If you’ve ever lost sleep over competing with bigger, shinier employers – the ones with the brand recognition, the fancy offices, the name everyone’s heard of – we’ve got some news.
It probably doesn’t matter as much as you think.
When we surveyed over 100 contact centre professionals and asked them to describe their favourite role, not a single person mentioned a brand.
Not one person.
They talked about their team, their manager. Flexibility and feeling supported. But brand? It didn’t even make the conversation.
We asked respondents what they look at when deciding whether to apply for a contact centre role.
Here’s a look at the results:
– Salary transparency: 64%
– The job ad itself: 61%
– Company website and values: 60%
– Employee reviews (Glassdoor, Indeed): 55%
– Brand recognition / company size: 36%
Almost twice as many people care about salary transparency more than if they’ve heard of you.
Oh, and look at this: 66% of people who said the job ad matters to them don’t prioritise brand at all. They’re judging you on how well you describe the role, not on how recognisable your logo is.
This is the bit worth thinking more about. When candidates research your company, they’re not doing it the way customers do. They’re not looking at your product pages or your Trustpilot reviews or that award you won in 2019.
They’re on LinkedIn or Glassdoor, or maybe texting a mate who used to work for you. They’re trying to figure out what it’s like to work there. Not from your marketing team but from the people who’ve lived it.
Which means your job ad isn’t just a list of requirements. It’s often the first real impression someone gets of what you’re like as an employer. If it’s vague, full of jargon, or reads like it was written by committee in 2015, that tells them something.
If it’s honest, clear, and sounds like a human wrote it, that tells them something too.
The companies winning on candidate attraction aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest names. They’re the ones being upfront about pay, realistic about the role, and authentic about their culture.
When people described their favourite contact centre job, the same themes came up over and over:
Nobody said “I loved working for a household name.” They said things like “my manager actually listened” and “I could do the school run” and “I believed in what we were selling.”
The things that make people remember a role fondly are human things. Like connection, autonomy, and purpose. Feeling like you matter.
You don’t need a massive brand to offer those. You just need to mean it and show it.
We also asked what would put people off applying entirely. The top three:
Notice what’s missing? “Never heard of them” isn’t on the list.
Candidates aren’t scared off by obscurity. They’re scared off by red flags, bad Glassdoor reviews, and vague salary bands.
They’re scared of job ads that scream “we’ll overwork you and underpay you.”
If your employer brand is working against you, it’s probably not because you’re unknown. It’s because something in how you present yourself is raising alarm bells.
If you’re a lesser-known business competing for contact centre talent, this is genuinely good news.
You don’t have to out-cool the fintechs or outspend the big insurers. You have to be clear, honest, and human. Transparent about pay and realistic about what the job involves.
The candidates who care most about brand are only 36% of the market. The other 64% are looking at how you show up, not how famous you are.
This is one of seven findings from The Great Contact Centre Survey; our research into what contact centre workers wish employers knew about attracting, hiring, and keeping the right people.
Download the full report to see what else the data revealed.
