What is a Call Centre Manager?
Call Centre Managers are in charge of the call centre’s employees, whom they teach, hire, supervise, and inspire. Their role is to ensure that the teams they supervise accomplish the goals of their firm and offer adequate customer service, but there is a lot that goes into this process.
Call Centre Management is a job that comprises overseeing a segment or the full operation of a call centre. It’s a hard and demanding job that requires a lot of knowledge and skill, but it usually pays well.
The Call Centre Manager job description includes a mix of analytics, team management, and man resource responsibilities. They set goals for a call centre’s daily operations and examine call centre data (such as sales rates and customer service metrics) to verify that these goals are reached. The primary aim is productivity and efficiency, and Call Centre Managers must collaborate with contact centre representatives to achieve this, offering extra help and training, or building new processes.
The individual in this capacity aims to look at the large picture and notice possible improvements as they arise as part of effective Contact Center Management. They must be able to look instinctively at their team to see possible problems before they develop because they are in charge of a company’s efficiency.
Maintaining excellent connections with their team of agents and pushing old business procedures to develop more effective methods to fulfil objectives are two prominent Contact Center Manager performance goals.
To cope with a wide range of scenarios, a good Call Centre Manager must be emotionally intelligent. They should also be an excellent leader capable of steering the staff in the appropriate path.
They should have a distinct approach and an effective call centre management method that enables them to perform their duties as a call centre team leader with the highest professionalism, composure, and efficiency.
Responsibilities
These are just some of the most common responsibilities that you may have as a Call Centre Manager:
- Hire, train, and manage a team of call centre representatives
- Work with call centre representatives to solve problems like difficult calls from angry customers
- Collect and analyse call centre statistics and adjust processes to meet or exceed goals
- Create weekly reports
- Work with other management team members to develop call centre objectives, keeping profitability and efficiency in mind
- Lead team meetings and coach and motivate team members
- Hire, onboard and train call centre personnel
- Analyse call centre data and prepare reports for upper management.
- Evaluate staff effectiveness and performance annually or on an as-needed basis
Salary
The salary for Call Centre Managers is primarily influenced by experience, sector and location.
The UK national average salary for a Call Centre Manager is £37,724, ranging from £25,000 to £56,000 per year. The average cash compensation amounts to £4,622. The average London based salary for a Call Centre Manager is £40,267, ranging from £27,000 to £60.000 per year.
Working hours and work location
Working hours can entail unsocial hours, especially early in a career. Some call centres have regular business hours, while others may be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Several centres cater to clientele from other time zones. Working extra hours or overtime at management level is typical in order for representatives of the management team to be present on a rota basis throughout the call centre’s operational hours. Call Center Managers are often employed in one of two departments: sales or customer service. In certain businesses, only one department may provide both functions.
What to expect
Call Centre Management that is effective results in happier customers, more productive workers, and clear communication techniques that speed up the resolution process. With consumer expectations greater than ever before, enhancing call centre operations entails far more than simply playing pre-recorded messages or having workers read from a script. Instead, it’s about integrating good management practises with powerful call centre technology features.
A call centre operates by acting as a hub for inbound and outgoing calls relating to customer care and support, sales, product information, appointment scheduling, and other services. Call centres might be remote, cloud-based, premise-based, inbound, outbound, or a combination of the two. A contact centre’s purpose is to offer customers/leads with the information they want as fast as possible, whether by chatting with a live person or dealing with an automated IVR system.
Call centre software includes call management tools like call routing, call forwarding, call queueing, and more to guarantee that any support offered is relevant, accurate, and customised. Yet, call centre management is more than just putting in the correct technologies. It is also about controlling and maximising agent performance effectively. In actuality, Call Centre Managers have a lot on their plates: they are ultimately responsible for the organisation’s overall performance and budget, and they lay the groundwork for a call centre’s success. Call Centre Managers are required to understand the big picture and know the ins and outs of the call centre sector.
