We often get calls from Contact Centre Agents or Customer Service Consultants looking for a change and wondering where their skills can take them. Contact centres are a growth industry and offer many fantastic opportunities, they are a great foundation for building a career in multiple areas.
As a Contact Centre Agent, your role is extremely important to the bigger picture of your organisation. Your sole experience with a customer will define the customers entire perception of the brand - so it is vital you are at the top of your game. Therefore, your role as a Contact Centre Specialist provides a great learning ground to start your career.
During your time as a Contact Centre agent, you will have learnt some valuable skills that will enable you to move to other areas of the business. As a Contact Centre Agent, handling customers directly will have given you a good understanding of the customer journey and a solid insight into the foundation of the business. Your communications skills will be heightened and you should be able to think on your feet and resolve conflict quicker than most.
So where does all this experience lead?
Traditionally contact centre roles involved handling customers over the phone, however there are now many positions behind the scenes and in other departments aiding the customer experience to consider including; Team Leader, Workforce Planner, Head of Customer Experience, Financial Analyst, Field Rep, Trainer, Project Coordinator, Claims Consultant, Complaint Resolutions Officer, Solution Architects, Data and Analytics Specialist, Contact Centre Coach and many more.
Leadership opportunities
Having spent a significant amount of time in a front-line Contact Centre Agent or Consultant role you may be ready to step up into a leadership or management position. With a little extra training and some internal mentoring, you could be ready to take on the role of Call Centre Coach or Trainer.
These roles require you to develop and plan for the success of your team and delivery of organisational goals. The focus of the role moves from your technical ability over the phone solving customers enquiries, to your ability to mentor, motivate, plan, train and arm your team with all the tools they need to be successful in their roles.
Sales opportunities
Having learnt all about your company’s product or service and armed with your strong communication skills and aptitude for conflict resolution you will be perfectly placed to move into a Field Representative or Sales Executive job within your organisation. In this position you will be responsible for finding new sales opportunities for your product or service in any given market.
You will need strong relationship building skills, the ability to research the market and your competition and a reputable and persuasive nature to sell the benefits of your product or service to your potential customers. Sales roles can be out on the road or internal sales over the phone within the office environment.
Analytical opportunities
Analytical roles are increasing in demand with company’s constantly assessing their sales and service processes and customer experience journey as well as their return on investment and employee KPI’s. Therefore, there are a whole host of analytical positions within any given organisation.
If you are good with numbers, like to critically examine an issue and find solutions and are intrigued by productivity and results, an Analytical position would be a great career move.
One such example are Business Analyst jobs; these require technical and organisational skills to identify issues within a business and create strategies to improve them. A great career for an analytical thinker and traditionally well paid too! Another would be a Workforce Planner, maximising operational performance of your team through critical analysis of processes and procedures.
Financial opportunities
Those who are more financially minded, could move into the financial area of a business. Here you will compare and analyse actual results and forecasts. Will project and provide cost analysis reports and forecasts and look into processes, policies and procedures to ensure cost efficiency is met in all areas of the business.
Some of the roles in this area would include; Financial Analyst, Commercial Analyst, Financial Advisor or Financial Planner.
As you can see, a Contact Centre Agent or Customer Service Consultant is a great training ground for a magnitude of potential career options. The majority of Contact Centres in Australia have multiple divisions for you to progress your career.
Are you ready for your next step? Contact our team for some confidential career advice or take a look at our current job opportunities.