If you like working with people and thrive in a fast-paced environment, then a job as a call center agent might be perfect for you. Call center agents do many things, like taking customer orders, processing payments, answering support calls, and resolving complaints.

It’s an important role in any company and a great starting point for a customer service career.

Which Call Center Fits Your Personality?

There are different types of call centers, each with its own unique characteristics. The perfect one for you depends on your personality, skills, and career interests.

Inbound Call Centers

This type of call center answers customer calls, usually to answer questions or address concerns related to the company’s products or services. Inbound call center agents offer help and provide solutions.

This is the ideal role for anyone who enjoys working with and helping customers. Patience, creative thinking, problem solving, and active listening skills are essential traits for agents in inbound call centers.

Outbound Call Centers

In an outbound call center, agents are proactively calling customers, leads, and prospects. These calls often involve selling products or services, soliciting customer feedback, doing outreach to prospects, and managing customer billing accounts.

Agents in this type of call center have a sales-focused mindset. Confidence, an outgoing demeanor, and persuasive communication skills are critical for success.

Blended Call Centers

Blended call centers consolidate aspects of both inbound and outbound call centers into one team. Agents in this type of mixed call center answer incoming calls and also do proactive outreach.

The right agent for this type of call center possesses a mix of customer service and sales skills. Organization, the ability to quickly pivot from one topic to another, and maintaining focus are important traits for anyone working in this type of environment.

Offshore Call Centers

Call centers located in a geographical location different from the company can be a smart business decision. Offshore call centers allow for 24/7 customer service and multilingual support, which may be important for companies operating in diverse global markets.

Agents in this type of call center usually speak multiple languages, including proficient English. An understanding of cultural differences, clear communication skills, and a customer-centric focus are required to thrive as an agent in this environment.

A Day In the Life: What Call Center Agents Actually Do

Inbound Call Centers

What an agent working in an inbound call center does on a day-to-day basis will vary by company. But there are common activities agents should expect to perform.

Answer Product or Service Inquiries: Agents must promptly and professionally answer customer calls and provide exemplary customer service. A deep understanding of the company’s products is essential to quickly and efficiently resolve customer inquiries. When your product knowledge and customer service skills are on point, you position yourself to be seen as a call center leader.

Resolve Complaints: Agents must quickly identify customer issues and offer effective solutions. Empathy and excellent listening skills are essential to ensure customers feel heard and respected. Deftly handling difficult customers demonstrates your ability to manage stressful situations effectively. These are all skills needed for future management roles.

Provide Technical Support: Agents are often required to help troubleshoot customer issues with the company’s products. This requires a thorough understanding of the most common problems customers call about, as well as knowing the correct solutions for each. The more you know about what the company sells and how it works, the more valuable you become to the team. This is what management is looking for when considering which agents will be effective team leads and mentors to other agents.

Maintain Records: Agents are not only responsible for fielding phone calls, but also documenting the details of each call. Keyboard proficiency and the ability to understand and navigate call center software is important. Diligence in this regard shows your attention to detail, a key skill required for career growth.

Follow Scripts: Agents are usually required to follow scripts when managing incoming calls. This is important to ensure consistent customer service, no matter which agent a customer speaks to. Once you master this skill, you’re able to offer suggestions for script improvement and demonstrate to upper management that you’re a critical thinker and willing to go the extra mile to improve the customer experience.

Upsell: Agents will sometimes be expected to offer additional products or services to customers during a call. Being comfortable with sales and having a positive attitude towards this type of outreach is important. If you’re good at it, your performance metrics will increase and you’ll be rewarded for increased sales, potentially with bonuses, promotions, or both.

Participate in Continuous Training: Agents are usually provided opportunities to build their skills and knowledge through courses and educational materials. A willingness to embrace these opportunities is essential. As your knowledge and skills grow, you demonstrate commitment and position yourself for promotions within the call center and beyond.