A Call Centre Manager must be prepared for everything and be able to work well under pressure. Calls come in all the time (especially at night) in a call centre, and you never know what may happen the next day. In truth, working as a Call Centre Manager is similar to riding a roller coaster: it’s a thrilling, yet ultimately rewarding ride.
Qualifications
Admission for Call Centre Managers is normally accessible to all graduates, while certain contact centres may need personnel to have specialised knowledge in an area such as financial services or information technology. The following topics may help you land a job with a specialised employer:
- Management or business
- Chemical and physical sciences
- Accounting and finance.
- IT or software engineering
- Electrical or mechanical engineering
Without a degree or HND, you can start as a contact centre operator and work your way up to a managerial position.
A variety of customer service and contact centre credentials are available. Pearson, for example, provides intermediate and advanced level BTEC Apprenticeships (QCF) in Customer Service and Contact Centre Operations.
Personal characteristics, critical abilities, and a pragmatic, common-sense approach are more likely to matter than your degree of study and topic.
Skills
Must have skills:
Some of the skills that you will have to acquire or possess in order to become a Call Centre Manager include:
- Ability to explain expectations clearly
- Short-term and long-term goal setting
- Strong understanding of current customer and employee engagement
- Flexibility in goals, products, and services offered, etc. based on changing customer base and employee feedback
- Task delegation
- Understanding of analytics and KPIs to make data-driven decisions
- The ability to identify and appreciate customers and workers
- Technical expertise of call centre software
- Workforce management and scheduling
- Ability to detect the sorts of information that should be conveyed to senior management
- Soft skills (communication, active listening, problem-solving, etc.) and the capacity to teach them to others
- Ability to offer thorough feedback to employees and supervisors
Work experience
Appropriate job experience in a call centre or customer service function will improve your chances of landing a job as a Call Centre Manager. Experience in sales and marketing, as well as general administration, is advantageous. You can get experience by working part-time or on holiday. Summer internships are also available in sectors such as sales and marketing. Experience in leading a contact centre, customer support team, or sales team is very beneficial.
Career prospects
Many graduates obtain experience in other areas of sales and marketing before advancing to the position of Call Centre Manager. Instead, they may start as operatives at a call centre and work their way up to supervisor and finally manager.
Outbound centres often have a greater personnel turnover and might provide faster advancement chances. In the field of outbound sales, perseverance and persistence may lead to quick advancement. Professional advancement may include managing larger contact centres or specialising in certain parts of call centre management. This might include: creating a call centre layout, creating a customer service emphasis, writing or analysing reports and training staff.
Call Centre Managers may even be promoted to positions where call centre management is simply one component of their responsibilities. Research managers, for example, may be in charge of organising market research programmes and data management.You might also work in training and development for other Call Centre Managers, or you could go into management consulting and specialise in advising call centres. There may be opportunities to work as a divisional manager, supervising many call centres.
Related Courses
This one-year full-time program delivered by the University of the West of Scotland will provide you the executive training you need to get your Call Centre Manager career off the ground. The London Campus is positioned in the heart of London’s financial district, giving you a unique perspective on UK business.
Students can choose from a variety of start dates for this full-time program given by the University of the West of Scotland London over the course of two years and eight months. Industry experts, guest lecturers, and seasoned professionals are available to teach students at UWS London. The nicest thing about this course is that it is held on the London Campus, in the centre of the United Kingdom.
The University of the West of Scotland teaches this program at their London Campus, so you’ll be studying at the heart of the UK’s Call Centre industry. This one-year, full-time curriculum is for students who have no prior expertise with computers or information technology. The course will help you learn much-needed IT expertise to help you prepare for a job as a Call Centre Manager.
The University of the West of Scotland in London provides a one-year foundation degree that will prepare you for undergraduate courses and lay the groundwork for a business or accounting related career. This course will introduce you to current research sources as well as practical case studies. Students will learn about important business courses while also improving their English language and study skills. With the knowledge obtained through the Business Foundation Programme, you will be well equipped to go to the undergraduate level with confidence.
