Call Center Career Change

Are you looking to make a career change? No matter which industry you are in, you likely have transferrable skills that can help you land a job with a call center. Since the barrier to entry is low, you may want to learn more about this potential career path. If you have these six […]

If you have these six characteristics, then a call center career may be what you are looking for.

1. You Have Strong Communication Skills.

Working at a call center requires excellent speaking, listening, and writing skills. You need to carefully listen to each customer and ask questions to fully understand their issue. You also must remain empathetic and explain the solution in an easily understood manner. Because this may be a customer’s first connection with the company, you want to make a great impression.

2. You Stay Organized.

Part of working at a call center involves the ability to stay organized. Your duties include checking the company knowledge database, talking notes during customer calls, and filling in call disposition codes. Other responsibilities include updating the customer relationship management (CRM) software and completing post-call paperwork. Because you may need to handle several customers at one time, you also must verify the details of each conversation to ensure their accuracy.

3. You Excel at Solving Problems in Your Previous Career.

The main reason customers contact call centers is to find a solution to their problems. Although you likely have a script to work from to handle common issues, you still have to resolve unique problems as they are presented. This requires creative thinking to help the customer while maintaining the best interests of the company.

4. You Enjoy Using Technology.

Technology plays a significant part in a job at a call center. You must be able to use Microsoft Suite and type fast enough to keep up with customer calls. You also need to learn the calling, recording, and payroll systems, and other technology.

5. You Have an Even Temperament.

Dealing with frustrated customers is a key part of working at a call center. This is why maintaining a positive, helpful attitude is required. You have to react with understanding and professionalism when customers are upset. Showing support while resolving problems is necessary for success.

6. You Are Reliable.

Working at a call center requires dependability. The job tends to be stressful and fast-paced. The hours include nights, weekends, and holidays. This means you need to be at your desk ready to work when your shift begins. Your team depends on you to help with the workflow.

Looking for a Call Center Career?

Salem Solutions can match you with employers looking for call center employees. Visit our job board today.

Jule Doran
•
Posted on
December 1, 2021

Retention in Great Resignation

Millions of employees have been quitting their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. Among the main reasons are not feeling valued at work, leaders not responding to employee feedback and low employee morale. As a result, a significant number of roles are remaining open. While this can be a depressing and scary thought, it is also […]

Odds are your call center is being impacted by The Great Resignation. If so, there are ways to reduce the impact of the high turnover environment experience nationally. If employees are leaving, especially a significant number of them, then there are opportunities for improvement for your call center. As a result, you need to determine what these opportunities are and what can be done to start improving. Start helping your call center and employees thrive with these tips!

Follow these guidelines to increase employee retention for your call center.

Develop a Strong Culture

Your company culture sets the tone for how your call center employees function. This includes how they communicate within the organization, how often they receive training, and how well they integrate their work with their lives.

Part of creating a culture that employees want to work in involves growth. You should be providing regular training, 360-degree feedback, and opportunities for career advancement. This encourages your employees to remain long-term.

Create an Employee Profile

Make a list of the qualities you are looking for in call center employees. Examples include strong communication skills, the ability to work well with others, and a good fit with company culture. These are the traits to look for when hiring. Candidates who have a significant number of these characteristics should have the most success while working at your call center.

Develop behavioral interview questions to uncover your targeted qualities. For instance, “Can you tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer? Include how you handled the situation and what your results were.” Observe the candidate’s answer to gain insight into how they react to stress and conflict.

You also should include psychology-based hiring processes to determine whether call center candidates have the traits necessary for success. For instance, you might talk about the demanding nature of the work, then use a job simulation to assess the candidate’s competency in handling a difficult situation. Or, you could ask forced-choice questions with A or B answers that require self-reflection. For instance, you may ask a candidate to share whether they A. are curious about new things or B. stay focused on the task at hand. This kind of question uncovers more honest answers than asking yes or no questions.

Illustrate Career Paths

Show clear opportunities for employees to develop a career path within your call center. This provides a goal for them to work toward and the steps to attain it. You can demonstrate how progress toward each goal is measured and feedback is provided to better attain it. Since career growth and self-improvement are important, your staff should welcome the ability to set and achieve their professional goals in line with your organization’s goals. The more motivated your employees are to reach the next level, the more likely they are to continue working for your call center.

