All the Call Center’s Men: Typical Call Center Structure

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Which roles and units are must-have in your call center? What responsibilities and skills are required to run its operations at different levels? We have tried to take a close look at the typical call center structure.

Which roles and units are must-have in your inbound call center? What responsibilities and skills are required to run its operations at different levels? How to provide effective call center management? We have tried to take a close look at the typical call center structure.

The typical call center structure of organization is shown below:

Source: CallCenterHelper

What is call center organizational structure?

Call center organizational structure is a call center structure that defines what are the units, work groups, and teams inside the call center organizational chart.

To define the terms precisely, we have to say that call center organizational structure is synonymous with call center administrative structure, but the term “call center team structure” has nothing to do with call center organizational structure.

The organizational structure of a call center always includes all the units and departments inside the contact center, such as IT department, HR department, quality assurance department, etc. Call center structure may differ depending on whether is it an inbound call center, outbound call centers, virtual call center, or a blended call center.

What is call center team structure?

Call center team structure is a call center structure described from the perspective of key roles and positions in the organization. Thus, the call center team structure always includes all the call center staff roles, such as call center agents, call center team leaders, call center managers and other positions. Therefore, you can’t include departments into the call center team structure - only jobs. For example, you can’t say that the IT department is a part of the call center team structure, but the IT specialists are a part of the call center team structure.

There is also a wide-used term “call center hierarchy structure”, which refers to the hierarchy of call center structure. In other words, it defines what are the internal relationships between different call center roles, what is the system of subordinates and leaders in the organization and what is the chain of command.

Now, when we are done with the terms, let’s find out what are the key roles and their responsibilities in the contact center organizational structure.

Call center team structure: key roles and responsibilities

Call Center Agents Responsibilities and Skills

The agents, or customer service representatives, are the first people we imagine when talking about a call center structure. They are the first whom we contact as customers and they basically perform the function of the call center. Call center team structure is just unable to function without call center agents and call center technology, so even though they are at the bottom of the contact center hierarchy, they are still the most important part of any call center. There are also senior agents, who often have more experience and don't work with routine tasks or common daily operations, but mostly with unhappy customers or complex issues.

The call center representatives’ responsibilities may vary depending on your company’s specific needs. But mainly they are expected to:

  • Answer incoming calls from customers and handle customer interactions, sent via email, web chat, or messengers
  • Respond to customer queries, handle calls with customers, and route them to a more competent colleague if necessary
  • Provide customers with the necessary information about the company: prices, discounts, promotions, etc.
  • Make outbound calls (outgoing calls) and send SMS to confirm or specify orders, or to inform customers of order delivery status
  • Make conversation notes (register the subject of the request, note down the conversation results, and so on)
  • Conduct customer surveys to measure customer satisfaction score, customer expectations, and customer service experience
  • Make sales calls, take opportunities to upsell and cross-sell to customers
  • Follow call scripts
  • Meet the target KPIs regarding 
  • Regularly attend training sessions

To perform their duties, call center agents are required to have such skills:

  • Developed communication skills, especially active listening that helps to ask more relevant questions to customers
  • Good articulation: customers respond better when they understand the agents’ words instantly
  • High level of foreign language proficiency (when working with foreign clients)
  • High emotional intelligence and stress resistance: an agent has to be calm and polite in any situation, try to help and solve the customer’s problem
  • Empathy: having natural empathy helps to build rapport with customers in different situations much easier
  • Ability to multitask: agents will have to switch between multiple systems while interacting with customers, switch channels frequently, work with both inbound and outbound calls if necessary.
  • Product knowledge - good knowledge of product helps to provide inbound call services on regular basis. 

Team Leaders (Call Center Supervisors) Responsibilities and Skills

A team leader manages a team of agents. Typically, the size of the team ranges between 8 and 12 agents. Call center team structure often includes a few agent groups, which means there are always a few supervisors. Thus, there is often competition between those groups and team leaders.

