Even a few years ago a call center agent was a man who used to answer phone calls from customers in order to provide service. Nonetheless, as the world is changing sharply, the job of call center agents is also evolving. Nowadays, a call center agent is a kind of bridge between your company and buyers, so in other words, an agent is no longer just answering calls – they are offering products, selling goods, providing service, resolving conflicts, and doing many other tasks. That’s why the key responsibilities and requirements for this job changed – and even though we can call it “customer service representatives”, “operators”, or “agents”, it still means the same. Agents’ work directly influences customer loyalty, customer experience, customer satisfaction and customer retention, so hiring agents is a challenging task. The agent has to be polite, empathetic, qualified, and skillful in both hard and soft skills, and this is not even half of the skills a call center agent must have for successful professional development.
So, check out this call center representative job description!
What companies set up call centers and hire agents?
Ecommerce companies
The call center agents job description for ecommerce should include such call center agent duties as order confirmation, delivery services, consulting, and sales – that is what call center agent does in the e-commerce business. Agents in e-commerce should have strong hard skills of additional product knowledge to answer incoming calls, handle outbound telephone calls, boost inbound sales, and provide quality customer service on daily basis.
Companies with huge customer base
Companies with substantial customer bases or big call center databases often suffer from high customer churn rates because of the inability to handle high inbound call volumes from potential customers. Call center agents are those who have to deal with these call volumes, but there are also automation tools to optimize agent workload. Call centre agents job description for ecommerce should include requirements of relevant experience as call center agent and ability to multitask.
Banking industry
Call center is a must-have for banks, at least because it is a highly competitive industry and it is a challenging task to retain customers with poor quality customer experience. Bank agents should know company policies, have strong customer service experience, understand company culture, company values and provide fast services to customers. Thus, call center agents are those who help customers process their payments, resolve customer issues, and the best options, and just provide the expected level of customer care.
Healthcare industry
Confirmation for visits, notifications, customer feedback collection, and many more tasks are processed by healthcare industry call centers. One administrator in the clinic just can’t handle such a number of tasks, because there are also other tasks to deal with. In other words, modern healthcare institutions just can’t exist without a call center.
Customer service departments
Call center software capabilities can help call center agents to engage with customer complaints quickly and react when needed, route calls automatically to meet the highest customer service standards, and forward customers to the right department or specialist. You can also handle customer service requests 24/7 by self-service options or through outsourced call centers.
Outsourced call centers
Outsourced call center agents have to be perhaps the most skilled and multitasking agents ever, at least because they often work with absolutely different projects. This means they can handle customer calls for insurance, financial, healthcare, and e-commerce business at a time. This requires many skills and high qualifications.
Nevertheless, no matter what is the industry call center agents work in, there are some overall requirements for this job.
Call center agent job requirements
- Good diction and a pleasant voice tone – customers respond better to clear answers when they understand the agent from the first time and there is no need to repeat or ask again. A low tone of voice is better perceived and inspires more trust in the interlocutor than a high or loud voice.
- Literacy, language knowledge, and phone etiquette – agents have to know the language as native speakers, don’t use lingo and know how to handle phone conversations politely.
- Verbal communication skills and empathy – empathetic agents can charge customers with a positive mood, which means there will be no place for unnecessary conflicts or other negative connotations.
- Stress resistance – agents often face angry customers, or dissatisfied customers who are pushing the situation forward straight to a conflict. Agents have to always stay calm, never lose control over themselves and the conversation, and know how to handle frustrated customers.
- Intelligence – agents have to bear powerful problem-solving skills, know how to find the root cause of a customer issue, and identify small details that help to resolve the problem. This also includes active listening skills, for a proper understanding of customer inquiries.
- Sales skills – excellent communication skills are required to handle outbound calls, especially cold sales outbound calls. Such agents have to know how to catch customer focus, and how to go the extra mile when needed. This is not a customer support role, so all customers here will be difficult customers. Outbound customer calls are cold calls to customers with a purpose to sell them your goods, and there can be hundreds of calls per day.
Call center agents have to feel free on the PC use, know how to write down text quickly, make fast decisions in difficult situations, and finally, you should also look for candidates who know a few languages. Call center agent job description rarely requires even a college degree, but only a high school diploma.