Provide Current Technology

Effective software and proven processes are needed to help your call center employees be more productive. This includes a customer relationship management (CRM) system and the tools to communicate with other departments or management. Having the structure to perform their work helps your staff perform to the best of their ability. This can lead to higher employee engagement, productivity, and retention.

Implement Training

Provide a regular training and development schedule for your call center staff. This may include on-the-job training, reenactments, multimedia content, team building activities, or activities during company events. Increasing your employees’ knowledge and skills helps them provide more effective customer service. They can better absorb the information and apply it to their day-to-day activities.

Ongoing training also promotes personal and professional development. This leads to greater job satisfaction and career fulfillment. Happy staff members tend to remain with the organization long-term.

Reward Employee Behavior

Give positive reinforcement for the staff behaviors you would like to see more of. You may reward good behavior with gift cards, bonuses, days off, shorter work hours, food, or assignment to the shift of the employee’s choice. This increases employee morale and promotes a positive workplace.

Conduct Exit Interviews

Meet with the employees who leave your call center to talk about their experiences working there. Find out what they liked and disliked and specific ways things could be improved. Ask questions to uncover greater insight into the employee experience. Use your findings to make improvements when possible. The more satisfied your staff members are, the more likely they are to stay with your organization.

Looking to Hire Call Center Employees?

Salem Solutions has vetted candidates ready to begin working for you. Get in touch with us today.

Jule Doran
•
Posted on
November 17, 2021

Keep Call Center Information Safe: 5 Tips for Work from Home Cybersecurity

Your call center contains a substantial amount of private information. Names, phone numbers, and social security numbers are stored on personal computers and corporate servers. This is why a data breach can cause significant problems for you and your customers. When working remotely, protecting this information is even more difficult. Without hypervigilance, your call center […]

Five Tips to Keep your Call Center Information Safe from a Cyberattack.

1. Protect Your Login Pages

One way to protect information is to protect any login in pages or company portals. Call center agents typically have to access many systems in the workplace. This is why you should use a cloud service provider that offers single sign-on supported by multi-factor authentication, SCIM, SAML, or other field-tested policies. This provides access to more effective threat detection, less password fatigue, and a more productive workforce.

2. Provide Role-Based Access

Not everyone at your company needs the same levels of access. Another way to increase security at your call center is to provide different access to people in different roles. Isolate the information an agent has access to when they use company software and cloud resources. This prevents unauthorized agents from accessing confidential information. The majority of hackers use deception to manipulate people into giving out sensitive data. This is why providing agent access to private information based on need and job title limits the number of individuals who could be targeted in a cyberattack. You can gradually increase agent access as they show you can trust them and remove the access after a vulnerability is detected or the employee leaves the company.

3. Use Encryption

Encryption is another way to keep your call center safe. Encryption can prevent spoofing and man-in-the-middle attacks. Spoofing is when an email address, sender name, phone number, or website URL is disguised to convince someone they are interacting with a trusted source. These types of attacks are incredibly common. This may include an agent’s supervisor or someone they do business with. A man-in-the-middle attack is where an attacker secretly relays and potentially alters communications between two people who believe they are directly communicating with each other. These attacks let hackers snoop on data passing through the company intranet. This can provide the hackers access to a computer where they can read unencrypted files. For this reason, you need a TLS certificate and virtual private network (VPN) to secure the transit and storage of information.

4. Include Contact Center Threat Monitoring

Contact center threats are not new but managing remote threats can be all the more difficult. You need to have systems in place to keep your call center and employees safe. Remote work makes it even more challenging to monitor call center transactions and quickly respond when a threat becomes apparent. Because typically IT teams track more IP addresses and looser usage patterns than before, they may need to allow unknown IP addresses to access hardware and services. This is why cloud services and third-party tools using artificial intelligence are needed to find real-time threats. These tools can help make you and your team aware of threats before it is too late.

5. Enforce Security Policies

Make sure agents are following all guidelines and requirements for cybersecurity. This includes everything from passwords to encryption to increase data security. You also should ensure the policies are audited annually and agents are regularly trained on cybersecurity. Additionally, support your policies with the proper training. Initial training should be provided during onboarding. Additional training should be used each year as a refresher. New training is essential any time new policies are created.

