What Are the Typical Positions in a Call Centre?

Within a call centre there are common roles, responsibilities, and positions,
including the Call Centre Manager, Team Leaders and Agents.

There are also other call centre job titles, such as the Customer Service
Director, Resource Planning Analysts and Quality Analysts, all of whom play a
vital role in helping the contact centre meet its targets.

A full list of typical call centre positions is provided below:

Call Centre Agent

Team Leader
Call Centre Manager
Customer Services Director
Resource Planning Analyst
Quality Analyst
Head of the Call Centre
Digital Contact Director
Operations Manager
Chief Customer Officer
Customer Experience Officer (CXO)
Human Resources (HR)
Trainer
Coach

Call Centre Agent

A Call Centre Agent can be known by various titles, depending on the
responsibilities of their position within the call centre, these titles include:

Customer Service Representative

Customer Support Specialist
Sales Advisor

An Example Job Description for a Call Centre Agent

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Call Centre Agent is generally expected to solve queries when a customer

phones into a contact centre.

However, an Agent may also contact customers themselves, maybe for

customer research purposes or perhaps to sell them something.

In addition to phone calls, Agents often communicate with customers via email,
live chat or post – or “snail mail”, as it’s Agents often
frequently referred to. communicate with
customers via email, live
Agents are often referred to by other
chat or post.
names, including Agents, Customer Service
Representatives and Associates – so if you
are interested in becoming a Call Centre Agent, make sure you look out for job
descriptions with these titles too.

If you work as a Call Centre Agent, your day-to-day activities may include:

Managing large amounts of calls in a timely and effective manner

Identifying customer needs
Researching customer problems
Providing the right solutions to customers
Keeping records of all customer conversations on the call centre
database
And meeting targets in terms of quality of conversations

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

Following communication scripts

Managing social media and third-party review sites
Taking opportunities to upsell to customers
Conducting customer research
Attending training sessions to continuously improve knowledge and
performance

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Agent are:
 1.Good communication skills, especially listening, as that will allow you to
ask better, more relevant, questions of customers.
2.Empathy is important as you may be handling contacts from customers
in difficult situations, so having natural empathy makes it much easier to
build rapport with these customers.
3.An ability to multitask will prove vital, as you will have to switch
between multiple systems while helping customers and also switch
channels frequently – from the phone to email, for example.

Other skills that make up a good Call Centre Agent include problem-solving,
collaboration, patience, tech-savviness and the ability to socialize well.

Experience Required
A background in a customer service environment will be very desirable, and
this doesn’t have to be in a call centre environment. You may also need GCSE
passes in Maths and English.

If you are from the US, you may need a minimum of a high school diploma.

Call Centre Team Leader

An Example Job Description for a Call Centre Team

Leader

Purpose and Responsibilities

A call centre Team Leader has the responsibility of managing a team of Call
Centre Agents. The numbers usually range between eight and twelve.

If you work as a call centre Team Leader, your day-to-day activities may include:

Having “morning huddles” to make sure that your team know what their
objectives are for the day
Call listening and giving feedback to Agents on how they can improve
Taking call escalations and looking out over your team for when an
Agent may need help
Ongoing coaching and development of your team
Monitoring and driving individual and team performance, usually against
a set of key performance indicators (KPIs)
 Preparing reports for your Line Manager on performance against these
KPIs
Ongoing motivation of your team to ensure a positive mindset and
customer-focused attitude remains throughout
Identifying and addressing any people issues, and being a pillar of
support for your team members

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

Training your team members to identify cross-sell and upsell

opportunities
Contribute to overall customer experience by promoting awareness of
any company-wide customer experience initiative
Make best use of resource by effective resource planning

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Team Leader
are:

1.Good interpersonal skills are essential as these will help the Team
Leader to motivate Agents and feedback in a positive, constructive way
that will encourage performance improvement.
2.Being accountable and responsible for your team’s performance. You
are all in this together.
3.Being organized and numbers-driven is important because you will
have accountability of your team achieving certain performance levels
and will have to provide reports to senior management.

Other skills that contact centres will look for in terms of a call centre Team
Leader include being customer focused, employee focused and having a good
understanding of basic HR guidelines.

Experience Required

Team Leader positions will normally require people with management

experience in a contact centre environment.
Experience in a contact centre environment may be more important than
qualifications once we get to this level of role.

Additional Information

How a Team Leader spends their time will vary greatly from one contact centre
to another. While this mostly comes down to culture, it also comes down to the
size of the team they’re leading.

Call Centre Manager

An Example Job Description for a Call Centre

Manager

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Call Centre Manager has the responsibility of managing a group of Team

Leaders, who then have teams of Agents reporting to them.

