DECEMBER 8, 2000
HOT JOBS
Calling Call-Center Managers | With more open positions than ever, recruiters are intensifying the hunt for senior execs -- and employers are sweetening the pot
| Gary Ormont oversees plenty of phone calls as vice-president for customer-service operations at cable-TV shopping channel QVC. In all, he's in charge of some 6,500 phone lines in QVC's six call centers around the world. At full blast, those centers can answer 108,000 customer queries an hour. Among his other duties, Ormont tracks sales spikes with his team of call-center directors so that when a particularly hot item hits QVC's airwaves, enough customer-service reps are on hand to take orders.
Ormont, who has been with QVC since 1989, is also getting calls of another sort these days: from headhunters. A week rarely goes by, he says, that an executive recruiter doesn't contact him with a job opportunity in customer service at another company. So far he hasn't been swayed, but that doesn't stop the headhunters from trying. Indeed, recruiters report strong demand for senior managers who can oversee call centers and customer-service operations. Problem is, like in other industries facing talent shortages at the management level, there aren't as many qualified candidates as there are open positions.
"FREE AGENTS." "You have fewer people chasing more jobs," says Dave Haberman, senior partner at executive-recruiting firm Lucas Group in Atlanta. "Today's corporate-call-center executives are like free agents." This year, Lucas Group will place some 40 executives in the call-center industry, up from 20 last year.
The changing role of call centers explains much of the demand for talent. In the past decade, banks of operators who handle everything from complaints to orders for products have emerged from the backwaters as companies realize customer service may be the most effective way to differentiate themselves from competitors peddling nearly identical products. It's hard to say how many call centers exist today because definitions of them vary, but industry experts put the number at 140,000 to 200,000 in the U.S. and Canada.
Their budgets are on the rise. According to an annual survey by Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality, companies boosted their call-center budgets by an average of 22% this year, vs. 18% in 1999. The study polled more than 4,000 organizations with call centers in 20 different industries.
SPENDING LOADS. Budgets are growing in part because companies want their call centers to do more than they have traditionally. They're spending loads on technology so service reps can pull up a customer's file on their computer screen within seconds and see who the person is, how valuable their business is to the company -- and what they may buy on the spot if enticed with the right offer.
Indeed, market researcher IDC estimates that worldwide spending on so-called customer-relationship-management software will hit $12 billion by 2004, vs. $3.3 billion today. As more call centers start generating sales and contributing to the bottom line, "the need for senior execs to manage them has come with it," says Paul Stockford, chief analyst at Saddletree Research, an industry research firm.
Exactly who is that executive? It could be a vice-president for customer service, head of marketing or sales, director of business development, or even a chief customer officer. Whatever the title, the best candidates for the job often are people who started their careers in call centers, recruiters say. "They have to understand what it's like to work on the front line," says Connie Caroli at recruiting outfit TeleManagement Search. That hands-on experience can help them deal with the job's common management challenges, such as controlling turnover and implementing technological changes.
Top candidates can command big bucks. Average cash compensation -- before fringes -- for an executive overseeing a company's call centers is $194,000, according to a new survey by consultancy Willam M. Mercer. Several factors can sweeten the pay, including the number of call centers, the number of employees, and the complexity of the product or service being sold.
$150,000 RAISE. Haberman recently placed a candidate who stepped down as president of a small division at a credit-card company in the position of senior vice-president at a major bank. Now responsible for 10 call centers instead of five, he got a base salary bump to $410,000 from $260,000. The executive's skill in building strong ties to consumers helped land him the position, Haberman says.
At the credit-card company, for instance, he devised a plan to contact some 100,000 credit-card holders living in an area devastated by a hurricane. Those customers were allowed to suspend their monthly payments until they got back on their feet. Thank-you letters poured in from relieved people. "My client loved it," Haberman notes.
Stories like that give customer service a good name -- and get call-center execs noticed. Today, if a good one "is with a company for two to three years, that's a fairly long time," says recruiter Richard L. Bencin, who adds that he places 100 to 150 executives a year in the industry. "There are people willing to pay for their experience."
By Jennifer Gill in New York
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Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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