Interview with a call center project manager

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Today's interview with the Project Director of Nirro Call Center!

Oleg Kashansky manages the project office, monitors project managers, distributes projects among performers. The rest, in the interview!



Oleg, tell me, how long have you been working as a PM in general and at Nirro Call Center in particular? How did you get into this path? Why didn't you go into another business niche?
Let me remember...It's been more than 4 years already!

At one time, I was looking for vacancies on the Internet and completely by chance came across a vacancy for a supervisor in a call center, I was interested, I just wanted to try myself in a new field.

I responded and had an interview with the director that same day. They didn't hire me as a supervisor and offered me a job as a sales manager. I started the path of a salesperson, or rather continued, because I had already been in sales before. I got tired of it, sales are not my thing. Maxim suggested trying myself in project management, I got interested! I was appointed as a junior PM and began training, I began to study PMBok, articles. At that time, the project department was just being formed in Nirro and I became, in fact, a senior project manager!

What do you like about this job? After all, in addition to communicating with people, this is creative work. A constant search, so to speak.
Really creative. Usually, a project manager simply administers a project. In a call center, a PM prepares scripts and develops sales methods. Isn't that creative?

I like that the work is without stagnation and routine, new tasks and interesting developments are constantly coming in. The creative mood is almost constant.

What difficulties do you encounter in the process of work? Do clients interfere with your creative flight, or are there certain limits?
Difficulties happen. Most often – the Customer’s misunderstanding of responsibility for their product. Many believe that they can pay money and a miracle will happen. But that doesn’t happen. Of course, we work within the framework, if we talk about the same scripts, but within the framework we have creativity. I also train my managers. Difficulties happen, but all are solvable, as experience shows.

Tell us HOW do you take on a project? Where does the mystery of launching begin for you?
I receive the collected information about the project from the sales manager, analyze it, see if the material provided by the customer is suitable for use in the project, then business opportunity seekers email list contact the customer, get acquainted and inform about the project strategy. In general, we have a fully regulated process, I spent a long time thinking about the optimal algorithm for launching the project.

The launch begins after all the approved agreements on the base and script, from this moment all the mystery begins))) It happens that the customer chooses the wrong strategy and we urgently decide together what to do. Fortunately, the Customers listen to us.

So the main relationship with the customer lies with you? It turns out that you are like a buffer zone between the customer and the contractor. Do you always manage to avoid sharp corners and come to a compromise?
Yes, that's right, I am the eyes and ears of the project. Yes, you can describe it as a buffer zone)))

We are all interested in the result, which means compromise is inevitable! It is difficult with some customers, though. Many hear only what they want to hear. The main problem is that not everything is sold directly over the phone, and the customer does not want to accept this fact and we have to argue. But we are all adults, we can always come to an agreement!

Can you give an example of something that can't be sold over the phone?
There are many examples, I will give the most typical ones:

- very complex technologies in IT, it is impossible to sell directly

- goods that are sold only at a personal meeting

- jewelry

- real estate, by the way

Oleg, tell me, is writing scripts also your responsibility?
Yes. We tried working with so-called "scriptologists", the experiment failed. It's easier for me to describe the proposal myself than to talk about all the nuances of the project. In addition, changes are regularly made to the script during the call, you can't run to the scriptologist.