If you work as a call centre Call Centre Manager, your day-to-day activities may
include:

Having meetings with your Team Leaders to make sure that objectives
for the day are communicated and understood
Having 1-2-1s with your Team Leaders to discuss any day-to-day issues,
and providing support as necessary
Ongoing coaching and Learning & Development of your team
Working cross functionally with other department leaders to ensure that
the objectives of the business are being met and outcomes are being
delivered
Monitoring and driving performance across your operation, and
preparing relevant reports for senior management
Translating the businesses short, medium and long strategy into
deliverable objectives for your Team Leaders
Identifying and addressing people issues, and usually having
responsibility of adhering to HR processes
You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

Depending on the size of the business and your operation, you may take
escalated calls from complex customer queries
Manage any third-party relationships
Have responsibility for effective resource planning

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Manager are:

1.Great interpersonal skills are essential to be able to engage with your

teams and stakeholders effectively.
2.Being accountable and responsible for your operations performance
and that the desired business outcomes are being achieved.
3.Being very well organized and numbers driven is important because
you will have a lot of data to collate and utilize in order to get the best out
of your teams. You will have multiple workflows open at the same time
across different parts of your operation.

Other skills that contact centres may look for in terms of a Call Centre Manager
include being people focused, performance driven, and having a solid
understanding of basic HR guidelines.

Find more skills that recruiters look for in a Manager in our article: 10 Essential
Skills for Every Contact Centre Manager

Experience Required

Contact Centre Manager positions will normally require people who have
experience of managing Leaders in a contact centre environment.

The relevant experience in a contact centre environment may be more

important than qualifications for this level of role.
Customer Service Director

An Example Job Description for a Customer Service

Director

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Customer Service Director has the responsibility for defining the strategy for
a customer service operation, and then creating a shared vision to enable the
effective delivery of that strategy.

If you work as a Customer Service Director, your day-to-day activities may

include:

Regular meetings with the senior leadership team to ensure that any
upcoming news, events and changes are pre-empted and managed
accordingly across the business
Having ownership of the service function and monitoring daily, weekly,
monthly and annual reports
Ensuring that all of your direct reports have the required information
and support to be able to do their roles effectively
Ongoing coaching and development of your management structure
Working cross-functionally with other business areas to keep up to date
with anything that may impact service levels
Preparing reports for the Board on service levels, and profit and loss of
the function
Being an inspiring leader and visible at all levels, promoting a culture of
people and customer first
Identifying any performance issues and coaching needs

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

Responsibility for a Voice of the Customer (VoC) programme and

improving the end-to-end customer experience by engaging with and
influencing peers across other business functions
Creating employee engagement strategies and devising metrics
Achieving cross-sell and upsell objectives and changing and adapting
these in line with business requirements
Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Customer Service
Director are:

1.Great leadership skills. You will inspire and lead a team who are
servicing your businesses customers. An engaged workforce is key.
2.Being accountable and responsible for your function’s performance.
You may have or profit and loss responsibility and experience and
certainly be commercially focused.
3.Being credible at Board level and able to influence change for the better
of the customer service function and the wider business.

Other skills that contact centres will look for in terms of a Customer Service
Director include being people focused, driven, emotionally aware and resilient.

Experience Required

A Customer Service Director role will almost definitely require a proven track
record of delivering results at a senior level within a desirable business or
industry, having achieved similar outcomes that the new business is looking to
achieve.

Resource Planning Analyst

An Example Job Description for a Resource Planning

Analyst

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Resource Planning Analyst’s role within a call centre is to make sure that the
right people are in the right place at the right time.

If you work as a Resource Planning Analyst, your day-to-day activities may

include:

Producing long- and short-term forecasts of call demands and volumes

 Producing and updating schedules for call centre employees so that they
know where they need to be, and at what time
Coordinating of real-time activities to ensure appropriate Agent
coverage
Producing reports to show overall contact centre performance

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

Managing direct reports

Conducting daily, weekly and monthly planning meetings with
operational leaders
Keeping everybody up to date with any upcoming plans or challenges or
risks to service levels
Floor walking to ensure that people are in the right place and doing what
they are meant to be doing

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Resource Planning
Analyst are:

1.Experience with Excel or a workforce planning tool of some description

and a good administrator.
2.An awareness of potential causes and impacts on day-to-day service
levels.
3.Good stakeholder management skills to ensure that effective planning
is delivered correctly.

Other skills that make up a good quality Resource Planning Analyst include
problem-solving, collaboration, being technology savvy, and able to
communicate well at all levels.

