Typical Roles in a Call Centre – With Job Descriptions

Here are job overviews and job descriptions for all call centre roles, from a Call Centre Agent to a Customer Service Director.

What Are the Typical Positions in a Call Centre?

Within a call centre there are common roles, responsibilities, and positions, including the Call Centre Manager, Team Leaders and Agents.

There are also other call centre job titles, such as the Customer Service Director, Resource Planning Analysts and Quality Analysts, all of whom play a vital role in helping the contact centre meet its targets.

A full list of typical call centre positions is provided below:

• Call Centre Agent
• Team Leader
• Call Centre Manager
• Customer Services Director
• Resource Planning Analyst
• Quality Analyst
• Head of the Call Centre
• Digital Contact Director
• Operations Manager
• Chief Customer Officer
• Customer Experience Officer (CXO)
• Human Resources (HR)
• Trainer
• Coach

Understanding each of these roles could come in useful when trying to set up a call centre, or just to familiarize yourself with the industry.

Yet many call centres won’t have personnel in each of these roles. The size of the centre will determine the available positions, as well as the number of Team Leaders and additional support positions.

For more of the basics regarding the make-up of a call centre, read our article: What Is a Call Centre? – 10 Things to Know

A Typical Hierarchy for a Call Centre

The following organizational hierarchy shows the typical structure and positions within the call centre.

Below, we share job descriptions for most of the roles introduced in this flow diagram – with additional job introductions for the other call centre positions.

Call Centre Agent

A Call Centre Agent can be known by various titles, depending on the responsibilities of their position within the call centre, these titles include:

• Customer Service Representative
• Customer Support Specialist
• Sales Advisor

To find out more names and titles for call centre agent positions, read our article: What Other Job Titles Should We Call Centre Agents?

Here is a video in which we introduce you to the role of Call Centre Agent. The video is narrated by Hannah Cox of Douglas Jackson – the contact centre recruiter.

If you are looking for a job description for a Call Centre Agent in the more traditional format, take a look at our example below.

An Example Job Description for a Call Centre Agent

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Call Centre Agent is generally expected to solve queries when a customer phones into a contact centre.

However, an Agent may also contact customers themselves, maybe for customer research purposes or perhaps to sell them something.

Agents often communicate with customers via email, live chat or post.

In addition to phone calls, Agents often communicate with customers via email, live chat or post – or “snail mail”, as it’s frequently referred to.

Agents are often referred to by other names, including Agents, Customer Service Representatives and Associates – so if you are interested in becoming a Call Centre Agent, make sure you look out for job descriptions with these titles too.

If you work as a Call Centre Agent, your day-to-day activities may include:

• Managing large amounts of calls in a timely and effective manner
• Identifying customer needs
• Researching customer problems
• Providing the right solutions to customers
• Keeping records of all customer conversations on the call centre database
• And meeting targets in terms of quality of conversations

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

• Following communication scripts
• Managing social media and third-party review sites
• Taking opportunities to upsell to customers
• Conducting customer research
• Attending training sessions to continuously improve knowledge and performance

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Agent are:

1. Good communication skills, especially listening, as that will allow you to ask better, more relevant, questions of customers.
2. Empathy is important as you may be handling contacts from customers in difficult situations, so having natural empathy makes it much easier to build rapport with these customers.
3. An ability to multitask will prove vital, as you will have to switch between multiple systems while helping customers and also switch channels frequently – from the phone to email, for example.

Other skills that make up a good Call Centre Agent include problem-solving, collaboration, patience, tech-savviness and the ability to socialize well.

Find more skills that call centres value in an Agent in our article: The Top 10 Most Important Customer Service Skills

Experience Required

A background in a customer service environment will be very desirable, and this doesn’t have to be in a call centre environment. You may also need GCSE passes in Maths and English.

If you are from the US, you may need a minimum of a high school diploma.

Call Centre Team Leader

Here is a video in which we introduce you to the role of a Call Centre Team Leader. The video is narrated by Hannah Cox.

If you are looking for a job description of a Call Centre Team Leader in the more traditional format, take a look at our example below.

Are you still not sure on the difference between a Manager and a Leader? Check out the following article to find out for sure: Are You a Manager or a Leader?

