Anyone ever worked in a call center? What's it like?

They vary, to be honest. Wildly. Avoid cold calling if possible and try and get a job with inbound calls rather than outbound if you have a choice. That said, I've met some really interesting people working in call centres and had some great laughs. You have to.

I worked in a technical support centre for 2 years. Even though the job is boring, you get the same type questions over and over again it was a great team and we used to go out all the time. A lot of the peeps in the centre were from abroad, Spanish, Frensh and so on.
If you work for a major company it's a good way to get a foot in the door and advance up. Some people I worked with are now managers and relocated to US and Australia.

Avoid this kind of work at all costs

Take it on part time if you can. 40 hour weeks in a call center will not do you any good!

Voltwad wrote: »

Capita has fairly high turnover

AFAIK Capita run the Emergency Services (999) lines (among other things), so I'm not surprised if they have a high turnover. I've seen their ads on Monster, jobs.ie and so on, though I haven't looked recently.

I worked in a tech support call centre, on the incoming phones for a year. My experience was probably better than average because I was doing Enterprise support: big customers with big computers, not home PC users, but we still had a good number of muppets calling us. An important thing to know is that everything you do is monitored: punctuality, number of calls, time per call, time on break, feedback, and so on, as well as some of the calls themselves. You're expected to compete against your colleagues to improve your stats.

Dean0088 wrote: »

Not long term. A few months at most.

hahahaha, and then 3 years later your still there.

I spent 3 years as a Customer Service Rep (CSR) for IBM, and another 7 years in 'backoffice' roles in a Service Center.
Initially, I provided tech support for the American market (IBM Aptiva computers). These customers where either the nicest of the most vile people to speak to. There was no middle ground.

I then moved to the internal helpdesk which provided support for IBM employees in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Very professional, and frequently enjoyable calls.
After that I moved into other Service Center roles such as Subject Matter Expert (SME), Problem & Change Management (PCM), Work Instruction Lead, Team Lead, Project Manager etc. These are the most 'fun' roles.

In short, this means I have a ton of experience, and I'll give you an honest opinion about some of these roles based on my experience.

1st level tech support : Incredibly scary when you start out. For the first few weeks you will be almost completely reliant on your colleagues experience and technical documentation. Then it becomes much easier and very rewarding for about 6-9 months. After that it becomes a extremely easy, and somewhat boring/repetitive job.
But, if you excel at the role, you can move into other job roles in the centre. This role will vastly improve your 'soft' customer skills and make you very proficient at solving problems logically. These are valuable life skills that will serve you well for a long time.

Subject Matter Expert: They earn more, and deal with more difficult issues. This means more interesting work, and increased job satisfaction when you find solutions to tough issues. You will become a real expert with many common business applications here. Can lead to much better paying technical roles if you specialise in some areas.

Team Lead: Great if you like things organized and have natural leadership skills. Horrible if you are a technical person. Fairly easy job to be honest.

These are the only positions you are likely to obtain in the first 1-2 years.

Stay away from telemarketing. Horrible horrible job and not worth all the crap you have to put up with.

BTW, if you speak Danish, I can get you a job in Blanch