Call Center Manager: What is the cost of hiring?

Why recruit a call centre manager

As a manager of your call centre team, a call centre manager supervises all call centre duties and processes. They will be able to coach your call centre representatives, as well as set targets through analysing data. Call centre managers will be able to make action plans around these targets, making sure that your representatives understand how to achieve both personal and team-based goals.

Qualities of a great call centre manager:

• The capacity to recruit and train new employees in your call centre processes
• Is able to lead your teams through meetings and the meeting of targets
• Sets highly effective work schedules for call centre representatives

Deciding between a full-time vs freelance call centre manager

Having a full-time, permanent call centre manager is recommended, as they will be familiar with your business strategies and performance targets. They will ideally have a good relationship with your HR department, helping to set personal goals for your representatives and advise them on how to reach them.

A permanent call centre manager will have a better appreciation of your long-term goals as a business. However, you may want to recruit a call centre manager on a contract basis if you are looking to cut back on overall costs. They can also support your permanent call centre manager with workloads or cover a manager who is on holiday, sick or parental leave.

What are the different types of call centre manager?

You should ideally have a call centre management team who supervises all call centre operations. It is a good idea to have an accounting executive to handle budgeting throughout the year. A call centre supervisor will help you to maintain a positive team and will be responsible for your onboarding processes. Your core outreach team will be made up of call centre agents and call centre representatives. Perhaps your business has a help desk or line for customers with problems that require troubleshooting, in which case you should look to recruit a customer experience associate.

• Call centre supervisor: manages the day-to-day operations of your call centre team, making sure that they are on track to meet targets
• Accounting executive: finds leads and helps to close sales, as well as using your data to predict outcomes and learn about trends
• Call centre agent: handles customer requests, complaints and refunds
• Call centre representative: follows your call centre script and manages calls
• Customer experience associate: helps your customers with product experience, troubleshooting issues and provides your business with a friendly face.

Where to finda a call center manager?

A good call centre manager is bright, qualified and has years of on-the-job call centre experience. Therefore, you might choose to use a specialist recruitment service to help you find candidates with the right experience. If you are looking for a call centre accounting executive, then you will need to specify business or economics qualifications in your job description. Recruiting internally could be a good route for you if you are looking to promote a call centre employee who already has experience of leading a team on projects, who can give excellent presentations and is highly organised. You can also find call centre managers by networking with other industry professionals and attending industry networking events.

To find the right call centre manager for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

• Networking with other industry professionals: meet other professionals at conferences, summits and expos
• Internal hiring: look to your own staffing to find experienced candidates who know your policies and processes well
• Recruitment service: use a specialist recruitment service to help you headhunt candidates for this managerial role
• Advertising on your company website: advertise the role on your website, including your competitive salary, application form and contact details.

Post your job online: Try posting your job for a call centre manager on Indeed to find and attract quality call centre manager candidates.

Skills to look for in a great call center manager

A great candidate for a call centre manager role will have the following skills and attributes, as well as work experience that reflects:

• Organisational skills
• An ability to prioritise tasks
• Ability to delegate tasks efficiently to different employees
• Flexible leadership skills 
• Conflict management skills

Writing a call center manager job description

A thoughtful description is important for finding qualified call centre manager candidates. A call centre manager job description includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities and the required and preferred skills for the position.

When writing your job description for a call centre manager, consider including some or all of the following keywords to improve the visibility of your job posting. These are the most popular search terms leading to clicks on call centre managers jobs, according to Indeed data:

• Manager
• Call centre
• Contact centre manager
• Call centre manager
• Team manager
• Operations manager
• Customer service manager
• Team leader

Interviewing call center manager candidates

Strong candidates for call centre manager positions will be confident answering questions regarding:

• Experience dealing with difficult customers
• Time management and approaches to staying organised
• How they delegate tasks and responsibilities to agents
• Leadership styles and ability to lead flexibly
• Experience giving presentations and leading team meetings

Need help coming up with interview questions? See our list of call centre manager interview questions for examples (with sample answers).