A Journey to the Center of a Competence Call Center

Competence Call Center, Austrian founded company, is in its 15 year of activity on the market and celebrated the moment last week, with a special orchestrated event organized in Berlin.

And, in the middle of the celebrations, Competence Call Center also chose to open the doors of its biggest center in Berlin to the journalists.

What can you see in a call center?

I presume what can you see in a call center depends of that very facility, company’s business culture and whether the management cares about the employees or not. It can be either a small place with a lot of crowded people (I saw something like that at some point) or a nice, modern, 3-storeys office with a very modern feeling and design, as CCC’s center is.

Together with some of the managers, we got a full view of the center and also a glimpse of its stories, procedures and steps to do when working in a call center.

Contrary to any preconceptions – some say call centers are a place where only young people go when they need to make the money -, Berliner team from CCC includes all ages, from very young and hip people with funny styled haircuts to more mature people that don’t fit in any way the stereotype image. And they all have a thing in common: you can see they all care about their clients’ customers and their problems.

The mixed group comprising CCC’s managers and journalists seemed to not interfere too much or at all with employees activities, as they were all busy taking calls and solving signaled issues as soon and as effective as possible.

Armed with directional headphones, call protocols and fast fingers on the keyboard, the main Berlin CCC center has 1,000 agents at customers’ service, ready and with a licence to solve any problem.

Stories within stories

The main hosts that showed us the behind-the-scenes secrets at CCC’s main center in Berlin were Andreas Ortmann and Benedikt Dormann. Andreas is the manager of the center, while Benedict is responsible for the Samsung team.

Samsung is a client the company handles since 2011 and for which provides various support: telephony customer contact and written services, including live chat and Facebook. Samsung team includes 280 employees with a mission: to answer 1st and 2nd level inquiries in 3 different languages. CCC’s work for Samsung was recognized internationally, with Gold at Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service.

The trophy – recognition for the performances of CCC’s 007s – dominates the awards shelves in one of CCC Berlin’s meeting rooms. “That’s the most important one, right there!”, Benedikt told us proudly, pointing to the trophy received for his team’s work.

Curiosity is something that will definitely go wild when visiting a place that falls into a category you heard a lot about, but you didn’t really explored. Therefore, you start asking questions and get answers on the spot, German style!

Andreas explained that Germany is the biggest market for CCC and the company has here 4 centers, from which 2 in Berlin (1000 and 700

employees), one in Leipzig (650 employees) and one in Dresden (400). In total, on all markets – Germany + other 6 -, CCC has 4,500 employees deserving clients from various sector, with Samsung and Zalando being 2 of the most important. Other clients that entrusted CCC with their customer care activities are: Ryanair, Payback, UPCdth, CocaCola, and many more.

Not only the services rendered for Samsung brought accolades to CCC, but also the ones for Zalando (People´s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Customer Service).

007s, Samsung’s 007s

CCC’s work for Samsung needs to be explored a bit more. For one thing, the customer care services are tailored for each product branches of the client, with dedicated teams to help solving any issues related to tablets or smartphones or lights.

Moreover, Samsung’s 007s are required to have extensive knowledge about Samsung, the brand and the products, to be familiarized with the latest hardware and devices so they can help efficiently the customers. That is why they are regulars in Experience Labs, where they receive regular on-site coaching’s and are asked to deal with TVs, mobiles, cameras or Home Appliances and even get “Home-in Samples”‘ delivered to their places to help be better at doing their job.

Maybe that, combined with internal team buildings organized by CCC, make the Samsung 007s be loyal and motivated and even be the face of Samsung, at least in in-house advertising posters.

What else do you need to know?

I have no idea what someone else would say and I surely can see it only through customer’s eyes! But I can share what I found out and that is that call centers – at least CCC’s one that I had a firsthand experience with – are businesses that care: about the clients, about clients’ customers and about their employees, the wheels that makes all spin and the key for success in this field of work. And, though it will sound a bit stereotypical, call centers are business for which people matter. So, next time when you call to snap on some random provider’s services or you receive a call to answer how happy you are with the products from a certain company, bite your tongue, be nice and polite and think that those people’s job has at its core the care for customers, namely me and you
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