What does call centre training involve?

[mallowmillymandy]

I'm debating whether or not to take on a call centre job for a bank. Everyone tells me job centre jobs are utterly horrendous and not to even be remotely considered. However the hours will work better for me as I have young twins who are in primary school and it will mean I can pick them up from school. Surely there is lots of training and support? I can't imagine in this age any job could be THAT bad

I've worked in 2 call centres. Training was good in both. Support was great in one and shit in the other. One job I hated and was awful, the other was OK. It is knackering though, the calls are relentless. People can be arseholes too.
Some places you can start off in the call centre and it gives you a foot in the door for other jobs. Thats what happened to me with my second job, I got off the phones after 18 months or so.

When I started it was 2 weeks of classroom training, then a week of call listening, followed by however many weeks of mentoring where I took the calls with someone sitting next to me. Then in "gradbay" where 1 mentor is shared between the trainees until they are all signed off.

Nowadays our training is 2 weeks intense classroom training and straight on the phones being thrown to the wolves because it is so busy they just want people answering the phones regardless of if they are fully competent.

I work for a bank as well so if the call centre is anything like mine it will be horrifically busy and (sorry to say) a little soul destroying. Most of the new starters we have had over the last year have already left.

It CAN be a good stepping stone to other things though, I finally got out the call centre after years and switched to a different team doing admin off the phone and I much prefer it. There are lots of different avenues you can take so the call centre is a good place to start.

Give it a go. I used to work for an energy company call centre, and it was fine. We were timed on our calls, and given targets based on those timings, but they were achievable. I now work in telecoms and train call centre staff, and the process is pretty robust. Customer facing staff need to be solid in their skills before taking calls, but once they're on the floor they have support during calls if needed. And yes, opportunities to move roles exist once you've been there a while. You'll get rude people on the phone, but not always - and I took it as a point of pride to talk down an irritable customer, so it didn't bother me at all.

Why not give it a shot and decide for yourself?

Oh thank you both so much. I'm incredibly nervous and worried that I'm doing the wrong thing. Apparently where I'm going the training is 3 mths and it's "supposed" to have lots of support. The training manager phoned me and he seemed lovely and said there's always plenty of help. I just hope it's a good fit for me.
What kind of calls do you take?

Transfer money?
Fraud?

You've got nothing to lose! If the hours are good for your family, just jump in and dedicate yourself to the task of learning new information and skills, you'll get there.

One of our facilitators just today told me about a chap in his 50s who started in call centre work a while back, he used to be a professional dancer! He's now a top performer in his team, but he was very nervous to start with - but he just kept at it. Practice and determination make all the difference.