An Example Job Description for a Call Centre Team Leader

Purpose and Responsibilities

A call centre Team Leader has the responsibility of managing a team of Call Centre Agents. The numbers usually range between eight and twelve.

If you work as a call centre Team Leader, your day-to-day activities may include:

• Having “morning huddles” to make sure that your team know what their objectives are for the day
• Call listening and giving feedback to Agents on how they can improve
• Taking call escalations and looking out over your team for when an Agent may need help
• Ongoing coaching and development of your team
• Monitoring and driving individual and team performance, usually against a set of key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Preparing reports for your Line Manager on performance against these KPIs
• Ongoing motivation of your team to ensure a positive mindset and customer-focused attitude remains throughout
• Identifying and addressing any people issues, and being a pillar of support for your team members

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

• Training your team members to identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities
• Contribute to overall customer experience by promoting awareness of any company-wide customer experience initiative
• Make best use of resource by effective resource planning

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Team Leader are:

1. Good interpersonal skills are essential as these will help the Team Leader to motivate Agents and feedback in a positive, constructive way that will encourage performance improvement.
2. Being accountable and responsible for your team’s performance. You are all in this together.
3. Being organized and numbers-driven is important because you will have accountability of your team achieving certain performance levels and will have to provide reports to senior management.

Other skills that contact centres will look for in terms of a call centre Team Leader include being customer focused, employee focused and having a good understanding of basic HR guidelines.

Experience Required

Team Leader positions will normally require people with management experience in a contact centre environment.

Experience in a contact centre environment may be more important than qualifications once we get to this level of role.

Additional Information

How a Team Leader spends their time will vary greatly from one contact centre to another. While this mostly comes down to culture, it also comes down to the size of the team they’re leading.

The number of agents in a contact centre team is not consistent across the industry, as highlighted in the graph below, which has been taken from a 2019 Call Centre Helper report.

This chart has been taken from our report: Are You Delivering Exceptional Customer Service? (2019 Edition)

As you can see, many contact centres reported team sizes of less than six Agents, while others had over 25 Agents per team. That’s a massive 19 head difference.

Generally, those with fewer agents in a team will invest more in creating relationships to improve the Agent experience and, in doing so, the customer experience.

However, those contact centres who opt for larger team sizes will do so in order to boost efficiency, as Team Leaders will be expected to take on more administrative responsibilities.

Find out how to be the best possible Team Leader in our article: Team Leadership: What Makes a Great Leader?

Call Centre Manager

Here is a video in which we introduce you to the role of a Call Centre Manager. The video is narrated by Hannah Cox.

If you are looking for a job description of a Call Centre Manager in the more traditional format, take a look at our example below.

An Example Job Description for a Call Centre Manager

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Call Centre Manager has the responsibility of managing a group of Team Leaders, who then have teams of Agents reporting to them.

If you work as a call centre Call Centre Manager, your day-to-day activities may include:

• Having meetings with your Team Leaders to make sure that objectives for the day are communicated and understood
• Having 1-2-1s with your Team Leaders to discuss any day-to-day issues, and providing support as necessary
• Ongoing coaching and Learning & Development of your team
• Working cross functionally with other department leaders to ensure that the objectives of the business are being met and outcomes are being delivered
• Monitoring and driving performance across your operation, and preparing relevant reports for senior management
• Translating the businesses short, medium and long strategy into deliverable objectives for your Team Leaders
• Identifying and addressing people issues, and usually having responsibility of adhering to HR processes

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

• Depending on the size of the business and your operation, you may take escalated calls from complex customer queries
• Manage any third-party relationships
• Have responsibility for effective resource planning

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Manager are:

1. Great interpersonal skills are essential to be able to engage with your teams and stakeholders effectively.
2. Being accountable and responsible for your operations performance and that the desired business outcomes are being achieved.
3. Being very well organized and numbers driven is important because you will have a lot of data to collate and utilize in order to get the best out of your teams. You will have multiple workflows open at the same time across different parts of your operation.

Other skills that contact centres may look for in terms of a Call Centre Manager include being people focused, performance driven, and having a solid understanding of basic HR guidelines.

Find more skills that recruiters look for in a Manager in our article: 10 Essential Skills for Every Contact Centre Manager

Experience Required

Contact Centre Manager positions will normally require people who have experience of managing Leaders in a contact centre environment.

