I was reading an article today on Call Centers in the Virginia area. The article itself was a little scattered, but the main point of it was that call center are finding value in locating themselves in rural and semi-rural locations. On top of that, the call centers are actually hiring despite the poor economy.
Having worked in a call center for twelve years, I have some opinion on them. Granted, my experience was probably better than others due to the fact I handled accounts directly, instead of just taking random calls every thirty seconds. Having more control of your day definitely has it’s perks.
The good things I see about call centers is the convenience for the customer. Everything is routed through one location. You can easily be transferred to different departments as needed. It’s also cost effective to the company to have one central location.
But the same positives of a call center are also it’s negatives. While it’s a one-stop shop for customer service, it can also be frustrating for a customer calling and not knowing exactly who to talk to. They may call the wrong department number, or get routed to fifteen different people before connecting with the right one. I know this happened several times at my old company and customers were not happy about it.
And being “cost effective” has a disadvantage to the employees working there. Call Centers traditionally have lower wages for front-line jobs that are the most stressful and time-consuming. Turn-around at call centers is high. It doesn’t surprise me when employees are required to answer the phone within 2 seconds and get off within 30 seconds or less, regardless of what the customer needs.
Working at a call centers can be a thankless job with not-so-great pay. Why stay somewhere where the majority of your calls are from someone with a problem? Usually irate to boot. Most companies are more interested in keeping costs low, they don’t focus on the needs of employees, which is a big mistake.
One way to change this is to better understand the value your employees can have to your business. Focus should be on training employees on how best to deal with customer calls through customer service excellence.
Screening of employees should be carefully done to weed out those people who most likely don’t really care about the customer, or who will end up most likely hating their job within six months and become unproductive.
Wages at call centers should, in my opinion, start at a minimum of $15/hr and go up from there. Most call centers minimum start at $9-$11/hr. There should also be more incentives created and even simple things that make the workplace a more fun and appealing place to go to.
In other words – invest in your employees as much as you invest in your customers.
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