What are the 3 most difficult things about working in a call center?

Here are the three biggest challenges for call centers and how you can turn them around.

Table of Contents

Employee Dissatisfaction and Agent Attrition. Stop for a moment and picture the daily life and challenges of one of your call agents.
Low Customer Satisfaction Rates.
Excessive Tools and Technology.

What is the most challenging part of being in a call center?

Call centers and contact centers are notorious for high staff turnover rates. On a daily basis, call center agents deal with stressful situations, high call volumes, and very often, emotional and frustrated customers. The repetition of work is high, and pay levels are low.

How would you handle a rude customer in a call center?

Ways to deal with rude customers

Be empathetic. The simplest way to handle rude customers involves using empathy.
Listen actively.
Chunk the issue.
Repeat what the customer has said back to them.
Stay calm and stoic.
Offer solutions.
Offer a sincere apology.
Set a time to follow up with the customer if necessary.

Why you should not work in a call center?

That’s because call center jobs are not as stable as you think it is. If the client is unhappy, if they lose money, if their customers are not satisfied, the client can give the job to another call center or they will hire their own internal staff. There’s also the risk of technology replacing call centers.

Why are call centers so stressful?

Insufficient Incentives This can be especially stressful in a call center, because the job is usually associated with low incentives, a lack of acknowledgement from their peers and a lack of intrinsic (inner) rewards. This can all lead to poor work performance, because there is no incentive to do better.

How do call center agents survive?

How to Survive (and Succeed) in a Call Center as an Introvert

Find the right call center. Not all call centers are created equal.
Plan and request time off.
It’s okay to go solo.
Fake it till you make it (yes, really).
At the end of the day, disconnect.

What makes a customer an abusive caller?

Some customers go beyond angry and become abusive. They might start the call in abusive mode, or might escalate to abusive from mere anger. Sometimes if you don’t tell them what they want to hear, they become abusive. Abusive is defined as verbally threatening, using foul language, and emotionally out of control.

How do you deal with rude agents?

How to Handle Rude Customers

Never lose your cool. Stay cool, calm, and collected, always.
Don’t take the anger personally. Remember that the client is not angry with you.
Probe the real issue.
Empathize with the customer.
Apologize politely.
Find a solution.
Unwind once the outburst stopped.

Can call centers make you depressed?

Call center representatives typically experience severe and chronic stress and have high rates of medical absenteeism, burnout, and depression. As a result, call centers have one of the highest employee attrition rates in any industry because few workers can manage our psychological and emotional assaults for long.

Can you get fired from a call center job?

Most of the time, when an agent is fired from their position, it is because they never should have been hired in the first place. They either didn’t have the prerequisite skills, weren’t a good cultural fit and didn’t have the right personality for the job.

Why do call centers micromanage?

Micromanaging often occurs because call center staff doesn’t know what to do nor how to get to where they need to be. This can be solved through weekly planning sessions, prioritizing tasks, and setting goals and deadlines. Sit down for one hour every week with your team and review what each person is doing.

Is working at a call center hard?

Working in a call center can be very demanding, but also extremely rewarding. Call center agents learn something new almost every day and are constantly being faced with different obstacles and challenges.

When will my agent disconnect a call?

Some agents will disconnect a caller just at the end of their shift (typically just after they have answered) and will tell the caller they will be placed on hold, or will simply tell the caller they need to be transferred and dump the call back in the queue.

What happens when an agent is too quick to say “thats all sorted”?

Just because an issue is routine for an agent, it doesn’t mean it is for a customer. If an agent is too quick to say “that’s all sorted, goodbye”, the customer may be left trying to crawl back through a conversation to check for understanding – just as the agent is about to disconnect the call.

Is it unprofessional to be too chatty on the phone?

Some agents confuse building rapport with being overly chatty. Unfortunately, getting too personal can come across as very unprofessional and may cause a customer to despair at how they are ever going to wrap up the call.

What are the most common problems with customer service agents?

1. Being Too Pushy About the Post-Call Survey Some contact centres tie their agent bonuses to customer survey scores. This can lead to pushy agent behaviour, as they focus too heavily on asking the customer to complete the survey, instead of focusing on the customer experience itself.