Call centers are nothing less than a revolution in India. The young brigade of India, fresh out of college and raring to go has got a fabulous opportunity to begin career at a call center. Some students join it merely to start earning some pocket money. There are numerous call center jobs for fresh graduates and even experienced professionals. These call centers could either be of international companies or even of domestic companies. Nearly a decade ago, the culture of call centers invaded the Indian scene and has completely changed the way youngsters look at jobs now.

Call centers are of two types: Inbound and Outbound. The inbound customers are those that handle customer queries and take calls. Many international companies have based their call centers for customer services in India. These are voice-based services. Selected candidates for these call center jobs are given voice modulation training, thorough knowledge of the product and also a sense of the culture of the area of whose customers they are dealing with. In these call centers, 24x7 calls are received from customers who are looking for any sort of information or want to lodge a complaint or place an order or anything that they want to say.

The outbound call centers are those that make calls to people. Generally, these are sales calls aimed at generating leads and getting in more business. The employees at outbound call centers are required to understand their products and services well and pitch them to the customers. Again, these are voice-based services where the employees are required to make calls. Extensive training is imparted to these call center workers to be able to drive better sales by understanding the needs of the customer well.

Jobs at call centers are advertised through newspapers, job sites and on company sites. The best part about call center jobs is that they readily hire fresh graduates. These graduates are trained under the supervision of trainers and seniors. The call centers offer high starting salaries and are the compensation paid is the main attraction for those working here. Call centers also offer many motivational activities to their employees. All this is done to retain talent as attrition rate is quite high in this industry. Students do not consider call centers as long-term careers but there are many who have stayed on with this industry to carve out long-term careers. They acquire managerial posts and start leading teams after three-four years of experience.

A typical call center is like a service center that has appropriate telecom facilities and access to Internet. Call centers provide both web-based and voice based information and support to domestic or international customers. Call centers provide a huge spectrum of services and are useful in all industries such as banking, credit collections, hotel/airline reservations manufacturing, customer service, order desk, catalogue sales, security, pharmaceuticals, utilities, market research, technical queries, food service, etc.

This career is best suited to freshers looking to start their career or retired professionals or even housewives. The field gives good growth opportunities to those working in here. Professionals from the tech field, HR, marketing can find good job opportunities at call centers. Though there are no particular educational qualifications required to join a call center, generally, graduates with good command over the language are preferred. For call centers servicing clients in eth western world, candidates must possess a good command over the English language. They should also have excellent communication skills, basic knowledge of computers, sharp presence of mind, ability to talk confidently in unfamiliar situations and patience. Sometimes, there are difficult customers to handle on phone and a call center executive must retain his cool temperament to deal with such situations.

There are irregular shifts in call centers. Call centers that service clients in the US have main workload at night so there are mandatory night shifts. However, there are many perks that come with call center jobs. Most call centers provide free meals and transport facilities to their employees. There are also other incentives and career growth opportunities that call centers promise to their executives. Thus, there are both negative and positive points of working in a call center. There are call centers located across the country but Gurgaon, Noida, Hyderabad and Bangalore have become the hub of call

Centers in India.

Few useful links:

http://www.naukri.com/

http://jobsearch.naukri.com/callcenter-ites-jobs/