It is hard to handle a customer having rage and frustration and not even being open to getting the help you are willing to provide but just yelling at you without even knowing you and your relationship with the service or product and most importantly uninterested with how your day is going.

Sometimes you are just surprised how people can find that time to give a call for a very simple and easy matter that can be solved so quickly with the only basic logic of 2 minutes. Or there might be times you just want to say that you feel the same with them about their problem. You can’t say anything but your scripted support lines when you know that people around you or your supervisor listen to every word you say because they are recorded for quality assurance purposes.

Have you ever felt connected to the voice you heard for a second (among all the others) before they got crazy and only wanted to talk to your manager, but you had to listen to their threats and ease them? Or just wanted to hang up the phone to that chatty customer who only wastes your time for nothing, and you get exactly nothing out of it.

Do you remember that time when you were so sure that the call went really well, but the person gave you 7 stars out of 10, and you didn’t get the chance to ask why, WHY?

Overly ambitious colleagues around you giving meaningless advice as if your supervisor is not enough or way too grumpy ones whose voice you can only hear happy when they give “support” ruining your mood, how about them?

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These are only some of the moments people work in Call Centres can relate to.

They are based on true stories. But at the same time, the only information you know about being a customer service representative if you are not one. You already know your previous experience or your friends’ in totally different industries were more or less the same, just because you only hear negative stereotypes about call centres and customer service agents, you are sure you will never be one of them. Well, that’s why we are here, to change your mind.

Face to face customer care, business to business relations, sales calls and meetings, handling students, reporting to managers, trying to fix a bug that appears each time you think you got rid of it this time… Every job has its downsides. Don’t you agree?

The question is, what do we learn from those experiences?

Not every job is suitable for every person, that is for sure. But every experience in your career path is valuable. Some use certain jobs as a step, others stay there because they decide that they are comfortable in that position or they simply love what they are doing.

Now let’s think about call centres again. Seriously, how bad it can be? Do you think millions of people on the phone giving you support cry for hours every night in their beds? Over their personal problems? Yes! Or because of their abusive managers? Yes! Maybe it’s you yelling at them for a simple issue! There’s one thing you don’t know, there are people happy with their jobs and be sure that there are also people saying they would never do what you do for a living, and you probably wouldn’t do theirs.

What you hear somewhere out there about how boring working in a call centre comes from two main sources. People who are just too narrow-minded to learn about the pros of a job and only care about its salary and the reputation and people who experienced working in a call centre and figured it out it’s not for them but also provides you good insight about their experience. If you listen to the latter, and if you think it’s not going to work for you either, no judgements. But if you just think that working in a plaza on high hills or wearing a suit while writing very important reports to your managers overseas is not going to be boring, I have bad news for you!

If you want to learn what the benefits of working in a call centre are and what you can learn from being a customer service representative, read on!

You will learn to provide the service you want to receive!

Are you also one of us who still cannot manage to talk to a robot on the phone, trying to give the keywords clearly and just hoping to reach the human customer service representative craving for meaningful communication? Then you know how important to sound human and provide some solutions for that person on the other side of the phone expecting a simple solution for a problem.

Come on! You are one of the only people who can solve these issues, and that makes you valuable. And nothing can beat the satisfaction that arises from well-done customer service. A nice phone call and a solution can make a customer’s day while poor service will turn them crazy. You know what I’m talking about. You had these feelings how many times already, right? Making others feel valuable can also teach you what kind of a service you also want from others.

You will be rewarded with feedback and get the chance to improve yourself!

Poor service is punished nowadays within seconds by the power of customers using social media channels and leaving reviews and feedback. But never forget, as Bill Gates famously says “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”.

You will have the chance to improve your communication and problem-solving skills by taking constructive feedback into consideration. Forget about the angry customers who do not value your service but care about the ones that highlight the points you deeply know that you need to work on. And who knows, maybe you will have to learn from positive feedbacks all the time!

You will learn how to overcome drama queens!

Have you ever participated in the school drama club? Or regretted that you haven’t done it when you faced those situations requiring acting skills?

When you are a customer care specialist helping various people solve the problems they face, you will have those moments feeling like a theatre actor/actress. You will be giving an amazing performance based on your scripted text and also going to have a lot of opportunities to improvise. Yes, customer service is a field you will have to follow a constructed script to ensure consistency between support provided by different agents but also a platform that requires a lot of instant decision-making and improvisation skills.

You may be asking yourself why it is even important. But learning to perform, being quality and service-oriented and providing the best customer experience will make you a different person. Don’t underestimate the value of having experience in this sector on your CV, a lot of recruiters will know how difficult to handle unexpected questions and problems faced by call centre agents. It will pay off!

You will learn a lot!

Let me elaborate it. These skills you will gain in your customer service representative job can be a gold mine when you move on with another career later on. You will surely have the chance to utilise your call centre agent skills including listening, empathy, rhetoric, communication, interpersonal, or improvisation and problem-solving in your future career steps, for sure!

The positive attitude that we have talked about earlier ensures customer satisfaction; being able to give a clear message, speaking understandable, controlling a dialogue or attentiveness that is the basis for listening skills and decision-making power you will gain from this experience will boost your soft skills. These are transferable and interchangeable skills that will be glad to have in your future work and life experiences. Spoiler: we, as recruiters, care about them A LOT! If you are inexperienced and want to gain working experience, many call centres are great places for that.

You will learn, besides all these, to be able to act as a team member in a big company, respond to supervisors, support your colleagues and enjoy the team activities and incentives.

You will actually enjoy it!

They said that it’s just a boring job that pays nothing, you just talk the whole day until your energy goes below zero and you go to sleep to wake up the same deadly routine about customer service jobs, am I wrong? Well, not everyone thinks the same way, there are other stories as well. I haven’t even mentioned the opportunities abroad (kept it till the end for the ones who truly values being a customer service agent).

Did you even know that it is one of the most demanded jobs all around the world that opens the doors for people who wants to work abroad? Yes, you can find a lot of countries you can just decide to go to today and you will be starting working next Monday in your own language! Hundreds of people are flowing around Europe thanks to global and international outsourcing companies recruiting multilingual customer service agents. And since the industry has a very bad reputation as you already know, they give extra support and care for their employees. Flight reimbursements, accommodation, bonuses, promotion opportunities, annual return tickets to your country, office amenities and more… All these great compensations and benefits that companies provide for their customer service specialists are beyond your imagination.

If you don’t believe me, why don’t you take a look at them?

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Customer Service Positions in Europe​