Interview Questions For Call Center Managers

What Do You See Yourself Doing In Five Years

This one is all about job commitment.

Some people make job hopping a career in of itself, and your answer here can be telling. Here, your interviewer is determining if you are:

• someone who sets goals
• someone who demonstrates commitment
• someone who is loyal

While no interviewer expects someone to stay at a company forever, try and craft your response in such a way that shows progression in your career, and alignment with the Companys needs and future. Again, self awareness is key your employer doesnt want to send you down an unwanted path, resulting in wasted time and energy for everyone.

Why Do You Want To Work For Us

Because managers represent the company to many, they have to believe in the companys mission. If they do not, chances are that the employees beneath them wont either. Companies only succeed when all their employees believe in and demonstrate its mission, values, and beliefs. So before hiring a candidate, ensure they are on the same page!

How Familiar Are You With The Call Center Industry

Jobs hire candidates based on their familiarity with the particular job of interest. The interviewer is trying to gauge whether you are informed on the current stand of the industry.

Tip #1: Keep your answer brief and accurate.

Tip #2: Bring out the primary significance of the industry.

Sample Answer

The call center industry works to receive and transmit massive enquiries via phone. It involves associates working in centralized offices to handles calls from multiple people. Correspondingly, they utilize technology massively to provide pleasant customer experience. Such diversification has brought significant change in todays digital age, as many job opportunities are promised.

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What Is A Virtual Call Center

The virtual call center provides a technology or software service, through which the customer associate or agent can connect to their customer from any location. This technology involves the host server and the equipment to run the call center. This service is rendered on a monthly or annual subscription. Agents can connect to the host server and can get access to the customer data. The benefit of a virtual call center is that you can work from home.

Tell Me About Yourself

This question is usually the opening ice-breaker. Take this time to highlight your accomplishments, strengths and previous job experience, while also mapping them to some of the specific desired qualifications outlined in the job description.

Be professional, but also show some personality. Beyond your experience and skills, interviewers are also trying to determine if youll be a good cultural fit. Your answer should be something like:

I was born and raised in Mankato, Minn., and graduated this May from Minnesota State University, Mankato with a major in communications. Interacting with people and solving their problems is what motivates me. Im always trying to fix things for family and friends, much to their chagrin. Thats ultimately what drove me to my past part-time positions in retail.

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Where Do You See Yourself Three To Five Years From Now

Its my first time to work in a call center so Im not set on a career path yet.

I know that I can become a team leader and eventually part of management.

My friends tell me that I could become a support staff like a QA or instructor.

My current goal is to master the job so Im qualified to grab opportunities that present themselves within the company.

What Procedure Do You Follow When A Customer Contacts You

The appropriate answer to this will vary depending on your contact center and industry. Still, any confident agent will be able to give you a rough outline of how to resolve common questions and problems. It should sound something like this:

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What Is Your Educational Background

Employers ask this question to understand how your education contributes to your skills as a call center manager. It’s likely that you already have call center experience, so employers may also use this question to get to know your other relevant experience. Try to relate your educational background or journey to the job listing.

Example:”I received a bachelor’s degree in business from Lakeside University. During that time, I was already working in a call center, which is why I changed my major from history to business. With the degree, I received a promotion to call center supervisor, and now I am looking to expand my management experience and intend to open my own call center one day.”

Why Do You Want To Work For Our Company

Interviewers want to understand your career intentions, as well as know if youve done your company research. Share something youve learned about the companys mission, values or reputation, and tell interviewers why its important to you. Your response could sound something like this:

During my research, I discovered that your company really values training and ongoing learning for your employees, and as someone who loves to learn new things and be challenged, this is important to me.

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How Can You Create New Opportunities For Customers Proactive Engagement

• Use internet service to contact a customer on social media
• Use mobile often to reach maximum customers by sending personalized context-relevant offers or services
• Customer Interactions must be relevant to customers interest to gain their trust and encourage them
• Analyze the customer data and behavior using a business intelligence tool to understand its expectation for the service you offer
• Use cloud platform to keep your service updated with the latest technology and with minimum expenses

Your Goals In A Call Center Interview

Your goal is to convince the interviewer that you are good enough based on the secret questions that I have shared.

However, just as the interviewer cant ask obvious questions directly, it wont be good for you to answer the same questions directly.

