5 Tips for Working at a Call Center

Finnegan Pierson

Working in a call center is an important job, but it is not always easy. You can easily get frustrated and burn out before you can move up in a call center job, so it is important to keep some handy tips in mind for work. You will want to have reliable transportation, take notes and stay organized as well as not take work home with you and develop an understanding of your customers.

Have Reliable Transportation

Having reliable transportation is not just a good tip for working in a call center, it is a must for many types of jobs. Whether you buy your own vehicle, find a reliable carpool at work or use public transportation, you need a way to get to work in order to keep the job. When looking into buying your own vehicle, sedans are a good way to go. This is because the vehicle type has a higher safety rating than many others, gets good fuel mileage and has enough seats to start your own carpool group.

Take Notes

It is a good idea to keep a notebook with you at work during and beyond the training period. This can help you keep track of important information and be a handy guide to look back on when you get stuck. Many call centers will have software designed to help you take notes while on the phone with customers and allow other members of your team to see it and respond in real time. This can help avoid having to pass the call up the pipeline to a manager for questions you do not understand. Taking notes can also help you be more personable because you can make a note of the name of the customer and use it during the call.

Keep Work at Work

Burnout among customer service personnel can be higher than in other industries and many call centers can see a high turn-around in employees because of this. One of the best ways to keep your stress level low is to leave your work at work. This means not spending your time at home obsessing over a stressful call or talking to your friends on the phone for hours. It also means having a healthy hobby to keep your mind off work and not answering any business emails at home. Being able to leave it all behind and curl up with a good book takes practice, but it can help keep your home from filling up with the stress from work.

Understand Customers

Understanding customers is about a lot more than speaking the same language. It is important to realize that many of the people who call in to your center are frustrated and just want something fixed. While this is not always something that you can do, when you do get frustrated back at them it can lead to an escalation and a bad call. The key is to be patient and active listener, take notes of key pieces of information such as what solutions the customer has tried and any relevant dates, and ask to transfer the customer to a specialist if you are not able to help.

Stay Organized

The better organized you are, the better you can help your customers. This means taking your time to understand all of the company policies, the software and hardware you use and the common problems customers face. Keeping your training notes close by and updating them when you learn new information can be a good first step in keeping organized.

Working at a call center can be a difficult job with high turn-around rates for employees. This is because you are dealing with customers who will usually only call in when they need help or have a frustrating problem. To help keep yourself focused, organized and patient it is important to know how to keep the stress of the job from following you home, how to take and keep good notes and much more. When you have reliable transportation, good organization and a solid understanding of customers, you can go far.