The relevant experience in a contact centre environment may be more important than qualifications for this level of role.

Customer Service Director

Here is a video in which we introduce you to the role of a Customer Service Director. The video is narrated by Hannah Cox.

If you are looking for a job description of a Customer Service Director in the more traditional format, take a look at our example below.

An Example Job Description for a Customer Service Director

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Customer Service Director has the responsibility for defining the strategy for a customer service operation, and then creating a shared vision to enable the effective delivery of that strategy. (Note, there is also a new Chief Experience Officer (CXO) role in the mix as another option for career progression.)

If you work as a Customer Service Director, your day-to-day activities may include:

• Regular meetings with the senior leadership team to ensure that any upcoming news, events and changes are pre-empted and managed accordingly across the business
• Having ownership of the service function and monitoring daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports
• Ensuring that all of your direct reports have the required information and support to be able to do their roles effectively
• Ongoing coaching and development of your management structure
• Working cross-functionally with other business areas to keep up to date with anything that may impact service levels
• Preparing reports for the Board on service levels, and profit and loss of the function
• Being an inspiring leader and visible at all levels, promoting a culture of people and customer first
• Identifying any performance issues and coaching needs

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

• Responsibility for a Voice of the Customer (VoC) programme and improving the end-to-end customer experience by engaging with and influencing peers across other business functions
• Creating employee engagement strategies and devising metrics
• Achieving cross-sell and upsell objectives and changing and adapting these in line with business requirements

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Customer Service Director are:

1. Great leadership skills. You will inspire and lead a team who are servicing your businesses customers. An engaged workforce is key.
2. Being accountable and responsible for your function’s performance. You may have or profit and loss responsibility and experience and certainly be commercially focused.
3. Being credible at Board level and able to influence change for the better of the customer service function and the wider business.

Other skills that contact centres will look for in terms of a Customer Service Director include being people focused, driven, emotionally aware and resilient.

Experience Required

A Customer Service Director role will almost definitely require a proven track record of delivering results at a senior level within a desirable business or industry, having achieved similar outcomes that the new business is looking to achieve.

For more on this role, read our article: Customer Services Director: Example Job Description

Resource Planning Analyst

Here is a video in which we introduce you to the role of a Resource Planning Analyst. The video is narrated by Hannah Cox.

If you are looking for a job description of a Resource Planning Analyst in the more traditional format, take a look at our example below.

An Example Job Description for a Resource Planning Analyst

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Resource Planning Analyst’s role within a call centre is to make sure that the right people are in the right place at the right time.

If you work as a Resource Planning Analyst, your day-to-day activities may include:

• Producing long- and short-term forecasts of call demands and volumes
• Producing and updating schedules for call centre employees so that they know where they need to be, and at what time
• Coordinating of real-time activities to ensure appropriate Agent coverage
• Producing reports to show overall contact centre performance

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

• Managing direct reports
• Conducting daily, weekly and monthly planning meetings with operational leaders
• Keeping everybody up to date with any upcoming plans or challenges or risks to service levels
• Floor walking to ensure that people are in the right place and doing what they are meant to be doing

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Resource Planning Analyst are:

1. Experience with Excel or a workforce planning tool of some description and a good administrator.
2. An awareness of potential causes and impacts on day-to-day service levels.
3. Good stakeholder management skills to ensure that effective planning is delivered correctly.

Other skills that make up a good quality Resource Planning Analyst include problem-solving, collaboration, being technology savvy, and able to communicate well at all levels.

Experience Required

A background in customer service and contact centres is desired for this sort of role, and Resource Planning Analysts have often previously worked on the phones as call centre Agents.

Advanced Excel training and qualifications in mathematics or statistical-related subjects may be beneficial.

If you want to be a good Resource Planning Analyst, you’ll need to understand all of the concepts that are presented in our article: Workforce Planning: 20 Fundamental Rules

Quality Analyst

Here is a video in which we introduce you to the role of a Call Centre Quality Analyst. The video is narrated by Hannah Cox.

If you are looking for a job description of a Call Centre Quality Analyst in the more traditional format, take a look at our example below.

