How to Become a Good Call Center Agent?

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Are you interested in pursuing a career as a call center agent, or have you already landed the role and are looking to upgrade your skills? Then, you are in the right place! We will break down everything about this role, from the skills required in daily life, and even show you tips on how to become a call center agent from home. Let’s get started!

What Is a Call Center Agent?

A call center agent is a person who offers customer support via phone. Existing customers who require information or need help solving a problem will call the helpline and connect with a call center agent. It is the agent’s job to fix the customer’s problem.

In most companies, call center agents do not deal with sales. Instead, companies typically have a separate department that focuses on selling to new clients and upgrading current customers.

What Do Call Center Agents Do?

Call center agents need to solve client problems quickly. This can be from something simple like helping a customer access their account to something more complex like teaching a client how to use a feature.

Call center agents must be able to think quickly on their feet and invent effective solutions. They also need to coordinate with other departments, including IT, to ensure technical problems get fixed quickly and also the sales department if they think a customer could be a good fit for another product.

Finally, call center agents should stay calm and professional with customers who are often stressed and angry

Another important task call center agents must do is handling customer feedback. As they speak to customers daily on the frontlines, they can quickly identify things that need to be improved with the product. This information can be extremely valuable to a company and spur new product lines.

How to Become a Call Center Agent

Do you want to know how to become a call center agent? Then follow these tips! Luckily, there has been a boom in the customer support industry thanks to the rise of e-commerce and SaaS, so landing a call agent role is easier than you think.

Get Relevant Skills Training

If you have never worked as a call center agent before, don’t worry! Many companies hire people without related experience if applicants can demonstrate they have some relevant skills. For example, if you have worked in a customer-facing role, if you have experience making numerous phone calls, are articulate, calm under pressure, and can think quickly. You can get these skills from various courses, hobbies, and roles, from working in retail to partaking in fundraising for a charity. If you show an employer you have some of the necessary skills, they will take a chance on you!

Evaluate Your Skills as You Plan Your Resume

Once you have developed the skills required to thrive in this job, it is time to evaluate them. It would be best if you were honest about your current skills. This way, you know exactly what you need to work on, providing a pathway to becoming a good call center agent.

Design a Resume With a Focus on Your Skills and Results

The next step after identifying your top skills is building a resume around these skills. In your resume, you should not only state your skills but explain how you acquired them. Provide details on how you used them and what results you achieved. You should also answer why you think these skills will help you in your new call center agent role.

Submit Applications

Get Relevant Skills Training

Once you have written the perfect resume, it is time to apply for some jobs! Applying for roles is a numbers game. You should apply for as many interesting roles as possible and match your experience and skill profile. However, don’t be too picky; it is better to apply for too many than too few jobs.

Complete an Interview

After submitting applications, HR and recruitment consultants will contact you to discuss the role. This informal interview will last about 15 minutes, and this is your chance to learn more about the job, such as salary, and introduce yourself.

You will progress to a formal interview if you pass this pre-interview stage. During the formal interview, it is important to be confident, take your time answering questions thoroughly, and radiate positive energy. However, don’t stress out; if you arrive on time, dress the part and give thoughtful and truthful answers, you should pass with flying colors! In addition, make sure you research the company and ask the interviewers some relevant questions about the firm. Also, it is good for you to formulate questions in a way that shows your expertise.

Continue Learning Hard Skills on the Job

Most call center agents learn during the job because it is a fairly unique role. So don’t stress if you feel like your skills are a little lacking. Your company will put you through a training program, and after a few weeks on the job, spending all day on the phone and helping customers will be a common thing.
Your manager will track your performance and identify areas you need to improve. For example, you may need to improve your voice tone or how you deal with emotional customers. You won’t have to wonder how to become a good call center agent, as your manager will have proven techniques to boost your skills. Managers always use special tools such as our Selmo Call Recording or Selmo Call Monitoring to improve agents' productivity.

