Job Description
As a call center manager, your role is to oversee a group of customer service representatives to ensure they are doing their jobs properly. You will be responsible for making sure that the center and its resources are properly managed and that pre-determined goals are being met effectively. You may also be responsible for working with representatives from clients, for participating in planning and goal-setting meetings, and for hiring new representatives. Furthermore, call center managers sometimes need to come up with innovative methods for motivating the staff in order to keep them moving in the desired direction.
Some of the responsibilities above may vary depending on the type of call center in which you are working. There are two primary types of call centers: inbound and outbound. Inbound call centers deal with direct calls, requests, complaints, and questions from customers. Outbound call centers, on the other hand, focus on contacting existing and potential customers in order to sell products and services. Although some centers may handle both outbound and inbound services, most call center managers deal with only one or the other at any given time.
Job Responsibilities
Call center managers do much more than just standing around watching to see that the staff is making the calls as required. They have a wide range of responsibilities. For example, as the manager you will need to monitor calls selected at random to ensure that your workers are doing an effective job. You also want to take steps to ensure that errors occur infrequently. If one of your staff members has a difficult encounter with a caller, you may be called upon to defuse the situation or to answer further questions from the caller.
As the call center manager, you will also have plenty of control over hiring and firing decisions. You will complete staff evaluations and contact staff members who are underperforming. You will, in most cases, also be responsible for firing staff members who fail to meet their goals or who have caused problems in the center. Additionally, you may need to create advertisements for new staff and to inform the rest of the management team when new staff members need to be added in order to meet increasing demand.
Along with all of your other responsibilities, you may be asked to stay on top of the latest developments in call center technology. When new technologies are adopted at your center, you may be required to ensure that the staff is trained to use the new equipment. Also, you may need to make recommendations to the rest of management on how to improve the staff’s efficiency by adding new technology to the center.
Education/Training Requirements
If you want to be a call center manager, you are definitely going to need experience on the front lines of a call center. In fact, many managers earn their jobs through in-house promotions. Having hands-on experience as a customer service representative will help you better understand the demands on the staff and enable you to set realistic goals. Also, managing the staff will be easier if you can come into the center with a strong background in doing the same kind of job the workers do.
Training is normally done on-site because each call center uses slightly different technologies and has somewhat different methods of going about their tasks. Obviously, if you’ve worked in call centers in the past or have a background in customer service, you will have a competitive advantage when it comes to getting hired and/or getting promoted to call center manager.
There are other skills that can help you improve your chances of being hired and that can help you accomplish your job more easily. For example, if you have a friendly and outgoing personality you will be better able to deal with people over the phone and to work with the staff as their manager. To some extent, you will also need to be self-motivated.
Call Center Manager Pay
Between 2006 and 2016, employment in call centers is expected to grow quite quickly. The growth rate is anticipated to be 25%, as compared to 9 to 11% for the overall job market in the United States. As a result, the demand for call center managers is also going to increase and that will also be reflected in a more desirable financial picture.
In most call centers, the manager’s pay is determined primarily by his or her years of experience. For managers with less than four years of experience, the pay is between $40,000 and $45,000. That’s more than double the average salary for a call center worker. As you acquire more years of experience, you could end up earning an average of between $55,000 and $58,000 annually.
Conclusion
Although call center managers tend to start out in the lower ranks of their field, having advanced education and training, as well as good interpersonal skills, will give you an edge in being promoted to the higher paying positions.
