How to Hire a Call Center Agent

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Does Your Growing Business Need A Call Center Agent?

Understanding the steps behind hiring a call centre agent, including data about candidates looking for call centre agent jobs, salaries, and key terms to include in your job description, can help you stand out from the competition to reach, attract and hire quality candidates.

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Our mission

Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

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Call Center Representative: What is the cost of hiring?

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Why hire a call center agent?

The reach of your company can be greatly increased by hiring a Call Center Agent. Your company will gain profit from satisfied client encounters if you have a committed team member taking calls and helping the clients with their inquiries. A call center agent also keeps thorough records of every call they receive, allowing you to maximise the value of your leads.

Contributions of a great call center agent:

  • Offer customer support via every medium and anytime.
  • Help consumers by having in-depth product knowledge. This helps to deliver customers a satisfactory experience.
  • Promote sales and outreach by building better customer relationships.

Deciding between a full-time vs freelance call center agent

Most call centers work round-the-clock. They offer 24×7 customer support, thus they have mainly full-time employees who work a variety of shifts. In such situations, with the round-the-clock operation, hiring a full-time employee will ensure that your company has reliable phone coverage if you receive calls constantly. You have complete control over your staff, and you can ensure that customers who call your company have a consistent experience. A full-time call center agent will help in driving customer satisfaction. It will aid business and also create a good reputation for the company.
 
Hiring a freelance call center agent might provide you with the extra coverage that you require. A freelance call center agent can help seasonal or festive businesses to keep up with their temporarily increased call volume. An e-commerce site needs extra people around the holidays or festive season. If you are having trouble in filling specific shifts, such as weekends or nighttime hours, you can consider using a freelancer.

What are the different types of call center agents?

A call center often employs a structure that enables calls to be escalated, if necessary, to someone with greater authority. Using this framework, the team is better able to manage various kinds of calls and assign various job responsibilities to each role. In a call center, people have the following hierarchy:
 
  • Call Center Agent: The typical entry-level employment for a call center representative is to take calls in an inbound call center or to make calls outbound in a call center. For most callers, call center agents are the first point of contact. They offer the appropriate customer support depending on the circumstances.
  • Senior Call Center Agent: Some call centers hire a range of levels of agents, with senior roles requiring more expertise and knowledge. They frequently handle more difficult circumstances than usual.
  • Team Lead: A call center agent with experience can advance to the position of a team leader or supervisor. In this position, they are in command of a team of agents. When a representative needs assistance, they answer calls, coach their team, provide feedback, fix problems, and take calls.
  • Call Center Manager: The manager sits above all team leaders and offers guidance and support. This person is in-charge of both general issues and day-to-day operations.

Where to find a call center agent?

To find the right call center agent for your business, try different recruiting strategies like:

  • Hire people who work in customer service: Consider hiring from other customer service industries, such as retail professions, to discover people who already know how to communicate with consumers.
  • Put up flyers: Hanging posters in areas where job postings are frequent can attract applicants. Post about your situation outside the building if your firm is in a busy area.
  • Promote internally: Offer a current worker who performs well in a senior call center representative position, or consider hiring a promising newcomer from a different department for an entry-level representative role.
  • Referrals: Ask your current call center agents for referrals. Offer them a referral amount to get their colleagues and friends to your company. Current employees always have a vast source of resources.
  • Job portals and social media: To reach a large audience, place ads on job-search websites like Monster, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and others. Use social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to advertise open call center agent positions.

Post your job online: Try posting your call center agent job on Indeed to find and attract quality call center agent candidates.

Skills to look for in a great call center agent

A great call center agent candidate will have the following skills, attributes, and work experience that reflects:

  • Effective communication skills: Call center agents should have great communication skills. They should be an attentive listener to understand the caller’s query, and to provide solutions.
  • Knowledge retention and recall: Call center agents should have a good memory for this fast-paced work. They should be able to instantly recall information about the callers. There should be no hesitancy or lack of conviction on the agent’s part.
  •  Speed and efficiency: Fast and efficient customer support service is highly valued by the callers. Callers do not want to hang around for longer. A call center agent with great speed and efficiency can listen to and resolve the problems of more callers.
  •  Creative problem-solving: Call center agents should be able to solve any problems. They need to be creative to arrive at a solution that will satisfy the customer. They should be able to look beyond the scripts given to them.
  • Organisational ability: Call centers are busy workplaces. They need good organisational skills at every level. Agents need to be able to juggle multiple tasks while talking to the callers.
  • Empathy: It is an important quality of a call center agent. A friendly approach helps in building a good rapport with the caller. Agents should have empathy for a caller’s issue.

Writing a call center agent job description

A thoughtful job description is critical to finding qualified call center agent candidates. A call center agent job description includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities, and the preferred skills for the position.

When writing your job description for a call center agent, consider including some or all of the following keywords to strengthen the visibility of your job posting. According to Indeed data, these are the most popular search terms leading to clicks on call center agent jobs:

  • Call center
  • Fresher
  • Fresher call center
  • 12th pass
  • Hindi call center
  • Freshers job vacancy
  • Telecaller
  • Call centre
  • Customer care executive

Interviewing call center agent candidates

Strong candidates for call center agent positions will be confident answering questions regarding:

  • Customer service ethos
  • Telephone customer service experience
  • Customer complaints addressed

Need help coming up with interview questions? See our list of call center agent interview questions for examples (with sample answers).

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FAQs about how to hire a call center agent

Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.