Call center agents’ responsibilities directly depend on the industry and project they are working on. For some projects, there is one list of responsibilities, while for others it is absolutely different. In rare cases, there can be only one responsibility for this job. For instance, it can relate to customer service only, like answering customer calls to answer customer queries or solve customer problems. In some call centers, there is differentiation between agent groups that work on different projects, for example, some can work with cold calls, and others with inbound calls. Call center agents’ responsibilities, in other words, depend on the project, especially when it comes to outsourced call centers.
Agent duties and responsibilities are regulated by internal instructions and other rules, and there are internal policies, especially privacy policies, which are designed by every company. Agent can’t answer personal phone calls in the workplace, eat or drink. In some cases, agents can’t communicate with other agents when working in call center. There is often a specific place for communication for employees, where they go during breaks. Agents are the subordinates of team leaders, or supervisors, who often lead a group of agent – up to 12 employees in it.
Call center duties and responsibilities for agents
Essential duties for average call center agent include:
- Answering inbound calls from clients
- Providing customer service and assistance, providing clients with actual information they need
- Resolving customer complaints and customer problems
- Informing customers about current discounts, offers, company news and recent updates
- Outbound calling during telemarketing campaigns or customer feedback collection campaigns
- Phone call sales and work with customer base
During last years, almost all call centers implement multichannel communication model, which means phone calls are no more the only available channel of all contact channels. This has added some responsibilities to agents’ work:
- Email messaging with customers, both inbound and outbound
- Working with live chats – answering customer queries, resolving issues, etc.
- Working with social media messages, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, etc.
When an agent can’t handle a customer issue due to any reason, there are two options to pick – either the supervisor joins the conversation or the agent escalates the call to a more qualified specialist. Nonetheless, both of these situations should be avoided as no customer wants to be transferred.
When it comes to the hiring process, candidates with relevant work experience are more preferred than newbies. Nonetheless, low salaries and difficult working conditions make employers seek newbies, which always means higher training expenses and longer onboarding periods.
Even though the last decade provided us with a powerful boost in automation technologies development, there is no way agents’ work will ever be replaced by AI or any other technology.
Prospects of the call center agent profession
Communication and negotiation skills
By using conversation scripts, agents quickly learn all the subtleties of proper communication, are able to listen to the interlocutor and find an approach to each client, gain confidence, and acquire the ability to persuade and resolve conflict situations, as well as work with active sales and objections. All these skills will definitely come in handy for agents, no matter what profession they choose in the future. This job type requires basic troubleshooting skills as a must-have, both for closing deals and for customer service experience.
Call center agent salary prospects
A call center agent can easily combine work in call center with studying or other activities, as it is possible to flexibly plan your work schedule and devote several hours a day to work. Work on night shifts, weekends, or holidays is paid at double rates. If the agent shows good performance results, bonuses and various pleasant rewards are added to the rate. Salary range differs based on workload, and average salary for call center agents is one of the lowest in the US.
Call center career prospects
High staff turnover and a fairly branched organizational structure facilitate rapid call center career progression. Call center managers try their best to find potential applicants for their call centers, and even such a vital thing as previous experience isn’t a requirement. Surely, it is hard to provide exceptional customer service with a team of newbies. Nonetheless, there are many different personality types and a successful candidate can use his employment opportunities and go higher for a more prominent call center role. Thus, an agent can be promoted to the position of a senior agent or supervisor in a short time. More responsible ones can then head the sales or quality department, become a trainer, or engage in recruitment to build new call center teams. Such ideal candidates rarely can be find among thousands of job seekers, so even a properly written agent job description sample or job description template can help you.
The profession of a call center agent has a number of advantages. Firstly, you can get your first job without any experience, service knowledge, which is not the case in all fields of activity. Secondly, you can get several important soft skills and interpersonal skills at once – even the experience of dealing with unhappy customers can help you in the future. Thanks to mentors and constant monitoring, you can gain those skills in a fairly short time as this is required to handle your exact responsibilities. Thirdly, skillful agents will have great call center career prospects in the future both in the call center industry and beyond. The experience you gain in this profession, especially knowledge of what is excellent customer service, will be useful wherever you work.