Experience Required

A background in customer service and contact centres is desired for this sort of
role, and Resource Planning Analysts have often previously worked on the
phones as call centre Agents.
Advanced Excel training and qualifications in mathematics or statistical-related
subjects may be beneficial.

Quality Analyst

An Example Job Description for a Quality Analyst

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Call Centre Quality Analyst monitors and assesses the quality of customer
conversations, across all contact centre channels. This includes phone calls
(both inbound and outbound), emails, live chat conversations and so on.

In doing so, a quality analyst is tasked with the wider goal of supporting
advisors to improve their customer A quality analyst is tasked
interactions. with the wider goal of
supporting advisors to
If you work as a Call Centre Quality Analyst,
improve…
your day-to-day activities may include:

Monitoring and assessing Agent performance against a set of criteria

Giving feedback to Agents on how they can improve
Designing evaluation programmes for Call Centre Agents
Developing a metric for Quality Scores to track individual and team
performance
Observing call centre trends
Preparing reports for management on where the contact centre has
improved and where it could improve further
Implementing Agent training and coaching initiatives

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

Running root-cause analysis to identify knowledge gaps

Providing customer feedback and internal compliance feedback to
management
Identifying and helping to implement tools that will improve advisor
performance
Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Quality
Analyst are:

1.Good interpersonal skills are key as these will help the Analyst to give
Agents feedback in a positive, constructive way that will encourage
performance improvement.
2.Being analytical will enable the Quality Analyst to better spot trends and
identify areas for improvement, both in terms of Agent and call centre
performance.
3.Being organized is important because the Quality Analyst has to wade
through lots of information, so being able to do this in a structured way
will be of great benefit.

Other skills that contact centres will look for in terms of call centre Quality
Analyst include quality focused, an ability to work to tight deadlines and being
technology savvy.

Experience Required

Call Centre Quality Analyst positions will normally require people with contact
centre experience.Head of the Call Centre

Contact Centre Heads lead contact centre operations of various sizes. Typically
this is a fast-paced area of business that is challenging and changing
continuously.

Someone in this position would be expected to shape the future of the contact
centre operation, to improve the customer experience through each available
channel.

Typically, the Head of the Call Centre would report to the Customer Services
Director or Managing Director and would be held accountable for the
performance of all call centre teams.

Yet there is much more to the role, as highlighted in the duties listed below.

Main Duties Generally Include…

 Budgetary/profit and loss management
Decision-making regarding people, processes, technology and the future
Developing plans for the use of new tools and technologies
Coordinating the contact centre management team at all levels
Ensuring KPIs are met or exceeded
Overseeing recruitment and scheduling processes
Reviewing and clearly defining all contact centre roles

Important Skills

People management
Budgetary management
Organization and communication
Being analytical, with an understanding of complex data
Problem solving
Team building/directing

Digital Contact Director

This role is primarily responsible for the uptake of digital channels and
customer contact efficiency across digital service lines.

Furthermore, it is the responsibility of the Digital Contact Director to deliver a

service that does not compromise existing revenue, service and margin
position.

Also, it is up to the person in this role to lead the creation/development of a

digital contact strategy, researching, proposing and designing the correct digital
channels that match brand image and ambitions.

Main Duties Generally Include…

Gaining an understanding of digital market trends and opportunities

that are relevant to the contact centre
Ensuring consistent delivery of service on email, web, live chat, video,
social and other correspondence
Designing and implementing ways to develop various channels
Identifying and researching third-party suppliers
Securing executive/board level buy-in on projects

Important Skills
 Digital design
Knowledge of how to improve the user experience
Researcher who is aware of market trends
Strategist
Tech-savvy
Problem solver

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)

A new role for the Call Centre is the Chief Customer Officer.

The CCO reports on the critical customer outcomes and brings relevant trends
to the attention of Customer Experience executives and CEO.
They create the CX strategies working with other departments to meet CX goals
and have a overview of metrics such as Customer Effort, NPS etc.

Operations Manager

As a support role in larger centres, the Operations Manager would tend to look
after the operational elements of the contact centre.

A person in this role would also be expected to liaise with the Team Leaders
and the Call Centre Manager regarding performance management information,
and they would usually be the link with the IT department or technology
suppliers.

So an Operations Manager would have to be good with statistics and

technically minded, while communicating with all levels of the contact centre.

Main Duties Generally Include…

Leading operations to ensure KPI targets are met

Planning and implementing contact centre strategy
Working with Training, Recruitment and HR to plan resourcing
campaigns
Designing continuous improvements of processes
Maintaining engagement with key client contacts
Setting and reviewing quality performance standards

Important Skills

Knowledge of operations and customer support

People management
Critical thinking
Business and technology management
Commercial understanding
Motivatation