How you view something is dependent on your perspective of it, from within things appear very different to from outside of them.
When I joined Norwich Union in 2000 I joined the online wealth management industry within an insurance company, I didn’t join the contact centre industry. This is because one was part of another, thus to me it was a role within online wealth management.
Within 12 months I left my agent role and moved into compliance, then MI and finally resource planning, all within a contact centre operation, within online wealth management.
So where has the term “contact centre industry” come from?
In my opinion it’s been created by those, like myself, who have a level of independence from a singular organisation, but work within the contact centre environment. It’s a grouping by which you can have a louder voice, connect with similar people, identify common roles, challenges and environments and you can of course use such groupings for sales purposes (I’m just being very honest here).
However, very rarely in operational life are contact centres grouped so generally, in fact many people working within strive to demonstrate their uniqueness from others.
So does it matter?
On a day to day basis of course not, but I would caution you to consider your audience when using the term to avoid any confusion or argument.
What does matter is the perception of contact centres, it would be fantastic to have a professional qualifications like HR and Finance do, but it could it ever apply to all contact centre roles? I doubt it and nor should it, some people take a contact centre role as they see it as a job, not a career (which is perfectly understandable).
Customers often have a dim view of contact centres for the service they provide, but not because of the person they spoke to. Organisations perhaps have the least constructive view of their own contact centre, a production/factory view that inevitably reaches the higher levels when savings are required, or more productivity is needed.
What should we do about it?
All we can do it to continue to strive to show the value the contact centre provides and how that value increases with the right people within. A tough ask in the current economic climate and for those who work remotely because it’s difficult for them to show their quality outside of data lead measurements and opinion.
We should celebrate when someone's career started in a contact centre, even when it's lead them away from us and we had to replace them.