A person who says hes trustworthy cant be trusted.

A person who says hes honest is probably lying.

A person who says hes loyal is probably cheating on you.

Filipinos call this

Nagbubuhat ng sariling bangko.

How do I tell the interviewer that Im a good person without directly telling them that Im a good person?

Ill make a good call center agent!

Im very hard working!

Im professional and honest!

Im good at speaking English!

These are answers that many beginners make.

Read these sentences again?

How do the sentences sound?

Even if you read the sentences confidently, its going to sound awkward.

How do I tell the interviewer that Im a good person without directly telling them that Im a good person?

It took me several years to figure this out.

I studied the best practices at different industries including sales, marketing, negotiation, and psychology to put this together.

Heres the heirarchy.

The lowest level of answer is the direct answer.

The better answer is to give examples.

The best answer is to share stories.

We already discussed the lowest level.

Heres why it doesnt work.

You only talk about the positive trait.

You dont have proof.

When you talk about a positive trait, youll need to provide proof.

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Imagine That Two Operators From The Same Team Didnt Come To Work And You Can Not Reach Them On The Phone But The Team Has To Make Hundreds Of Calls On That Day What Would You Do

This situation happens often in a call center. Now, you should show two things in your answer. First one are excellent management and organizational skills. Say that you would try to reorganize people in the teams, and after a short training allocate someone from another team to the affected one.

Another thing to show is your willingness to take on the job, to get your hands dirty. You can say that if you did not find any better solution, and it was crucial to make the calls on a given day, you would simply take a seat and start making the calls yourself. This answer will sound very impressive especially in small call centers.

Tips For Making The Most Of Your Support Interviews

When interviewing potential support hires, you always run the risk of repeating the same questions, receiving the same answers, having the same small talk, and then promptly forgetting all the important details.

The antidote? Think creatively, establish a system, and then stick to it. You wont be left groping for questions, your interactions will be more memorable, and youll be able to standardize the circumstances under which you assess candidates.

A strategic approach makes for less fuss, more focus, and leads to the best person possible joining your customer service team. Below, Cassie Marketos provides some useful tips for conducting better interviews.

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S Of A Call Center Interview

The first part of a call center is the introduction.

You want to get to know each other.

Youll be asked to tell them about yourself.

The second part is where you discuss your past jobs and work experience.

The interviewer matches what you can do to what is required in a job.

Youll be asked to talk about your past jobs or talk about your career from the time you left school.

The third part is the job fit.

The interviewer assess if you are a fit for the job based on your past behavior and your attitude.

Youll be given different situations that are similar to what they need.

Are Additional Probing Questions Needed

If a candidates answers are vague, ambiguous, evasive, or dont fully address the question, ask follow-up questions triggered by the response.

Suggestions include: Im not quite sure I understood. Could you please tell me more about that? Im not sure what you mean by ___. Could you give me some examples? You mentioned ____. Could you tell me more about that? What stands out in your mind about that? Can you give me an example of ___? You just told me about ___ Id also like to know about . . .

Behavior-based interviewing isnt perfect, and its not a panacea for complex recruitment and retention challenges. Still, it is a tried and true methodology thats used by some of the worlds most successful companies.

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What Makes A Successful Call Center

This question shows employers how you measure success and what efforts they can expect from you as call center manager. Prepare for this question by thinking about the most important aspect of your job and describe how that aspect relates to success. You can consider things like improved sales, good customer service reputation and employees meeting their goals.

Example:”A successful call center meets quotas by putting customers first. The customers keep the company running, so they are the most important aspect to consider when measuring call center success. I would say that a high customer satisfaction and low call drop rate means a call center is doing very well.”

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Job Hopping Is A Big Problem In Almost All Call Centers What Would You Do To Retain The Best Employees Or Any Employees

Nobody really dreams of working in a call center for two years, let alone for a decade. People come and go, thats just how it goes in this business. Unless you pay them extremely well , most of them will simple leave.

You shouldnt wear pink glasses in your interviewyou should see the job realistically. Manager is not a magician. Nevertheless, you should at least outline some strategies that can help you keep the operators onboard for a little longer.

From my experience to such strategies belong:

• Building good relationships with individual agents, recognizing them for their work, praising them often.
• Creating a friendly atmosphere on the workplace, a sense of belonging somewhere.
• Having regular one on one meetings with the operators, hearing them out and identifying problems before they escalate to something bigger .
• Having a clear structure of compensation and rewards, so people know what they can gain if working hard.