An Example Job Description for a Quality Analyst

Purpose and Responsibilities

A Call Centre Quality Analyst monitors and assesses the quality of customer conversations, across all contact centre channels. This includes phone calls (both inbound and outbound), emails, live chat conversations and so on.

A quality analyst is tasked with the wider goal of supporting advisors to improve…

In doing so, a quality analyst is tasked with the wider goal of supporting advisors to improve their customer interactions.

If you work as a Call Centre Quality Analyst, your day-to-day activities may include:

• Monitoring and assessing Agent performance against a set of criteria
• Giving feedback to Agents on how they can improve
• Designing evaluation programmes for Call Centre Agents
• Developing a metric for Quality Scores to track individual and team performance
• Observing call centre trends
• Preparing reports for management on where the contact centre has improved and where it could improve further
• Implementing Agent training and coaching initiatives

You may also be expected to take on responsibilities like:

• Running root-cause analysis to identify knowledge gaps
• Providing customer feedback and internal compliance feedback to management
• Identifying and helping to implement tools that will improve advisor performance

Skills Required

The top three skills that recruiters tend to look for in a Call Centre Quality Analyst are:

1. Good interpersonal skills are key as these will help the Analyst to give Agents feedback in a positive, constructive way that will encourage performance improvement.
2. Being analytical will enable the Quality Analyst to better spot trends and identify areas for improvement, both in terms of Agent and call centre performance.
3. Being organized is important because the Quality Analyst has to wade through lots of information, so being able to do this in a structured way will be of great benefit.

Other skills that contact centres will look for in terms of call centre Quality Analyst include quality focused, an ability to work to tight deadlines and being technology savvy.

Experience Required

Call Centre Quality Analyst positions will normally require people with contact centre experience.

Hannah Cox

Contact centres usually recruit Quality Analysts internally, promoting experienced and driven advisors who are familiar with the current quality programme and wider organizational goals.

Having basic level GCSEs may help, particularly in Maths and English. If you are from the US, you may need a minimum of a high school diploma.

To find out more about what Quality Analysts do, read our article: Contact Centre Quality Assurance

Other Roles Within the Call Centre

Here are some more, shorter, introductions to some of the other contact centre roles that we highlighted at the start of this article.

Head of the Call Centre

Contact Centre Heads lead contact centre operations of various sizes. Typically this is a fast-paced area of business that is challenging and changing continuously.

Someone in this position would be expected to shape the future of the contact centre operation, to improve the customer experience through each available channel.

Typically, the Head of the Call Centre would report to the Customer Services Director or Managing Director and would be held accountable for the performance of all call centre teams.

Yet there is much more to the role, as highlighted in the duties listed below.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Budgetary/profit and loss management
• Decision-making regarding people, processes, technology and the future
• Developing plans for the use of new tools and technologies
• Coordinating the contact centre management team at all levels
• Ensuring KPIs are met or exceeded
• Overseeing recruitment and scheduling processes
• Reviewing and clearly defining all contact centre roles

Important Skills

• People management
• Budgetary management
• Organization and communication
• Being analytical, with an understanding of complex data
• Problem solving
• Team building/directing

For more on this role, read our article: Head of Contact Centre: Example Job Description

Digital Contact Director

This role is primarily responsible for the uptake of digital channels and customer contact efficiency across digital service lines.

Furthermore, it is the responsibility of the Digital Contact Director to deliver a service that does not compromise existing revenue, service and margin position.

Also, it is up to the person in this role to lead the creation/development of a digital contact strategy, researching, proposing and designing the correct digital channels that match brand image and ambitions.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Gaining an understanding of digital market trends and opportunities that are relevant to the contact centre
• Ensuring consistent delivery of service on email, web, live chat, video, social and other correspondence
• Designing and implementing ways to develop various channels
• Identifying and researching third-party suppliers
• Securing executive/board level buy-in on projects

Important Skills

• Digital design
• Knowledge of how to improve the user experience
• Researcher who is aware of market trends
• Strategist
• Tech-savvy
• Problem solver

For more on this role, read our article: Digital Contact Director: Example Job Description

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)

A new role for the Call Centre is the Chief Customer Officer.

