Poland has a very large number of call centre firms, and most of them are small. For a new consultant that can mean learning at the next desk; for a team coordinator it means little time for calm call practice. This guide pulls together Eurostat data and the EU occupation classification ESCO and shows what follows for training.
How the sector is structured
As across the EU, Poland has two kinds of contact centre, and the statistics count them separately.
- In-house teams. A bank, telecom operator, insurer or online shop runs its own helpline. Its staff are counted in the parent company's industry.
- Outsourced providers. A specialist company handles calls for other firms. In the Polish PKD classification this is class 82.2, call centre activities.
Eurostat's structural business statistics show 1,461 enterprises in class 82.2 in Poland in 2024, employing 16,393 persons (2021: 1,570 enterprises and 15,301 persons). That is about 11 people per firm on average, one of the most fragmented outsourcing markets in the region: the Czech average is about 34 and the Slovak one above 100.
Many more people work in in-house teams. The EU Labour Force Survey counts 155,000 people employed in ISCO sub-major group 42, customer services clerks, in Poland in 2024. The group includes contact centre clerks as well as receptionists, enquiry clerks and travel consultants, so it is not an exact consultant headcount. Telephone sales belong to a separate group (ISCO 5244).
Languages served
Polish is the base language, and the multilingual base is narrower than the EU average. In Eurostat's Adult Education Survey (2022), 23.0% of Polish clerical, service and sales workers aged 25 to 64 knew no foreign language (EU: 23.5%), but only 5.0% knew three or more (EU: 11.3%). One foreign language is fairly common; several are rare.
In practice a project in two foreign languages can mean a small team that is hard to backfill quickly. Everyone in it must be able to handle a difficult call as well as a standard one.
Roles and career paths
ESCO follows the international ISCO-08 classification and gives the Polish role names:
| Step | Role (ESCO) | ISCO-08 group |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Call centre agent (telephone sales) | 5244 |
| Entry | Customer contact centre information clerk | 4222 |
| Specialist | Call centre quality auditor, call centre analyst | 3341 |
| Team lead | Call centre supervisor, contact centre supervisor (in Polish: koordynator) | 3341 |
| Management | Call centre manager, contact centre manager | 3341, 1439 |
Poland's Integrated Qualifications System (ZSK) has published an application to include a market qualification called "conducting sales and telephone customer service". It covers selling products and services by phone and running telephone surveys. Its current status can be checked in the Integrated Qualifications Register.
Training challenges
Small firm, no trainer. With eleven people per firm on average, there is rarely anyone who only trains. Training falls to the coordinator, between calls.
Fewer firms train. In the 2020 Continuing Vocational Training Survey, 40.9% of Polish enterprises provided any training, well below the EU average of 67.4%. Participants spent 17.2 hours in courses on average (EU: 22.5 hours; 2020 was a pandemic year).
Sales and service in one person. The classification separates the telephone seller (5244) from the customer service clerk (4222), but in a small team one person may do both. The move from solving a problem to making an offer needs its own practice, or it sounds pushy.
The complaint that builds. The hardest call is the one where the customer is ringing again. Practising with a colleague rarely recreates that pressure.
One line to practise
When the customer should hear an offer after the problem is solved:
"Your request is closed now. While I have you, one quick question: does your current contract still suit you?"
Say it out loud five times until it sounds natural.
Practising these calls with DIRI AI
With DIRI AI a consultant practises a call by voice with an AI customer that is clearly labelled as AI and fictional, then reads a report on what to say better. A team can rehearse the complaint or the move into sales before it happens on a live line. There is a Free plan; see the pricing page.
Related pages: sales call centre team training, complaint handling call training and customer support de-escalation training.
Sources
All sources were read on 9 November 2026.
- Eurostat, Enterprises by detailed NACE Rev. 2 activity (sbs_ovw_act), class N82.2, 2021 and 2024. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/sbs_ovw_act/default/table
- Eurostat, Employed persons by detailed occupation, ISCO-08 two digit (lfsa_egai2d), OC42, 2024. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/lfsa_egai2d/default/table
- Eurostat, Persons knowing foreign languages by occupation (edat_aes_l25), 2022. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/edat_aes_l25/default/table
- Eurostat, CVTS 2020 (trng_cvt_01s, trng_cvt_25s). https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/trng_cvt_25s/default/table
- Integrated Qualifications System (ZSK), application "Prowadzenie sprzedaży i obsługi telefonicznej klienta". https://kwalifikacje.gov.pl/images/downloads/ogłoszenia_konsultacje/ministerstwo_rozwoju/8/Wnosek_o_włączenie_kwalifikacji_-_Prowadzenie_sprzedaży_i_obsługi_telefonicznej_klienta.pdf
- European Commission, ESCO, call centre occupations. https://esco.ec.europa.eu/en/classification/occupation?uri=http://data.europa.eu/esco/occupation/0ededdc2-050a-4ec3-8e70-6295105fcd19