The responsibilities of team leaders may include:

  • Ensuring that agents perform their duties and meet their KPI (Key Performance Indicators) targets
  • Reviewing the agents’ team performance, agent productivity and giving feedback
  • Onboarding and coaching newbies
  • Scheduling timetables
  • Preparing call center performance reports for manager
  • Handling calls when a customer wants to escalate a call
  • The ongoing motivation of the team.
  • Handling angry customers 
  • Analyzing customer surveys to eliminate poor customer service experience cases

The main call center supervisors skills are:

  • Interpersonal skills: an ability to solve conflicts between team members; a knack for motivating others and giving constructive feedback
  • Accountability for their team’s performance
  • Confidence in their actions
  • Organization skills, especially planning
  • Coaching skills
  • Product knowledge

Call Center Managers Responsibilities and Skills

A call center manager is the head of a group of team leaders and the highest position in the call center team structure, besides the customer service director. Their purpose is to translate business strategies into deliverable objectives for team leaders and make sure that team leaders understand the objectives for the day. Also, they work cross-functionally with other department leaders to meet the objectives and deliver the outcomes. Inside the call center team structure, there is also call center management structure, and in this case, call center manager can be considered the lowest position, but in most cases it doesn’t work this way. Even though call center team structure is a benchmark that is generally used by almost every organization, its internal structure can also differ, and the term “call center manager” in the case of call center structure refers often to both lower and senior management, so to define who is a call center manager, you have to look at every case separately.

The responsibilities of a call center manager may include:

  • Having meetings with team leaders
  • Preparing reports with key contact center metrics for senior management
  • Performing contact center management
  • Coaching and developing their team members
  • Solving people issues and involvement in HR processes
  • Taking escalated calls if some complex customer issues arise
  • Doing effective resource planning to reach business goals.
  • Researching customer expectations, 

What skills are required from call center managers? These mostly are:

  • Long-sightedness: a good manager not only understands solutions for current problems but also thinks ahead, trying to prevent problems that may arise in the future and harm effective call center management
  • Time-management skills: be able to prioritize their workload and delegate tasks if possible
  • Coaching skills: be able to train and develop their team members
  • Ability to motivate and engage others
  • Organization skills
  • Critical thinking
  • Conflict resolution skills.

Customer Service Director Responsibilities and Skills

A customer service director defines a strategy for customer service operations and creates a shared vision to implement this strategy effectively. He is at the top of the call center structure, and basically, a customer service director can be called a call center director, but in some cases, there are other directors who work with contact center management strategy and overall call center strategy planning, while customer service director is responsible for implementing customer service strategy only. 

The responsibilities of a customer service director may include:

  • Regular meetings with the top management and business owners to keep up to date with all the information regarding their function (any upcoming news, events, changes)
  • Monitoring daily, weekly and monthly reports on customer service
  • Keeping their direct reports up to date with all the information regarding their function and supporting them in performing their duties effectively
  • Working closely with other departments to stay informed of any changes that may impact customer service
  • Preparing reports for the top management on service levels
  • Running the Voice-of-the-Customer program and improving customer experience.
  • Designing and implementing call center team structure, making changes to current call center team structure.

To succeed in performing their duties, customer service director is required to have such skills:

  • Leadership skills: this person is supposed to inspire, motivate and lead the customer service team
  • Long-sightedness: ability to think strategically and identify success factors
  • Ability to express their thoughts clearly and concisely
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Be able to advocate for changes in customer service at a top level.

Quality Control Department

This department is responsible for call quality control and assessment of agents’ performance. Quality control department isn’t a “complete” part of call center team structure as it rarely has something to do with current call center operations, but it is still one of the most important call center units. Using call monitoring tools, its contact center employees listen to recorded calls or live conversations with customers. Quality control covers other communication channels as well: quality analysts may check emails and live chat transcripts.