Want to feel the full power of a predictive automatic dialer can give your outbound call center?

Typical Call Center Agent Duties

Answer and Respond to Customer Calls

The most common task inbound call center agents do is answering customer calls. When customers call the company support, they will be automatically connected by special software such as Selmo to the available agent. Your task is to identify the problem they are facing and solve it.

Follow up With Relevant Customers

Another important task is following up with customers. This can be via email, chat, or phone and involves ensuring that customers can solve their issues and that they are happy with the product or service. For example, after speaking with a customer the next day, you might send them an email recapping your previous discussion and checking that the solution you recommended is working.

Generate Customer Interest in Products

In customer service, your job is also to advocate for the company’s products. You need to get customers excited about new features and new product lines. This is not quite sales, but you need to believe in your company’s products truly, and this enthusiasm should rub off when speaking to customers.

Represent the Organization

Typically, as a call center agent, you are the first point of contact for clients. This means a client’s opinion of a company is heavily influenced by their interaction with you. If you come across as friendly, helpful, and professional, the customer will leave this interaction with a positive impression of the company and is much more likely to continue using the company’s products.

Benefits of Being a Call Center Agent

Being a call center agent is a great gig! Here are some of the benefits:

Hone your communication skills
Earn incentives
Develop transferable skills
Work in a camaraderie-based team

Working in a customer-facing role can be an extremely rewarding career. Learn more about these benefits below!

Earn Incentives

Working as a call center agent can be a lucrative career, especially if you work in a tech company with performance bonuses.

Work in a Camaraderie-Based Team

Call center agents often have a tight bond because the job can be stressful and a unique environment. It is fun to work in a team-based environment where you can ask your colleagues for pointers or laugh about crazy customers.

Develop Transferable Skills

Call center agent roles will teach you various skills you can use in other careers. You will learn how to hit targets and achieve performance-based goals. You will learn how to solve problems quickly. You will learn how to talk to customers and identify their pain points.

Hone Your Communication Skills

Communicating with people is a skill that will take you very far in life! Communication skills are critical to forming relationships, making friends, and building a career. Working in a call center will turn you into a master communicator as you need to quickly identify an issue a client is having and solve the issue while calming the customer down and making them feel at ease. You will also often have to simplify complex issues and explain them in an easily digestible way.

Qualities of Every Great Call Center Agent

It is not blind luck that certain individuals excel as call center agents and others struggle. If you want to become a top customer rep, you need these qualities:

Patience
Excellent verbal communication skills
Organization
Flexibility
Attention to detail
A friendly nature

If you actively develop these qualities, you will become a top performer before long-running your own call center team!

Patience

Dealing with hundreds of stressed-out, angry, and confused customers takes excellent patience. Sometimes getting customers to do simple tasks can be incredibly difficult. However, if you can take a deep breath and be patient, you will be ahead of your colleagues.

Excellent Verbal Communication Skills

You need to be able to clearly explain the cause of a problem and how to fix it. It is essential to simplify your instructions and keep them brief; otherwise, you will confuse the customer, and they will become frustrated.

Organization

Contacting so many customers every day can be an organizational nightmare. You need to learn how to use your company’s CRM and other software, schedule your day, use alerts, and keep a to-do list.

Flexibility

Customer support agents must be able to think on their feet and come up with multiple solutions on the fly. If one solution doesn’t work, they need to pivot to something else.

Attention to Detail

To solve problems, you need to accurately identify the issue, which involves listening closely to the customer and asking the right questions. You won’t identify the correct problem if you aren’t concentrating enough.

A Friendly Nature

Customers expect to be treated with respect and feel better when chatting with someone happy and friendly. Building rapport and having an enthusiastic voice is a big plus.

Wrapping Up

Congratulations, you have made it to the end of our guide and now know how to become a call center agent! Companies constantly need customer support agents, so you should have no problem landing a role due to the high turnover. This job is a great way to break into the corporate world and learn valuable skills that will help you in any career!