Need Help Hiring Great Remote Call Center Employees? Salem Solutions Can Help!

If you need to find the right employees for your remote call center, we are here to help! We know it is not always easy to find talent. When you need to hire you need to do it quickly. As experts in call center staffing solutions, we can help you find the perfect employees for your needs. Get in touch today!

Jule Doran
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Posted on
November 10, 2021

What You Need to Know About Public Trust Security Clearance! How to Help Ease the Process

Often, applying for a job with the federal government requires a public trust security clearance. Many government call centers are currently hiring. If you want to land one of these top notch jobs, you should be aware of public trust security clearance requirements. This is the lowest level of additional background screening needed to fill certain roles. This said the process is more extensive than your typical call center job. The employment application and screening process can be lengthy. Understanding what security clearance you need and preparing the information for the application can put you ahead of other applicants.

Discover why a public trust security clearance is important and some tips to fill out the application for it when applying for a government call center job.

Importance of Security Clearance

The federal government requires a security clearance for roles involving confidential information. This includes names, addresses, birth dates, and personal identification numbers. Many government call center jobs will require this kind of clearance. To protect the privacy of the data, you must provide full disclosure about everything that is asked about on the application forms. A public trust job requires honesty, you cannot be trusted to review and hold confidential information if you begin your relationship with dishonesty. This is why failure to provide accurate information on the government documents can result in a hefty fine and/or jail. Also, your new employer will let you go if you are hired for a job and they find out you provided false information on your form.

Forms to Complete

When applying to a government call center job, you may have to fill out specific forms. One document you need to fill out for a public trust security clearance is Standard Form 85 (SF85). The lengthy application requires full disclosure about confidential information for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to review. This includes the release of medical records, financial records, marriage and divorce records, child support information, employment history, and residential history. Processing your application can take anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months. Understand that providing false information is a federal crime punishable by a fine up to $10,000, up to 5 years in prison, or both. Also, make sure you know what is in your background. By knowing what will likely come up you can be prepared for when the government looks into it.

Informing Your Employer of Your Job Search

Since public trust positions require your employment history for the past 7 years, the federal government will contact your employer. The government will ask about you, your work ethic, and your work history. This likely will require them to get in touch with your current employer. Because your employer will learn about your job search, it is best you let them know ahead of time that you are looking for a new position.

Are you looking for a government job?

Partner with Salem Solutions to find a government call center role. Visit our job board today.

Jule Doran
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Posted on
November 3, 2021

Incentivize Call Center Staff

Gamifying your call center workplace makes work feel more rewarding and fun. It drives engagement among your team and creates a culture of continuous improvement. Providing rewards for reaching key performance indicators (KPIs) encourages agents to perform their best. It also creates healthy competition that encourages creativity for solving customer problems. You gain insight into which employees are reaching specific metrics and goals and which need additional training and coaching. This lets call center agents determine how well they are doing and helps them feel more accomplished at the end of the day.

Implement any of these engagement strategies to incentivize your call center agents.

Get Creative With Training

Instead of holding traditional call center training sessions in a classroom, create a mix of videos and discussions to educate your agents. Include multiple-choice tests to determine how much your employees are understanding and retaining. Provide individual coaching in the areas that need improvement.

Reward Customer Interactions

Direct customer feedback can be used to increase your call center agents’ performance. This may include receiving a star rating from each customer after their interaction with a staff member. The feedback should include what the customer liked best about their experience and, if appropriate, suggestions for the employee to improve their performance. This can activate the reward center of each team member’s brain, motivating them to continue their great work or work to improve their performance.

Gamify Performance

Using incentives to measure agent performance makes the process feel more like fun than a monitoring system. Setting achievable performance metrics clarifies which goals your call center employees should be reaching in a set amount of time. Include rewards your staff will enjoy when reaching or exceeding their targets. Making it a competition between agents can also help gamify this process.

Use Point Redemption for Rewards

Create a point system based on the difficulty of each metric. The harder it is to achieve a metric, the more points that should be awarded. Establish prizes based on the number of points a call center agent accumulates. This may include food, a morning off, or another incentive your team will find appealing. The greater the points, the more valuable the rewards.