Outbound Call Centers

Agents working in outbound call centers can expect to perform many of these tasks each day, depending on the company’s business model.

Make Sales Calls: Agents are often expected to do cold outreach, often referred to as telemarketing. Agents who are good at persuasion and understand sales techniques and customer psychology are the most successful. When you close a lot of sales, management notices and promotions quickly follow.

Contact Leads and Prospects: Sales leads can come from many sources, but leads don’t equal a customer who is ready to buy. Outbound call center agents play an important role in nurturing these relationships in the early days and moving customers along the sales funnel. The most successful agents are great at pinpointing people’s needs and building relationships.

Solicit Customer Feedback: Understanding how customers feel about a company’s products or services is an important part of continuous improvement for any company. Call center agents are the front line of customer outreach to get this information. Being personable and a good listener are essential to succeed in this role.

Manage Customer Accounts: Whether it’s following up on customer inquiries, proactively managing outstanding accounts receivable, or alerting customers to potential fraud issues impacting their accounts, outbound call center agents will be talking to customers daily about sensitive topics. A friendly demeanor, patience, and diplomacy are essential skills needed for successfully making these calls.

Follow a Script: Just like their inbound call center counterparts, outbound call center agents will usually be provided a script to follow when making calls. This ensures a consistent customer experience across the entire agent team. Your ability to “stick to the script” is important to your success and growth in the call center and beyond.

Document Activities: Recording the details of your interactions with customers, prospects, and leads is part of the day-to-day responsibilities of every outbound call center agent. Usually this information goes straight into the company’s CRM software. Attention to detail and clear communication skills are both critical to performing this task well.

Blended Call Centers

When a company chooses to blend both inbound and outbound activities into one call center, the agents that work there will perform a mix of daily activities.

Answer Incoming Calls: Agents will field a variety of calls from customers, from questions about missing orders and concerns about items received to technical support requests and billing inquiries. The ability to pivot quickly, depending on the type of call received, is essential.

Outreach to Existing and Future Customers: Agents will call customers for many reasons. From soliciting feedback on their experience with the company’s products to chasing late payments to building relationships with leads and prospects, agents must be positive, outgoing, and have thick skin. When you’re good at these activities, you help the company’s bottom line.

Make Sales Calls: Telemarketing is a part of many blended call centers, and agents will be expected to close a quota of deals each day, week, or month. The ability to persuade someone over the phone, effectively address objections, and build rapport are essential to success. When you succeed, you catch the eye of management and are poised for career growth.

Follow Up on Leads and Prospects: Agents will often be called on to work through lists of leads to begin building relationships. Agents are often responsible for gaining agreement to schedule calls or visits on behalf of the sales team, too. A positive attitude, ability to actively listen, and deep knowledge of product specs and benefits is important.

Enter Data Into a Customer Relationship Management Tool: Every contact an agent has with a customer, lead, or prospect should be documented in the company’s CRM tool. This makes that information available to everyone else at the company. Good keyboarding skills, attention to detail, and a basic level of technical proficiency is crucial.

Follow a Script: Agents will be provided scripts for each type of call they make or receive. Closely following these scripts ensures that customers get the same experience and information no matter which agent they speak with. Going off script can have a detrimental impact on the company. Agents that can follow directions and still maintain a conversational tone will do well.

Offshore Call Centers

Offshore call center agents have similar daily tasks to their onshore counterparts. But their location means their day-to-day tasks have a unique flavor.

Answer Incoming Calls: This is the majority of an offshore agent’s daily work. Agents will be responsible for answering questions, solving problems, and escalating issues, as required. Since the calls are likely coming from a different geographical location, offshore agents must be ready to switch languages as needed. Flexibility and adaptability are key.

Keep Good Records: Since the call center is not physically located at the company, it’s important for offshore agents to properly document all their calls. Mastery of the company’s CRM is critical, as is accurate and thorough data entry skills and technical proficiency.

