By Kathy Sisk
A customer service representative (CSR) and telemarketing service or sales representative (TSR) are great entry-level positions to prepare future managers and leaders. Primarily this is due to the training CSRs and TSRs receive in communication and computer skills, which is essential for today’s growing service sector economy. Those whose career choices remain within the call center industry, persevering through the challenges, eventually could find themselves in a higher paying and rewarding position.
With committed individuals seeking newer heights in their career path, companies now have an important role helping them to chart a way to achieve their career goals. TSRs and CSRs need to know how they can advance themselves. A company can accomplish this by having the call center manager or HR person:
- Verbally communicate the various career opportunities to the candidates during the interview and orientation
- Provide an organizational chart to show the path that leads to other positions
- Identify areas of responsibility, required skills, and duties of these positions
- Discuss the company’s training opportunities employees can participate in to help them achieve their advancement goals
Those who desire to advance while remaining in the same position can achieve higher levels of job satisfaction by taking advantage of their company’s support. The company can increase the employee’s responsibilities and diversify his or her job functions. These additional responsibilities and duties come with more pay, bonuses, and incentives.
How does one begin taking steps to guide employees in the right direction to advance along a career path within the company’s organization and provide the company with higher levels of achievement? By offering diversification in an employee’s job.
For most employees, diversity in a job function is as important as salary. Those who wish to advance in their career look to job quality to meet their own personal satisfaction. This can be a challenge in an outbound telemarketing position where the job and the different campaigns can be tedious. This especially occurs if the company is not interested in expanding their call center to include other versatile campaigns.
In the next issue we will discuss how to add diversification to an employee’s job function.
Kathy Sisk is founder and president of Kathy Sisk Enterprises Inc. and is a trainer and consultant, contributing thirty-five years of expertise to the telemarketing, sales, and customer service industries.
[From Connection Magazine – Mar/Apr 2014]