Perceptions of contact centre personnel and their status in organisations are undergoing a paradigm shift as companies recognise the importance of contact centres to the success of their brand and business.
“Many companies, specifically those that run their own contact centres and do not outsource, now look for graduates. The profile for contact centre personnel has undergone some radical changes,” says Lindi Dickinson, head of Pastel People Placements in Softline Pastel.
“Where companies in the past were willing to take on school-leavers, today graduates are preferred in many instances because organisations are seeing value in the fact that the contact centre provides a sound stepping stone. Through the contact centre, graduates gain considerable knowledge of the company's operations, and that helps them to move into higher positions within the company.”
Graduate jobseekers looking for contact centre positions realise that the experience they gain will be beneficial and improve their chances of transferring into more senior positions where sound career paths exist.
Pastel People Placements itself looks for graduates for a number of contact centres within Softline Pastel Accounting and Softline Pastel Payroll. Dickinson says contact centre recruits undergo six weeks of induction, followed by an examination that requires a minimum pass level of 90%, primarily because of the mission-critical nature of payroll and accounting software demands all-encompassing knowledge of tax laws, labour laws, accounting practice and other Acts of Parliament that directly affects businesses.
Softline Pastel Accounting recently received international recognition by winning three awards at the Contact Centre World Awards, in London, run by ContactCentreWorld.com, the online magazine for the global contact centre industry. Pastel Accounting's 140-seat call centre based in Woodmead, in Gauteng, won the Best Community Service category, was a runner up for Best Help Desk and placed third for Best Customer Service. There were five finalists per category and 1 000 entries from over 40 countries.
“Our recruitment for the various contact centres has therefore been successful in identifying specific profiles and culture fit, candidates who are comfortable with social interaction and with an underlying customer service ethic, besides many other specific identified skills.”
Among the sought-after capabilities Dickinson recommends for contact centre recruits are a calm demeanour, an ability to handle upset or irate co-workers and customers (conflict management), trouble-shooting skills, attention to detail, an ability to adhere to routines and the agility to stay in touch with a constantly changing environment.
Dickinson says strict standards have to be applied for contact centre staff recruitment because talent is invariably more important than skills.
“Identification of talent is one of the most, if not the most, important differentiator in candidate selection. The recruitment team also needs to be able to identify candidates' strengths, weaknesses and the right profiles for not only contact centre employees, but also have a different set of recruitment criteria for contact centre team leaders.
“The perception used to be that people applying for contact centre positions could not get another job. However, that is changing very rapidly as the need for very specific profiles in team leaders and individual staff has been recognised and career paths have been mapped out.”
There are also new methodologies to select the most suitable contact centre applicants and retain them, including making use of a “predictive index” (PI) service from Praendex Incorporated, which enables individual talent to be recognised.
In the past, most candidates entering contact centres would hold the job for 12 to 18 months. Today that has extended to two years and more and many employees holding senior positions today started off in a contact centre environment.
Dickinson agrees that contact centres are a “different working environment”, requiring management attention in terms of motivation and incentives, teambuilding and the creation of team spirit to be successful.
“But contact centres have come a long way. Today a contact centre is a platform for building a career. It has advanced to the point where SETAs now offer a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) for contact centres so there is every incentive to make it a career or a solid stepping stone to success in another area of the business.”
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Note to editors:
Pastel People Placements is the Recruitment Division of Softline Pastel. Softline Pastel is the leading developer of business software in South Africa, which gives Pastel People Placements a unique and thorough understanding of business staff recruitment and placement requirements. The Division provides customers, value-added resellers, accountants' forum members and the general business community with the highest calibre of candidates and caters for the following job categories: management, financial, bookkeeping, IT, HR, payroll and administration, to name but a few.
The Sage Group
The Sage Group is a leading global supplier of business management software solutions and related products and services, principally for small to medium-sized enterprises. Formed in 1981, Sage was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989. Sage has 5.8 million customers and more than 14 500 employees worldwide. We operate in over 26 countries covering the UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, India and China. For further information, please visit http://www.sage.com.
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