Call Centre, Contact Centre, Telemarketers, Telemarketing Staff, Customer Service & Csr Career Guide

Call centre, Contact centre, Telemarketers and Telemarketing staff, Customer service and CSR has largely boomed in many developing countries mainly due to lower labor costs. Many Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Providers specialize customer service, telemarketing and all of them have huge numbers of call centre and contact centre agents or customer service staff, telemarketer staff, CSR that works to provide efficient call centre service.

Call centres are groups of people responsible for handling incoming calls from customers. Many multinational companies and large corporations provide customer service staff to handle inbound or outbound calls from their clients. Typically, companies receiving larger volume of incoming calls will utilize a call centre or contact centre. Call centre agents are also called Customer service staff, Customer Service Representative or CSR. Contact centre is another term for a call centre. In a contact center, handling emails and letters are also part of the call centre service. Also customer service rep or CSR may utilize online chat to interact with clients.

Telemarketers and other people working in a call centre are generally called agents. These people use headsets to keep their hand free to work on other tasks while handling calls from clients. Headsets also avoid neck injury from cradling a phone all day. Usually agents are provided with cubicles with their own computers aside from the telephone. Computer skills are a must in call centres since call details from clients are needed to be encoded in a system. A call centre rep or CSR is also tasked to report to supervisors or team leaders who then will give periodic performance reviews to help an agent enhance their call centre service skills. The calls handled by customer service reps or CSR are monitored and recorded to ensure quality or if the complaint needs to be reviewed.

You may be worried about the sound of ringing phones in a call centre and contact centre, but actually there is nothing of that kind anymore. Technology has made it easier for call centre and contact centre to use a queuing system to fairly handle calls from their clients. Customer calls are placed in queue in the order in which they are received. If the customer service rep or CSR are busy, the call will be placed on hold usually with music, then the first available agent will receive the call that has be holding on for the longest period. A screen showing the number of calls on hold and the length of holding period are usually showed on a screen in call centres. Goals are set to determine that the maximum amount of time a customer should hold, the length of calls and the number of calls handled by each call centre rep or CSR should have in a day are realistic. These set of numbers guides call centre management to plan on the number of staff they will need each day to handle the number of calls expected on each given day.

Since call centre and contact centre use telephones and computers rather than having to personal contact, a call centre agent, CSR, telemarketer or customer service agent may be placed anywhere geographically. Some contact centres for a large company maybe spread all over the country, some agents even have the option to work from the comfort of their homes. And many times, a call centre will be established by BPO companies in foreign countries such as Philippines, China and India to cut labor costs. This is now commonly called as outsourcing.

Call centre and contact centre services are not only limited to telemarketers and customer service agents. Job opportunities are also open for supervisors and managers to guide the staff. Trainers are required to train new employees. Business analysts are hired to check on the business statistics, and quality assurance personnel are needed to improve the processes and procedures practiced in the company. If you are considering being a call centre or contact centre agent, Telemarketer/s and Telemarketing staff, customer service rep or CSR, then it could be your stepping stone to a successful and fulfilling career.