What is a Call Center

You have most likely called a call center many times in your life. You may have made an airline reservation, called for directory assistance, ordered a product or called for technical support on a recent purchase. The call center is the place where your telephone call is answered.

Depending on how many phone calls are received, call centers may be very small or extremely large. Some companies need thousands of employees to handle the large volume of calls they receive from customers.

A call center is like any other office environment where you will find many people talking on the phone and working with computers. The key difference is that in a call center the employees' primary job is to take calls and help customers. When they finish with one customer, they move on to the next customer that is waiting in line.

On a busy day, employees in a call center (called customer service representatives or customer service agents) may take more than 100 phone calls. The number of calls that a customer service agent takes depends on the length of each call and their work schedule. On average call times last from three to four minutes, with about one minute of "after call wrap-up" to complete any unfinished work related to the call.

If you work in a call center, you will need to be good with people and comfortable talking on the phone, but there is more to it than just the phone call.