Call and contact centres

All of us use call and contact centres – often on a daily basis. Phoning a bank, insurance company or major retailer, or receiving a survey, a suggestion that yet another satellite TV subscription channel would offer untold delights, or even a credit card statement probably involves such a centre. They can operate 24/7, and handle anything from a request for an account statement to a highly complex financial software problem.

Call and contact centres are big business, and the difference between them is simply that agents (workers) in call centres just work using telephones, while those in contact centres manage all forms of communication. Both operate either in-house for a large company or as a separate, outsourced (sub-contracted) function. In either case, the agents are the first point of contact between the organisation and the public, with the latter either making general enquiries or specific ones relating to some product or service provided by the organisation.

There are very few centres that just use telephones because it is now imperative for them to handle all forms of communication and to deal with clients through whatever medium they have selected. Numbers of call and contact centres in the UK are set to rise to 8,000 by the end of 2005. The industry employs more than 850,000 people (over 3 per cent of the working population) and is still growing. More than 3 million calls are made daily to centres during office hours.

Annual staff turnover can approach 50 per cent and this costs the industry over £1 billion each year. Over half the workforce are female, over half are under 34 years of age, and over 70 per cent are in full-time employment. The vast majority (83 per cent) deal with customers; 35 per cent of the workforce are in the north of England, 21 per cent in the Midlands/eastern England, 21 per cent in Wales/the south-west, 19 per cent in the south-east/London, and only 4 per cent in Scotland.

Clearly, the technology running these centres is complex and sophisticated. All relevant records from all sources must be available to the agent dealing with a customer. The agent has to be aware of previous phone calls, faxes, e-mails and the like, and to be able to refer to them, as well as details of the problem or enquiry. These details must be displayed accurately, and in a form that is easy to understand.

Contact centres in the Services

There are no contact centres in the Services, although many people become involved in dealing with enquiries, answering phone calls, letter, faxes and e-mails, and even managing websites. However, doing this uninterrupted for a full working day is a little different, as is the technology employed in centres and the self-disciplined responses required from agents. Not everyone can ‘deliver 180 seconds of bubbly personality 120 times a day, particularly around the peak 10am time slot.’

Many of the management skills involved in running a centre or a section within one will be familiar to the Service leaver. Indeed many of the attributes needed to work in this employment area may be found in Service clerical and signals specialists. Formal sales training can help because much contact centre work involves sales techniques, and Service leavers should recognise this as an expanding field of opportunity.

Employment

Contact centres operate all over the world and it is not uncommon for a British consumer talking with a British company actually to be telephoning somewhere in mainland Europe … or the USA … or India. Centres can be established anywhere that can provide the necessary communications infrastructure, workforce, technological support and reliability. Employers can take advantage of relatively high unemployment and government grants when they establish their operations. The UK currently has 37 per cent of Europe’s contact centres but competition threatens this position in the market.

The main jobs in the contact centre industry include:

• customer services adviser
• customer services team leader
• sales adviser
• sales team leader
• product specialist
• scheduling/resource manager
• operations/contact centre manager.

Contact centre working conditions have improved immensely, and the human resources field is now taken very seriously, despite high staff turnover. These days, agents may deal with finance, travel, hospitality, banking, marketing and retail using the telephone, Internet, e-mail, SMS messaging, fax and post.

Large companies will have their own operations – controlled and managed by their own employees and with agents dealing solely with their own products or services. Becoming employed by them will follow a similar route to becoming employed in any other capacity.

Other centres are operated by specialist companies. In these operations, agents may represent several different organisations, depending on the contract between the centre and the organisation hiring its services.

Some centre operations support the major activity of the organisation; in others, like catalogue sales, football pools, holidays and airline ticketing, the centre is the way that the business reaches its public. In any case, agents are likely to be critical points of contact for the business, so they act as representatives and must behave accordingly.

There is concern about stress and monotony working in this industry, but the same legislation on issues like Health & Safety applies as in any other working environment. However, the combined effect of using desk, screen, voice, headset and mouse under pressure is still perhaps not fully appreciated and not well understood.

Agents may work on inbound or outbound calling, or both (which is called blending). They deal with anything from the stupid to the expert and need resilience and a sense of humour. Some centres will have a fairly constant volume of activity; others experience dramatic peaks and troughs, involving rapid employment of temporary staff.

Training and qualifications

People skills and basic skills are important, with recruits expected to demonstrate the following.

• Communication skills:
• Technology skills:
• Professional skills:
• Personal aptitudes:

The Call Centre Management Association (CCMA) represents contact centre managers and supervisors, or independent consultants engaged in call centre planning, implementation or training. Its function is ‘to promote the profession of call centre management; to contribute to the continuous professional development of call centre managers and supervisors, and to assist in sourcing high-quality training courses’.

The Call Centre Association (CCA) represents:

• companies operating contact centres
• organisations involved in the industry’s development
• public-sector bodies with an interest in the industry.

As well as accrediting in-house training schemes, it supports a wide range of industry training courses at the following levels:

• Pre Employment for Non-Contact Centre Workers
• Agent Level Contact Centre Employees
• Team Leader Level Contact Centre Employees
• Manager.

e-skills UK is the e-skills Sector Skills Council for people involved in electronic business. Through its Call2Contact business unit it is developing National Occupational Standards as part of a career and skills framework. These standards have already generated the following NVQs:

• Call Handling Operations Level 2
• Call Handling Operations Level 3
• Supervising Call Handling Level 3
• Managing Call Handling Level 4.

The first three of these NVQs also form part of Modern Apprenticeships in Call Handling at Foundation and Advanced levels respectively (soon to be Apprenticeships at Advanced and Apprentice level).

The Institute of Customer Service has developed both an Advanced and Foundation Modern Apprenticeship in Customer Service (soon to be Apprenticeships at Advanced and Apprentice level). They include Core Skills and units taken from a variety of other NVQs, including its own NVQ/SVQ in Customer Service, available at Levels 2, 3 and 4 – although the latter is not part of the Modern Apprenticeship system.

The Direct Marketing Association is a trade organisation representing direct marketing employers’ interests, with telemarketing being one of these areas. It is not a provider of qualifications, but its code of conduct makes it likely that its members adhere to at least the minimum standards expected in the industry.

Contact details

Call Centre Management Association Tel: 01293 538400 Website: www.ccma.org.uk

Call Centre Association, 20 Newton Place, Glasgow G3 7PY Tel: 0141 564 9010 Fax: 0141 564 9011 Website: www.cca.org.uk

e-skills UK Call2Contact, 1 Castle Lane, London SW1E 6DR Tel: 0207 963 8920 Fax: 0207 592 9138 Website: www.e-skills.com

Institute of Customer Service, 2 Castle Court, St Peter’s Street, Colchester, Essex CO1 1EW Tel: 01206 571716 Fax: 01206 546688 Website: www.instituteofcustomerservice.com

Direct Marketing Association, DMA House, 70 Margaret Street, London W1W 8SS Tel: 020 7291 3300 Fax: 020 7323 4426 Website: www.dma.org.uk