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There's a wide range of jobs within the call centre industry with top earners raking in more than $200,000 a year according to one industry leader.
Gay Reed-Barrance is the regional contact centre manager for manufacturing and marketing company Amway and is the contact centre committee chair of the Telecom Users Association of New Zealand. She says there are vacancies for people at all levels across the industry - from first timers to senior managers.
And she says the days of sitting like a battery hen in a cubicle are over with many call centres offering bright open offices and some firms allowing their staff to work from home.
"I do smile when I hear people compare us to battery hens and that we just take complaints all day - that is so far from the reality of our bright colourful customer and sales-focused environment - the earnings of good staff are in the top five per cent of the nation. I know half a dozen people earning more than $200,000 a year plus benefits."
Reed-Barrance says remote call centre workers are finally taking off in New Zealand and that in America a lot of airlines and other industries don't have any contact centre staff in-house.
"They only use people who work from home and there are a lot of companies in Australia that have successfully moved to this model," she says. "We've had the technology for years in New Zealand. I know companies that have 20 or 30 remote workers. It's ideal for people who live rural and want to work from home.
"As long as the children aren't crying, the dog's not barking and their work area set up is professional then there is a huge opportunity for the industry to find dedicated reliable and responsible workers."
Reed-Barrance says some New Zealand banks use remote workers and that her own employer is about to trial it here.
Call centre work is also perfect for people who want to work part time as businesses need people on shift at different times of the day to include weekends, peak school hours, late evening and overnight. And she says there is a chronic skills shortage affecting the industry.
"There are lots of roles for customer service representatives throughout the country at the moment and the same goes for Australia," says Reed-Barrance. "People who have one to two years' experience in sales - including retail sales or have strong customer service skills in any industry - will quickly have half a dozen jobs to choose from when going to recruitment agencies. It is definitely an applicant's market."
She says people who help manage call centre staff to ensure the correct number of staff are rostered on can pick up annual salaries of around $100,000 in New Zealand with Australian firms offering up to $150,000 a year.
"These are the workforce management people who forecast the resources required to answer calls and emails and they can command a lot of money if they have good people management skills," says Reed-Barrance. "A year ago people doing this job were commanding $60,000 to $80,000 a year in New Zealand with some getting a little more.
"When you talk of managing a contact centre with 150 to 1000 seats then a good workforce manager can save a company a lot of money. Or the company can take a chance and risk spending a lot of money having the wrong level of resources available. It's an area that is critically short of candidates."
She also says there are good opportunities for migrant workers with languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean with many larger centres employing them to help callers who do not have English as a first language.
"These people are well educated, articulate, multi-lingual and are loyal," says Reed-Barrance. "There is still some bias in New Zealand. But they are a wonderful people who work hard and are prepared to do shifts that a lot of other people are reluctant to do."
She says there are two types of call centre person; inbound and outbound calling. And while outbound operators - often cold callers with something to sell - use a different skill set to those handling incoming calls, Reed-Barrance believes most people can handle both roles.
"We have trained the majority of our team to be successful at both roles. Most people believe that making outbound calls is more difficult than handling incoming calls - but I say when you make the call you are in control - you know who you are calling and why you are calling," says Reed-Barrance. "An incoming call can be about anything."
But it can be a pressurised job at the coalface with managers able to see exactly who is doing what and how many calls they handle an hour. Not only that, managers will often listen to conversations so they can offer coaching and advice to staff.
"Call centre managers can certainly measure the performance of every member of the team very accurately," says Reed-Barrance. "The technology allows us to know how many calls people took or made and how many faxes or emails they responded to.
"But over the past three to five years most of us in the industry have moved away from saying 'you must handle so many calls per hour'. Today, it is all about first call resolution - so it doesn't matter how long the call is - we try to resolve all questions and issues during one interaction with the customer.
"But there certainly is measurement and that would cover exception reporting - whereby someone who has lots of short calls or lots of long calls is identified. In these cases we would listen to their calls and see if we need to give them any coaching."
Reed-Barrance says measuring staff performance allows companies to offer praise to staff and to promote and reward them.
"We have fantastic reward recognition programmes throughout our industry," she says. "I know of one firm where the top ten sales people are going on a trip with some of their leadership team. Staff will also get bonuses - especially those in sales environments with targets to meet."
She also says working in a call centre is a good training ground for careers outside the industry.
"Every job - whether you are a plumber or an airline pilot - will need good conversational skills and the call centre industry teaches people all this. They learn all about the internet and pick up great software skills.
"If you are not a great conversationalist then you can become an industry analyst or workforce manager and travel the world doing this earning a great salary."
She says a people who get on well with others could become a team leader or a trainer. Trainers, says Reed-Barrance, are typically found in call centres with 50 or more seats.
"Call centres are big business nowadays," she says. "And most companies see us as a critical part of their customer facing operation. Many call centre managers are on the senior management team of large companies and form part of the strategic design for five, ten and twenty year planning."
Reed-Barran says call centre work is a good career with little in the way of entry barriers. It seems all one needs to succeed is the ability to listen, speak well and to have a positive can-do attitude.
*Contact Steve Hart via his website at: www.stevehart.co.nz