The CCO reports on the critical customer outcomes and brings relevant trends to the attention of Customer Experience executives and CEO.
They create the CX strategies working with other departments to meet CX goals and have a overview of metrics such as Customer Effort, NPS etc.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Developing a Customer Experience Strategy
• Gathering and analyzing customer feedback to identify trends
• Building relationships with customers
• Collaborating with other departments
• Defining and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs)

Important Skills

• Problem-Solving
• Decision-Making
• Being analytical, with an understanding of complex data
• Relationship-building skills
• Communication Skills

Operations Manager

As a support role in larger centres, the Operations Manager would tend to look after the operational elements of the contact centre.

A person in this role would also be expected to liaise with the Team Leaders and the Call Centre Manager regarding performance management information, and they would usually be the link with the IT department or technology suppliers.

So an Operations Manager would have to be good with statistics and technically minded, while communicating with all levels of the contact centre.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Leading operations to ensure KPI targets are met
• Planning and implementing contact centre strategy
• Working with Training, Recruitment and HR to plan resourcing campaigns
• Designing continuous improvements of processes
• Maintaining engagement with key client contacts
• Setting and reviewing quality performance standards

Important Skills

• Knowledge of operations and customer support
• People management
• Critical thinking
• Business and technology management
• Commercial understanding
• Motivation

For more on this role, read our article: Senior Operations Manager: Example Job Description

Customer Experience Officer (CXO)

Customer e(X)perience Officer (CXO) doesn’t have to think about the customer experience in his or her spare time from their “other” C-level responsibility, but is devoted 100% to CX.

By definition, the C in CXO stands for customer. The entire focus of the CXO is on customers, and CX programmes and initiatives. If anything, the CXO can be the common thread woven through and across the entire company — including any potential silo department.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Developing a Customer Experience Strategy
• Customer Journey Mapping
• Customer Analysis and Insights
• Employee Training and Engagement
• Performance Measurement

Important Skills

• Customer Empathy
• Strategic Thinking
• Leadership
• Data-Driven Decision-Making
• Communication

For more on this role, read our article: What is a CXO? The Chief Experience Officer Explained

Human Resources (HR)

There needs to be a very close relationship between HR and the call centre due to HR’s ongoing people activities such as recruitment and training.

Depending on the company, there may be HR resources within the call centre.

HR are responsible for ensuring that terms and conditions of employment and job descriptions are all in place, as well as organizing recruitment…

Usually HR are responsible for ensuring that terms and conditions of employment and job descriptions are all in place, as well as organizing recruitment and possibly training for the call centre. They also deal with issues that individuals may have personally or professionally.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Recruitment and Selection
• Compliance and Legal Responsibilities
• Compensation and Benefits
• Employee Engagement and Recognition
• Health and Safety

Important Skills:

• Communication Skills
• Active Listening
• Organisational and Time Management
• Strategic Thinking

Trainer

Some centres have trainers as part of the overall team because of the high volume of induction and ongoing training that is required.

They are responsible for preparing and delivering training to the agents in the centre.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Designing and developing training programs that align with the call centre’s objectives
• Providing an overview of the call centre environment, technology systems, and customer service expectations
• Tailoring training programs to specific roles within the call centre
• Monitoring trainees’ performance

Important Skills

• Relationship Building
• Communication Skills
• Strong organizational skills
• Ability to provide constructive feedback
• Confidence and presence to deliver engaging and interactive training sessions to groups of varying sizes

Coach

In larger centres, in addition to the Team Leader, each team may have a coach who will provide additional support and technical knowledge to the agents.

This is usually someone who has been a very good agent and has a good way of getting information over and helping someone to improve their performance.

Main Duties Generally Include…

• Identifying individual training needs and skill gaps
• Assisting in the delivery of initial and ongoing training programs
• Collaborating with supervisors, team leaders, and other stakeholders to align coaching initiatives with team goals and objectives

Important Skills

• Coaching and Mentoring
• Proficiency in contact centre operations
• Time Management and Organisation

Thanks to Douglas Jackson for their help with this article.

If you are looking for a new role within the call centre industry, these articles may be helpful:

• The Top 25 Words to Describe Yourself on Your CV
• Mistakes to Avoid When Applying for a Job
• 4 Signs That You’re Ready for a New Job

Author: Rachael Trickey
Reviewed by: Hannah Swankie