CALL CENTRE Not a Dead End Job!


“I regarded call centre work as a stopgap job, but here I am, 10 years later, in charge of the site where I took my first call”


Sharif-Paul Hamuda, 29, from Hunton Bridge, near Watford, is a new Site Director for three call centre operations for outsourced customer relations firm Sitel in Watford, Hemel Hempstead, and Bletchley, Northants. He manages 350 people, in the past having even managed some of his previous bosses


When Sharif-Paul Hamuda left University, his dream was to go into the entertainment business – 10 years on, he has ended up in a different career with unexpected benefits, but not quite in the way he had expected.


“After graduation, I took a job I thought would last a few months in a call centre operated by a company called Sitel which is hired by other companies to run their customer service functions.”


“Like many of my friends from this area, I’d worked with Sitel before to earn a bit of money straight after Sixth Form before I studied at London Metropolitan University in 2000. I did a music production course as that’s what I wanted to do at the time. I had my own event organisation and promotion business while I was at University – essentially working as a DJ in the evenings.”


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But Mr Hamuda’s experiences in his “stopgap” job at Sitel surprised him. “We took calls from clients booking their holidays. I realised that the work I was doing with some of our very well-known client’s outsourced call centre team was part of the entertainment business.”


Mr Hamuda was soon promoted to the back office function of two


prominent onsite solutions teams in the Watford site office, handling customer complaints as part of the Guest Care Team. In contrast to the negative public image of such roles, he thrived in his new role.


“I realised that it’s quite a challenge to deal with people who are upset and turn around the call from a negative to a positive. It’s a buzz


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