You’ve been scrolling job boards for twenty minutes. You’ve found three contact centre sales agent roles that look decent. They offer good pay, hybrid working, and a company that seems like it might not be terrible to work for.
Then you see it. “Essential: previous contact centre experience.”
And you close the tab, because you’ve spent the last two years in hospitality, or retail, or maybe a bar where you handled complaints, upsold meals, and somehow kept smiling at the person who sent their steak back three times.
Here’s why you shouldn’t have closed that tab though – you might be a better hire than someone who’s been in a contact centre for years. You just don’t know it yet.
We recently surveyed over 100 contact centre professionals. People currently doing the job, people who’ve built careers in it, and people who’ve moved on.
52 out of 105 didn’t have any contact centre experience when they started. That means, nearly half of the people working in contact centres right now wouldn’t have got past the “essential experience” filter on most job ads.
And when we looked at people who came from hospitality, retail, or other customer-facing backgrounds?
75% of them stayed for over a year. (Trust us, many heads of recruitment in contact centres would love this retention figure.)
Your time dealing with the public face-to-face, handling complaints, juggling a Saturday lunch rush – that’s not irrelevant experience. It’s arguably better preparation.
So don’t count yourself out. The people doing the job are telling us: it’s not about where you’ve worked. It’s about what you bring!
When we asked contact centre workers what makes someone good at this job, three things came up again and again.
Communication and active listening. We don’t mean being chatty. It’s more the ability to hear what someone’s really saying, understand the issue behind the question, and respond in a way that makes sense.
Empathy and patience. This is when you’re able to stay in someone’s corner even when they’re being unreasonable. Treating the person on call number 47 the same way you treated the first.
Resilience. This is all about bouncing back from a rough call. Not carrying one bad interaction into the next.
If you’ve worked a customer-facing job, you’ve been practising all three. You’ve just been doing it without a headset.
87% of the people we surveyed said anyone can succeed in a contact centre with the right training and support. Only 11% believed you need some innate quality that can’t be taught. The people doing the work are saying the same thing: you don’t need to be the finished article on day one.
Here’s where we feel a lot of candidates go wrong. They apply to anything that looks vaguely right without checking what the company’s like to work for.
Our survey found that 55% of contact centre workers check employee reviews before applying. But Glassdoor isn’t the only place worth looking.
We recommend trying Indeed reviews, browsing Reddit threads about the company. Maybe try searching LinkedIn for current employees and see what they’re posting. You could also WhatsApp that friend-of-a-friend who works there.
You’re not looking at their products or their Trustpilot score. You’re trying to find out what it’s like to work there. What the managers are like and – and this is a biggie – whether people stay or leave after six months.
The things that should make you pay attention: salary transparency (64% of candidates said this matters most), a clear and honest job ad (61%), and whether the company’s values feel real or just corporate wallpaper (60%).
The things that should make you pause include vague pay details, bad management reviews, and anything that hints at a culture where you’ll be treated like a number. (Those were the top three deal-breakers in our research.)
If you get to the interview stage, the questions you ask matter just as much as the answers you give. Here’s a checklist of things worth raising – especially if you’re coming from outside the contact centre world.
Q “What does onboarding look like here, and how long before I’d be taking calls on my own?”
This one’s important. Our research showed that people who felt rushed during onboarding were 2.5 times more likely to leave within six months. If the answer is “two weeks and you’re on the phones,” that’s worth knowing now. A good employer will invest in getting you ready, not just getting you started.
Q “Is there a buddy or mentor system for new starters?”
Having someone to go to who isn’t your manager came up repeatedly in our survey. It’s a good sign if they have one. It’s a conversation starter if they don’t.
Q “Will I get to listen to real calls before I go live?”
Call listening and shadowing was the second most requested onboarding improvement. If a company builds this into their process, it tells you they understand how people learn the role. If they don’t, it doesn’t mean run – but it’s worth asking why not.
Q “What flexibility is there around working location?”
86% of the long-stayers in our survey work hybrid or remotely. If flexibility matters to you, ask about it upfront. It’s not a cheeky question. It’s a practical one.
Q “What would you say makes someone successful in this team?”
This one’s for you. Listen to how they answer. If they talk about traits and behaviours – communication, empathy, resilience – that’s a company that hires for potential. If they reel off a list of systems and targets, that tells you something too.
Landing a contact centre sales agent role isn’t about having the right line on your CV. It’s about showing up with the right qualities, doing your research, and asking the questions that help you figure out whether the role is right for you too.
If you’ve spent time working with the public — in a restaurant, behind a bar, on a shop floor — you’ve already been building the skills that matter.
The talent pool is wider than most employers think. And so is the pool of people who’d be brilliant at this job, if someone would just give them the chance.
This article draws on findings from The Great Contact Centre Survey: research into what contact centre workers wish employers knew about attracting, hiring, and keeping the right people. Read the full report to see what else the data revealed.