Real-time Problem Solving: Agents at remote locations are often in different time zones from the company. This means there isn’t usually a live resource to reach out to when an agent has a question. Offshore agents must thoroughly understand every product or service the company offers and have a solid grasp on company procedures. These agents are the first, and sometimes only, line of defense for customer satisfaction.

Follow a Script: When agents are remote, usually in locations with cultural and language differences from the company and its customers, adhering to a prepared script becomes even more important. Detailed scripts help agents overcome language nuances and ensure an error-free conversation.

The Pros and Cons of Working in a Call Center

Like any job, being a call center agent has its great parts and challenging moments.

Pros of a Call Center Job

  • Transferable skills: Problem solving and communication skills are honed when you’re a call center agent. These are skills that will help you in all your future career roles.
  • Promotion opportunities: Entry-level agent jobs can lead to quick promotions for motivated employees ready to master the basics and become great call center agents.
  • Remote work: Many call centers are virtual, meaning agents can work from almost anywhere.
  • Diverse work days: Even if the type of calls you field are similar, every customer is unique and provides a different spin for you to manage.
  • Commissions and other compensation: High-performing agents, especially those in sales roles, can earn commissions and other bonuses that boost overall pay.

Cons of a Call Center Job

  • Burnout: Call centers are fast-paced environments, and managing customer expectations day in and day out can wear down even the most tenacious agent.
  • High turnover: Due to the entry-level nature of the role, many agents find out it isn’t the job for them and move on.
  • Repetitive work: Agents make or answer calls throughout their shift, then document that work, which can quickly become routine and boring.
  • Stress: Dealing with irate clients or meeting high call volume requirements can cause stress for even the most relaxed agent.
  • Unusual working hours : For call centers that operate 24/7, agents are expected to work shifts beyond the typical 9-to-5.

Call Center Agent Growth Opportunities

Call centers are dynamic environments. This means you don’t have to stay an agent forever. There are many opportunities for growth. Agents who master specific skills can get promoted quickly.

Team Lead

This role manages a team of agents. It is the first step up from an entry-level agent role. Team leads do many things, like conducting daily team meetings, monitoring calls to provide agent feedback, taking difficult calls that agents cannot resolve, preparing reports that show agent performance against key performance indicators, and supporting agents in other ways.

To be successful in this role, you must be a good communicator, motivator, and problem-solver. The agents on your team will look to you as a role model, mentor, and coach. Salaries for this role range from $40,000 to $65,000 per year.

Call Center Manager

After team lead, the next step up is call center manager. This role oversees the team leads and agents and has general responsibility for call center operations. This role will provide coaching, resolve day-to-day issues, work cross-functionally with other department managers, ensure call center policies and procedures are followed, monitor performance, and prepare reports for senior managers.

This role requires you to be a people person, since you must engage and work with not just your team of leads and agents but also managers and executives across the organization. You’ll also need excellent organization skills and the ability to understand call center metrics, crunch the numbers, and produce reports for executives. Annual salaries for this role average between $65,000 to $107,000.

Quality Analyst

This role is responsible for ensuring that all methods of customer interaction—phone calls, emails, live chats, and other communication channels—adhere to company standards. The quality analyst implements and manages a quality assurance program that monitors all communication channels. This role will also assess agent performance, design evaluation programs, develop and implement quality score metrics to measure individual and team performance, and arrange training opportunities.

Excellent communication and analytical skills are essential in this role. You also need to be very well organized and able to quickly identify issues and trends that are impacting call center performance. The salary range for this role is between $50,000 to $80,000 per year.

Chief Experience Officer (CXO)

If you have aspirations to ascend to the executive suite, the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) is the apex of customer service. This senior role is responsible for envisioning and implementing a company’s overall customer experience strategy. The goal is to deliver a consistent and positive experience to customers at every touchpoint of their journey.

This role requires someone with advanced strategic thinking skills, as well as leadership qualities and the ability to make data-driven decisions. Average salaries for this C-level position are $130,000 to $250,000 per year.