How long did it take you to feel confident in call centre job

[tictokontheclock]

And if they have hybrid working options when did you feel confident to be left at home to get on with job

This largely depends on the type of call centre work you're doing. If it's 192 type calls where you're just looking some info up and relaying it you could feel confident quite quickly. Many call centre jobs are much more complicated though. Could take months to feel confident with those. Also depends if you've done call centre work before, that helps, even if it was a completely different job.

Thanks for replying. It's all new to me ( completely different direction) in a call centre for bank. I so nervous that I'll not retain any information at all lol 😂

Well I have not experienced any call centre work, but with most new jobs that I had no experience in, tha
t I felt in the swing of things at the two week mark.

I don't think you'll be expected to retain everything, certainly not at the beginning anyway.

I've done call centre work and I've trained people to do call centre work. My advice would be to take lots of notes, create checklists for your own use, get into the habit of doing things in a certain order. Learn how to control the call.

It'll all fall into place after a while. Could you arrange to talk to someone who was in your position 6 or 12 months ago? They would understand how you're feeling and could offer advice.

Lastly, sound confident even if you don't feel it.

Great advice rider!!! Taken it all on board. Note pad will be brought with me !!!

Insurance company so similar level of regulation as a bank, we had 12 weeks of training, but part of that was on the phones with customers with different products as i learned all of them.

I was hired in the middle of Covid and all training was done at home, no office time.

Current new starters have reduced down to 5 weeks but that is because they are not trained in specialist products.

So the level of training is dependant on what you have to do. It's in their interests to give you decent training - it's hard to recruit call centre staff at the moment, well any decent staff at the moment, tbh. (In Australia.)

Ex HMRC call centre, all we got was a week's training on customer service & the equipment, I hated it & only stuck it 9 months before asking for a move back to paper based work.

They usually offer really structured training with lots of repetition so that by the end of the training period you know what to do.

Main things in my experience (18 yrs in large retail call centre roles from advisor to Call Centre Manager before moving into Info security) are:

learn the call structure they want you to follow, usually something along the lines of the below and make sure you use it to structure your conversations.

• greeting
• how can I help
• confirm your understanding of the query
• deliver help
• confirm they have understood and all elements of query have been addressed
• ask if anything else
• close call

Building rapport is really important, they should teach you in the training, but things like using the callers name, mirroring their words/tone/pace, verbal nods to demonstrate you're still there and paying attention. If you have rapport with the caller, they are less likely to get wound up if you need a minute to look up an answer.

If they have a section in the training about managing different types of callers pay attention and make sure you understand and can follow the strategies. fonolo.com/blog/2020/09/9-types-of-call-center-customers-and-how-to-deal-with-them/

Use time between calls to familiarise yourself with your products. If it's retail go through the website to see what stock/ranges you have, if you have an intranet work through it systematically so you know where to find information when you need it.

Almost 14 years in a bank call centre, it used to be manageable, if you were lucky and got a decent team and a manger who wasn't a 23 year old career climber. (They are a nightmare, little management experience,) because the established agents wouldn't take the job and hassle that come with for a pension so you get "new and enthusiastic" (read target driven drivel management from someone whose entire life revolves around working and socialising within the company and usually has anout 6 months to a year experience on the phones themselves.

With the job You are told to build rapport, but do it quickly, empathise, but don't talk to much, ask them about any vulnerabilities they would like to share with you that we have no way of helping with and all within a couple of minutes. Then you get a glorious 3 second break between that call and the next one. I prefer being in the call centre as remote / homeworking can leave you very isolated, looking for support can leave you hanging while you have to rely on teams / zoom and chat boxes .

I'm currently applying for anything but a call centre job right now. Can you tell?

Just be careful on taking notes, double check its allowed. Some call centres don't allow any note taking and pens, paper and phones are banned for data protection.

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime oh no 🙈 is it really that bad? I'm extremely nervous about starting. Part of me is like, how bad can it be then I see/ hear things about call centres that make me wonder if I've done the right thing. Hopefully I can use it as a bridge to get onto something else once my foot is in the door.

In my experience it's gotten a lot worse, another poster was correct in saying taking notes etc all has to be done electronically, no paper, working from home you have to have a dedicated space that you stay in so if you have kids etc that you think you can watch at the same time it doesn't work. I always preferred the training in the centre itself with your peers for support, remote learning is hard and sometimes you don't get the full benefits of actually watching, listening and immersing yourself in the job before you're doing it yourself.

The majority of calls are from decent people who just want their end goal, when it comes to the other end of the caller spectrum having a good support network around you to share a WTF face / chat with can really help.

Call centre work is full on front facing in that it is literally take call - call ends - take call and your breaks etc are highly monitored as is any time you take away (toilet breaks etc.) Management punch down in these jobs the focus is very much on how many calls you take, how long you take, how much time away from your calls you have. There's a lot of lip service about things like mental health but again that depends on the support you get from your team and manager, I have had some fantastic ones but they tend to be veterans themselves who understand.

@tictokontheclock I liked working in call centres and was able to progress well.

There are elements of any job that you won't like and it is a job that's tightly controlled in terms of things like breaks because they have targets around answering calls quickly and need people to be available to take those calls when they come in.

I started at 17 doing telemarketing, moved through a few customer service teams, became a team leader at 22, floor manager, quality and training manager, customer service manager, call centre overall manager. Then moved into IT Service Delivery management, Governance, Risk and Compliance and am now Director of Info Sec, Governance, Risk & Compliance.

Opportunities are available as long as you ask for them and take them when they're presented.

Hey,

I wondered how your getting on. Ive just started a new call center job and the nerves are huge!