Call Center Staffing & Hiring

A call center is operated by a company whose function is to handle volume of calls for different companies. Being a centralized office handling considerable volume of calls, a call center is usually housed in an open workspace that could handle individual work stations for each call center agents. A call center’s main product is the service these call center agents deliver, needless to say that the most important staff in a call center are the call center agent themselves. The demands of the job require specific skills and since an agent is expected to handle different cases together with the different personalities of the callers, patience is a requirement. With this condition it is necessary to handle the staffing and hiring carefully.

The enormous demand for call center service is the reason for the increasing growth of the industry. However, one of the most difficult and crucial part of call center management is finding and keeping the right people for the job. This is the industry that has the highest record of turnover rates. Some estimates say that it suffers more than 50% turnover. Filling up vacancies, immediately or in a rush is not a solution to this kind of problem. Some call centers employ agencies to do the hiring for them, while some are handled by their human resource department. But since these people are going to work under the call center manager, hiring is still his primary responsibility. It is therefore imperative that a manager participate in the hiring process.

Here are few helpful guidelines in hiring that may help reduce if not avoid the large turnover rates.

• Clearly define the skills needed for the job.

Emphasize on the great need for excellent communication skills, customer service skills and sales.

• Interview and acquire evaluate overall personality.

Excellent patience and good sense of responsibility are two essential factors a call center candidate must posses.

• Involve your managers and supervisor in the process of selection.

• Make the applicant speak his mind out. Know his expectations and endeavors. Know what he thinks about an ideal call center and what would satisfy him.

• Be an excellent an effective interviewer.

It would be helpful to understand by heart every job description in your organization. This would be your guide in the process of hiring and staffing. Basically the most numbers of turn over happens in the call center agent position. So it would be best to understand the details of the job of a call center representative.

Hiring and staffing costs. Executives and contact call center managers must be able to design a program that would enhance agent loyalty. They should also look into creating plans and implementing programs that would prepare regular agents to a call center professional. This would build the moral of the agent and enhance his loyalty to the company since he would feel their concern in his professional growth. This would save a lot of expenditures in recruitment and training, lost management time, training new staff and other training programs.