Also, quality analysts have such responsibilities:

  • Designing evaluation programs for agents
  • Developing criteria for quality score
  • Researching call center trends and practices
  • Researching agents with customer interactions
  • Realizing training initiatives
  • Giving feedback to agents on what they should improve.

To succeed in performing their duties, quality analysts are required to have such skills:

  • Communication skills: it will help them to give feedback in a clear and friendly manner
  • Analytical: spot call center trends and identify areas where improvement is required and possible (both for individual agents and the call center as a whole)
  • Organization skills: quality analysts deal with tons of information, so being able to do this in a structured way is very important.

Other Units and Roles

It is also worth mentioning other units and roles that may not belong to a call center structure (except for outsourcing call centers) but have to be in contact with it. As we have also mentioned, call center team structure can significantly differ depending on what the project call center is working on, what are the budgets, short-term and long-term goals, the business model, and numerous other factors matter too.

HR Department

Call centers are inclined to have high employee turnover because of stressful work, and that’s why call center structure often includes HR department. It is the first reason why your company’s HR department has to be in constant contact with the call center. The call center department structure of this unit includes two positions: HR manager and trainer. In big companies, hiring new contact center employees is almost continuous. In outsourcing call centers, the HR department serves mainly the call center needs.

HR Manager

Generally, the responsibilities of an HR manager in a call center are similar to those of an HR manager in another company. However, high employee turnover makes them pay more attention to:

  • Recruiting of new call center employees (this process virtually never stops)
  • Onboarding of newbies
  • Employee retention.

Trainer

In big companies and outsourcing call centers, trainers work as a part of the overall team. Aside from training new employees, they are also responsible for:

  • Giving feedback after training is completed
  • Filtering out unsuitable candidates after introductory training
  • Providing ongoing agent training for call center agents and other employees.
  • Providing team-building activities

IT Department

The IT Department is a part of the call center structure as it has to provide technical conditions for the timely and high-quality work of a call center. Its call center staff’s responsibilities include:

  • Providing the workstations with necessary resources (network, electricity, telephony)
  • Maintaining the correct functioning of the equipment
  • Excluding or minimizing downtime due to technical failures if such failures are internal and fall within the department’s area of responsibility.

Sales department

In outsourcing call centers, the sales department searches for potential customers and sells them call center services. These clients are then transferred to the managers (or project managers), who is the liaison between customers and performers. Project managers determine the needs, form the required indicators, and control the performers to meet these indicators.

Conclusion

Depending on your company’s size and other factors, the call center structure may differ from the one described above. In small companies, there are only 3-4 branches of the organization tree that perform several different functions. For example, the head of the call center may also be involved in its development and partially in the search for customers and call center staff. Some call centers do not have quality analysts and trainers: supervisors and managers take over their functions. Also, in some cases, contact center supervisors can rarely answer incoming calls, work with the customer base, and process other contact center operations. 

Even though contact center organizational structure differs from one organization to another, it is still a generally accepted concept proven by the years of successful call center functioning and implementation. In some cases, you might not need some of the branches of a contact center structure we defined above, but you still need to use the classic call center structure: agents, supervisors, managers (both senior and lower-level), quality assurance departments, and HR departments. This is the concept that always works - if configured correctly.

The success of a call center depends not only on team or agent performance, but on call center software too. Such vital technologies as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) or ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) help to reduce operational costs, streamline contact center operations and contact center processes, handle incoming customer calls more efficiently, grow customer base, improve such vital rates as Average Handle Time and Average Answer Speed, provide digital channels communication, manage the work of remote teams, and finally, reach the business objectives you want. 

We offer a cloud-based call center software that provides all the features modern call centers need, including real-time monitoring and reporting tools, self-service call center platforms, automation contact center systems, internal knowledge bases, outbound call services including auto dialers, call center scripts editor, multichannel communication with digital channels included, routine task automation, proper scheduling tools and many more capabilities. 

 






Tanya Gonchar

Expert in call center process automation, Head of Marketing at Voiptime Cloud. Interested in customer service, B2B sales, marketing, business analysis.

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