Call Center Secrets Revealed

To most people, a call center is just an anonymous building full of telemarketers sitting in cubicles. When you need to call your credit card company to dispute a charge or get technical support for your computer, you are speaking to someone in a call center. Those are correct assumptions. And most people also know that while there are still many call centers located in the United States, more and more companies are closing their American call centers and outsourcing the work to India. That's where most people's knowledge of call centers ends. Let me tell you a few secrets...

CallCenter Secret #1: The company you "called" might not be the same company that owns the call center.

Many large companies have moved away from handling call volumes themselves. It's a lot cheaper to pay another company (one that own calls centers) to do it for them. A call center that handles calls from many clients only has to pay for headsets, phones, computers, human resources, payroll, and training for one place of business. A call center, therefore, can charge each client less per call for its services than if the company were to staff the necessary number of people and maintain the equipment.

Many call center employees are not allowed to disclose the name of the third-party company they really work for, even if you ask.

CallCenter Secret #2: Everything is outsourced.

Call centers don't just employ people trying to sell you stuff or help you fix your computer. Some large companies outsource human resources to call centers. If you've ever called an 800-number in the classified ads and been given a job interview over the phone, that was probably done by someone in a call center and not at the actual job site.

Likewise, many for-profit colleges and trade schools employ the services of call centers to contact potential students who have requested information online or called the 800-number at the end of a commercial.

Whether or not it's ethical to outsource human resources or college admissions is up for debate, but I know it gives me the feeling that all is not right with the world.

CallCenter Secret #3: You might not be calling a call center after all, but someone sitting at home in his pajamas.

Many call centers and similar businesses employ people to take calls at home. If you've ever ordered anything from an infomercial or ordered delivery from a restaurant chain, you may have just given your credit card information to someone sitting in front of their personal computer.

The way it works is that the home employee signs up for shifts (usually online), signs into the system at the appointed time, and handles calls routed to him. This person may have never met his employer face-to-face, but his computer has software that networks with the company's system. The person taking your call might never see the product you ordered in real life.

CallCenter Secret #4: Your "Do Not Call List" status will not prevent all solicitations.

If you have "opted-in" for information, then you will likely be called repeatedly by call center folks. Usually this happens in a sneaky way. For example, if you are looking for a job on Monster.com, you may have to click through advertisements for schools to get to the actual job postings. If you fail to uncheck the little box that says "I would like more information about School X," then you will get solicited because you've just opted-in.

The same rule applies if you mail in one of those postage paid reply cards that you get with the junk mail. You think you're going to get a brochure about low-cost health insurance, and instead you get twenty phone calls.

When you receive phone solicitations or call in to speak to someone and end up with a call center employee on the line, don't blame the poor sap on the other end of the line. Most of us are decent human beings. Besides, the call center industry is much bigger and runs much deeper than any one particularly persistent caller.