Starting salaries for call centre and contact centre staff have sharply increased in the past 12 months, according to research from IRS and the Call Centre Association (CCA).
Their fourth study looked at the reward packages of 191 organisations operating more than 400 centres, employing around 150,000 staff.
It found that starting salaries have risen well above the typical 3% basic pay award in the sector, and 43% of call centres provided pay increases across the board in the past year.
The median mid-scale annual salaries range from 12,500 for a trainee, to 34,618 for a call centre manager.
A third of organisations reported making changes to their salaries outside of the annual pay review. Lower-level customer service representatives (CSRs) were the largest group of employees to gain from pay rate changes, with 19% of organisations increasing levels of pay for this group.
The findings also show that public sector starting salaries are between 4.2% and 9.6% higher than their private sector counterparts.
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