What is a Call Center?

 

Nearly every major company in the U.S. has a call center operation.   Supporting their clients or customers is vital to any business so having a strong call center team is an important part of any company doing business today.  Just about all of us come into contact with a customer service or call center operation on a regular basis – whether it be checking on or paying our cellular phone bill to handling online banking.  As technology advances, strong customer service and call center teams will be an ever-growing industry.

 

Call Centers in Lancaster County and the Charlotte Region

Lancaster County is recruiting call center operations to the area but there are already more than 50 call centers in the Charlotte Region.  Several of these call centers, including Citi Financial, Wells Fargo, and Titanium Solutions are located in Fort Mill.   There are smaller call centers operating in Lancaster County including Founders Federal Credit Union, Sharonview Federal Credit Union, Humana/KMG, and Comporium.  Having the skills necessary to work in a call center environment is vital to getting a job with these companies.   That is why Lancaster County is working with the OneStop, York Tech, and the WIA to get a strong, professional, basic skills training program started here in Lancaster County.

 

For a list of call center and back office operations in the Charlotte Region click here. As you can see, there are dozens of companies in this industry located in Lancaster County or in the immediate region.  Getting the proper training can help you land a job in this industry.

 

The call center team

Call centers are typically organized in groups. Each team has a defined role in the call center to support a particular type of customer request. For example, in a call center for ordering clothing, one team may support men’s apparel while another team may support teens' or womens' clothing. Each call center is organized differently depending on the types of products or services they support.

 

Call center agents have a complete support team to assist them in their work. When difficult questions arise, most call centers have a help desk for their agents to use, or the call center provides support from the supervisors in each area. In some cases it is necessary to escalate the call to experts. If all these options fail, it may be necessary to call the customer back with the information they need.

 

Other types of teams within the call center may include the training group (for training  new hires and ongoing training of agents), the quality monitoring team (for monitoring calls for customer service and quality), human resources (for recruiting and hiring call center agents) and the work force management (for scheduling employees to match the work load).

 

A new age of technology

When call centers first began, it was not unusual to walk into a call center and hear ringing phones. When a customer called, the telephone system would ring the telephone of any agent that was not busy with another call. If more than one call was coming in at the same time, many phones could be ringing.

 

In today's modern call centers, when a customer calls they wait in line in what is called a "queue." A telephone queue is a holding place for calls until an agent becomes free to take a new call. Since most agents in call centers today wear headsets, you will not hear ringing phones. The waiting call is transferred to the agent that has been idle the longest, and all the agent hears is a tone that alerts them a call is coming through.

 

Within the call center area, usually on an electronic display board, you can see how many calls are waiting on hold and how long the longest caller has waited. This information helps the agents and managers know when to take special steps to speed up the process or to add more agents to handle calls in queue.

 

Also commonplace today in call centers is automated attendant technology (Press 1 for sales, Press 2 for ...). This technology allows customers to tell the telephone system the type of call they are placing.

 

Recall from the earlier discussion on teams that the call center is organized in groups supporting different areas. The automated attendant ensures that the customer is routed or directed to the right group to meet their needs.

 

In some companies, they have taken the automated attendant one step further. Instead of only routing calls, the automated system can help the customer directly. For example, banks have long used these automated systems to provide account information or to initiate transactions such as balance transfers.

 

In state-of-the-art call centers, you will find speech recognition technology that allows the customer to speak their request and avoid pressing buttons on their telephone

 

Covering the globe

Not all call centers are centrally located in a single building. Large companies may have many call centers located all around the world. This allows them to handle different time zones and languages. The term for this type of time-zone coverage is "follow the sun." Companies can also route calls to the call center that is the least busy thereby better utilizing their resources and shortening the wait time for customers.

 

This technology also allows companies to hire around the world. For example, you may be calling in the U.S. and have your call answered in India. In most cases, other than accent differences between regions, you may not be aware that this call was routed to an international location.

 

Call center management and technical positions

In addition to the front-line employees that work with customers, the call center offers many other jobs in both management and technical areas. Examples include:

• supervisor or team leader
• training development and delivery
• workforce scheduling
• quality monitoring or quality assurance
• business analyst (reporting and financials)
• process specialists
• human resources
• information technology
• facility design and maintenance

What do call center jobs pay?

It depends on the company and type of call center, but the wage rates for call center employees range from $9.00 per hour to as much as $18.00 or more an hour depending on the type of job and experience.   Management positions can exceed $25 per hour or more.  The more training and experience you have, the better the pay will be.  Almost all of these jobs also include health insurance and other benefits and the companies tend to be employee friendly.

 

There are more than 50 call centers in the Charlotte area and Lancaster County is working to recruit call centers locally.  The key is having the skills necessary to land a call center job from day one – so prepare yourself now and take advantage of programs and services available to you from local agencies.