* Special Tip: You can also download the full list of questions in a simple, one page long PDF, and practice your interview answers anytime later:

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Have You Ever Set Up A Call Centre Which Skills Did This Require

The candidate should know the technical details of running a call centre. With their answer, the candidate should demonstrate the ability to set up a call centre and provide the skills required for the task. Here is what to look for in a successful answer:

• Technical skills
• Experience in setting up call centres
• Networking skills

Example:

“Technical skills are vital when setting up a call centre because we rely heavily on computers and operating systems to run efficiently. I’ve never set up a call centre on my own, but I did assist management in doing so at my last place of employment. I believe my experience with Citrix services and Java Runtime helped make me an asset to my supervisor during the process.”

Describe A Time When You Used New Training To Improve Your Team’s Sales Outcomes

Employers ask this question to understand your managerial experience and how you use it to create positive outcomes in the workplace. When preparing your answer, consider a time when productivity rose or work became more efficient because of a training you implemented. Be sure to reference data points to show the team’s improvement.

Example:”In my last role as a call center manager, my team tried out a new software that would allow representatives to monitor call hold times and mark the perceived mood of the customer. At first, the software was not being put to use, and we saw no improvements, so I held a training to teach my employees how to use the software to their advantage. After the training, the representatives used the software to analyze how hold times affected a customer’s mood. My team began brainstorming ways to shorten hold times and saw an improvement in customer moods on calls, which raised our customer satisfaction by 8% in only a few weeks.”

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How Would You Handle A Situation Where A Customer Uses Abusive Language On Phone

As human is to error, customers are likely to get annoyed when particular products or services do not meet their expectations. Business should know how to handle such situations to avoid losing.

Tip #1: Demonstrate that you can handle abusive clients

Tip #2: Provide the steps you would follow to deal with the customer

Sample Answer

I would first stay calm and understand the problem from the customers perspective. I would also listen to him or her attentively to gauge the source of the problem. After calming him down, I would give some assurance that his issues would be resolved as soon as possible. Similarly, I would consider the unpleasant situation to do more assessment, hence avoiding repetition.

The Benefits Of Behavioral Interviews

Behavioral interviewing is based on the premise that the best predictor of future performance is past performance and can:

Save MoneyHiring an employee is a significant investment, and a bad decision can cost your business a lot of money. It can also have a long-term effect on a company because below-average employees can lead to disappointed clients and drag down team productivity.

Provide a better understanding of the candidateThe behavior interview format lets an interviewer gain a more in-depth picture of a candidate in ways that can help determine if they are a good fit for your organization. Its a way to measure soft skills, personality, problem solving, and work ethic.

Help predict the employees future behaviorQuestions like give me an example of or what will you do if can help interviewers understand if the candidate would approach common situations in a given role in the way the company would want.

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How Do You Go About Onboarding A New Employee

Getting onboarding right is crucial for success. You want to make sure your call centers new manager understands the importance of a good onboarding process and how to deliver one.

Look for candidates that highlight the importance of setting expectations, practical training, and creating ongoing opportunities for improvement.

How Do You Handle Calls From Dissatisfied Customers

In order to be successful as a call center representative, you should know how to navigate handle challenging customer conversations. It is important to remain respectful and focused on the customer’s needs while resolving their issue and creating a positive experience for the caller. In some cases, you may need to follow a certain protocol or bring in your supervisor to help you find a solution.

When answering this interview question, use the STAR method to describe the situation, illustrate what task you needed to complete, explain what action you took and provide the results of your efforts. You can use an example from your own experience or discuss a hypothetical scenario.

Example:I had a customer who was very upset about his subscription service which did not meet his expectations. As the representative, I apologized for the inconvenience and assured him that I would research his issue. After gathering more details, I discovered he was having connectivity issues due to a lapse in updating his software. I explained the issue and the solution to update his software, but he explained that he was considering canceling his service altogether.

The customer agreed to a brief hold while I discussed with my supervisor possible reparation for the inconvenience. I was able to give the customer an additional month of service at no charge. The customer seemed pleased with my solution and thanked me for solving his issue. He even agreed to sign up for additional service with us.

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