monitoring current trends in quality assurance.
- Making reports and recommendations for managers to improve quality.
- Providing agents with feedback.
Skills required from quality control professionals:
- Analytical skills to create effective quality assurance tactics.
- Organizational skills to build stable working relationships with agents.
- Communication skills to provide agents with constructive feedback.
Other roles
HR manager
This one is easy. HR manager is responsible for hiring new employees, in most cases, agents and team leaders. The responsibilities of a call center HR manager are quite similar to the responsibilities of any other HR manager.
They include:
Finding new employees, organizing hire interviews, providing candidates with test tasks.
Onboarding for new employees.
Employee retention and communication with employees about key aspects of the employment conditions.
Trainer, or coach
Trainer is a position that is responsible for providing agents with training sessions. Trainers are very important as they are people who help agents gain all the vital skills and qualifications they need to provide seamless quality customer service.
Responsibilities of a call center trainer include:
Organizing and providing ongoing and onboarding training.
Designing training programs.
Providing feedback after training.
Reporting about the results of training.
Communication with agents about the conditions of training.
IT specialists
IT specialists are responsible for business continuity and stable work of all the infrastructure of a call center.
Their key duties include:
Providing workers with all needed resources – equipment, electricity, Internet connection, and maintenance.
Maintenance of call center infrastructure.
Recovery in the case of downtime and prevention of downtimes.
Sales reps
Sales department includes not only sales reps but also project managers and sales managers who build the sales strategy and plan long-term objectives. Also, it can include lead management specialists.
Sales department is responsible for:
Direct sales through phone calls and other communication channels.
Lead management.
Work with cross-sales and up-sales.
Design of sales strategy and its implementation.
Reporting and sales analytics.