Target a Key Performance Indicator

Select a key performance indicator (KPI) you want your team to improve on. This may include average speed of answer, first call resolution, service level, or average handling time. Or, it could involve average hold time, percentage of calls transferred, or number of calls taken. The metric should be quickly measured by quality assurance software that tracks agents’ performance. This way, the winner can pick up their prize when their shift ends or begins the next day. Clarify for your team exactly what you will be looking for. Award a prize to the agent who performed the best on the metric. The reward may be a gourmet coffee drink, lottery tickets, a gift card, funny socks, an additional break, or other prizes your team would enjoy.

Start a Penny War

Divide your agents into teams, then give each team a bucket. Explain that coins placed in the buckets have different values. Pennies are worth one point and silver coins are worth negative points based on their value. For instance, a nickel is worth -5 points and a dime is worth -10 points. The teams can add coins to their own bucket or the competition’s buckets. At the end of the penny war, the team with the most points wins. They can select which charity receives all of the money.

Organize Call Center Olympics

Select multiple metrics that you want your agents to improve on over a set time period. Consider each metric a sport. The team member with the best score for each sport wins a medal or ribbon. Have an awards ceremony and party to celebrate the winners’ success.

Set Up Beach Party Bingo

Create a beach area with outdoor chairs and a sun umbrella. Include a tub of tennis balls labeled with a number and a bingo prize. Design a bingo card for each team member. Every time a call center agent reaches a KPI, they get to choose a bingo ball and receive the prize written on the ball. They also get to mark the number on their bingo sheet. The bingo winner receives a larger prize or perk.

Offer a Mystery Prize

Choose a unique mystery prize that your agents will not easily guess. Hide the prize or a picture of it in the call center. Choose a metric for your team to compete on for the day. Let them know that whoever performs the best on the metric will receive a clue to the prize’s location. The employee who finds the prize wins it.

Need to Add Agents to Your Call Center Team?

Salem Solutions has candidates with the skills, experience, and temperament needed to succeed in your unique environment. Reach out and request an employee today.

Jule Doran
•
Posted on
October 20, 2021

Effective Call Center Improvement Strategies to Better Your Business

Call center customer demands continue to increase in the digital age. Customers expect exceptional service when they call your agents. It is your job to help your call center agents find the tools they need to retain your customers. Strengthening the manner in which your customers are served can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. […]

Five Strategies to Improve The Effectiveness of Your Call Center

Set Standards for Service Operations

Clarify the guidelines for your agents to follow when interacting with customers. These standards should include making each customer feel welcome, quickly answering questions and resolving problems, and looking for additional up-selling opportunities. They also should involve improvement of interaction quality, the availability of information, agent behavior, and appearance. You may want to find some common customer service scenarios and effective ways to solve them, then share the information with your agents.

Personalize Each Call

Make sure agents can access relevant information when a customer calls. This includes the customer’s name, what they purchased, and what their previous engagements with the call center were like. Additionally, agents should use the customer’s name several times throughout a call. You should also teach your call center employees how to express empathy and understanding. The customer should feel valued and respected for choosing to purchase from your company.

Perform a Root Cause Analysis for Problems

Find out the real cause behind the issues being discussed. This typically involves a product, service, or policy. Then, work to resolve it as quickly as possible. Next, implement proactive measures and ideas to prevent the issue from happening again. After that, find out whether the same type of problem is happening with related service tickets. If so, repeat the process for these tickets as well. To do this all issues and solutions should be recorded and tracked.

Encourage Feedback

Ask each customer to provide constructive feedback on their experience. They may have a hard time reaching your customer service department, resolving their problem, or building a strong relationship with a customer service representative. Because a negative experience can impact your brand, you need to be aware of problems as they are reported and fix them as soon as possible.

Increase Efficiency and Productivity

The more calls your agents can handle in less time, the better. One way to accomplish this is by providing agents with better training. This may include finding instances where a group of agents needs additional coaching to better manage customers and build lasting relationships. Another way is by having agents provide dissatisfied customers with incentives and rewards. This may include a coupon for free or discounted future purchases to encourage the customer to return. A third method is by using chatbots to provide customer service and customer support. Having chatbots answer your most frequent customer questions frees up time for agent to handle other issues.

Need Transformative Call Center Talent? Salem Solutions Can Help!

The best way to improve your call center business is by hiring top call center talent. If you need help finding the perfect match for your business, please reach out!

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