How much salary I can earn working in a call centre?

That depends. There are a few factors that govern how much you can earn while working in a call centre. Here are 4 of them:

1. The Specialization and the Products.

Call Centre jobs come in many distinguished services. There are customer supports for banking and financial products, IT applications, hospitality services,Telco products and so on. And each of the services may branch into a number of different niches.

For instance, if you are in the IT support, the products and applications you are supporting can be Windows applications, Cisco Network, Lotus Notes email clients, SAP, Oracle and so on. The more specialised the application, and the more the demand for it, the higher the salary you can get. Generally, those supporting robust application such as SAP and Oracle will get higher pay compared to those working to support Windows program.

Also, many of those working supporting the TM products (those are not TM employees but rather the employees of the outsourced company) may not like what I say but most of the times, I found out that their pay is often lower than those people supporting multinational products such as Hewlett Packard (HP) or Dell products.

2. Your Level of Support

The call centre job has its own organizational and team structure. Often, it is structured to accommodate different level of support, where those working in the higher level structure are normally more competent and handle more complex issues. They are also usually more hands-on technical staff. The higher the level you are in, the higher the salary.

It will be common for you to see the work force group divided into different level of supports. For example, there are first level support, second level and so on. The first level support usually refers to those problems the support staff can solve through phone consultation, and are more often than not, considered ‘easier problems’.

If the problems need support from the higher level, then it will be passed to the higher level technical support. Sometimes, the 2nd and higher level support needs the staff to visit the client’s place and solve the problems there. At each of the support level, there will be one team leader that is responsible to oversee the performance of his team. This team leader will report any cases or problems to the shift or incident manager above him/her.

3. Language and Regions

Malaysia is well known of its capability to provide call centre support in multi languages; hence many companies prefer to have their support division set up in Malaysia rather than at cheaper places like India and China. There are people who speak English, Malay and Chinese dialects like Mandarin and Cantonese.

Also, we have people who speak Japanese, Korean, French and Italian! The more language you speak, the higher your chance to get more salary and this often comes in the form of language allowance.

For instance, if you work supporting the ExxonMobil users in Asia Pacific, you may be supporting those users from the Japan, so the need for Japanese speaking support staff is inevitable. If you are a graduate from one of those Japanese universities, here lies a great opportunity for you.

Also, depending on the region you support, you work time may not be the same. For example, those Dell staff supporting the Australia & Oceania regions may begin their work at 5 or 6am and finish work around 4pm every day. Because of the ‘hardship’ of the working time, your earning is somewhat higher than those working in the normal 9-5 hours.

4. Shift

Critical products & services such as banking applications require the system to be up and running 24 hours, 7 days per week. Any problems and issues with the system need to be attended immediately. Hence the support team will be structured to cover 24 hours operation, and the staff will cover the designed shift.

Depending on the company’s operation, the shift may be an 8-hour shift of 12-hour shift. If you work in 12-hour shift, most likely you will work a total of 15 days per month (in one week, you work for 3 days and rest for 4 days, and vice versa).

Working in shift will entitle you for the shift allowance, and depending on the company, it may range between RM300-600 per month.

Other posts you may want to read:

1. IT Call Centre job prospect in Malaysia
2. 7 Facts About Call Centre Job You Need to Know
3. Dell Graduate Attachment Program
4. Malaysia Salary Guides Compared
5. How to Calculate Overtime Salary