Contact Center Fundamentals
2-day training course - $1,895
On-site delivery available
RCCSP
  Professional
    Education
       Alliance

What You Will Learn:

  • How to determine a contact center's mission
  • Alternative services that a contact center can provide
  • Contact center configurations and business models to consider, from a simple centralized center, to remote agents, home workers, and outsourcing solutions
  • Which stages of call processing you should measure, track, report, and act on; and how to do it
  • The top customer expectations centers must meet
  • Service level targets - what they are, what they mean
  • How to interpret contact center metrics and set realistic targets
  • Contact center business functions and job roles
  • How contact centers and other company departments interact
  • Creating and managing a workforce and the center's human resource capacity
  • Why people leave, what it costs, and how to improve agent retention
  • The causes of burnout, stress, turnover, and agent churn
  • How to structure your center's call handling process, from greeting to closure
  • The differences between efficiency and effectiveness, productivity and utilization, metrics and KPI's, and what you need to know about all of these performance measurements
  • Continuous quality improvement and how to achieve it
  • Reporting agent and overall call center performance
  • How to build a useful balanced metric scorecard for your center
  • How to build an agent performance scorecard that front-line professionals can use for self-management

Overview

This course was designed specifically for the business person entering or transferring to a call center, executives that oversee or set performance goals for the contact center, and those responsible for the set-up, design or redesign of a contact center. Contact Center Fundamentals presents the 'big picture", and introduces attendees to the component parts and performance factors that make up today's world-class call center. You'll learn how calls flow into and through the center, what underlies call center work capacity, efficiency, productivity and effectiveness, and exactly how to prepare, step-by-step, a customized balanced scorecard for managing your contact center 's performance and contribution to organizational goals.

After attending this course you will be able to "talk the talk". More importantly, you will have a renewed vision for the future of your call center and how to get there.

Course Chapters

Part I: What Contact Centers Are

  • Contact Center Mission, Models, and Contributions
  • Contact Center Structure and Staffing

Part II: How Contacts Centers Function

  • Tracking the Life of a Call

Part III: What Contact Centers Require

  • Call Arrival and Delivery Technologies
  • How Agent Resources Are Utilized
  • Contact Center Standard Operating Procedures

Part IV: What Contact Centers Produce

  • How Quality is Managed
  • Creating a Performance Scorecard

Who Should Participate

Contact Center Fundamentals is ideal for:

  • IT, human resources, marketing, and other professionals that support or interface with the company call center or help desk
  • Consultants and sales professionals with contact center clients and prospects
  • Newcomers to the contact center profession
  • Executives with contact center oversight
  • Leaders charged with forming a call center department or business
  • Outsourcing entrepreneurs
  • Financial analysts and directors

Important: Professonals with any level of call center work experience should not take this course.  This is an introductory course.  If you have worked in a contact center, please see either:

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this introductory course.

Agenda

Introduction

  • Overview of the Contact Center Fundamentals course
  • Goals and learning objectives for the Contact Center Fundamentals course

Chapter 1 - Contact Center Mission, Models and Contributions

  • Defining your contact center service mission
    • Contact center evolution
    • Attributes of a contact center
    • Information flows and business purpose: inbound, outbound and blended centers
    • Current and future channels of contact center communication
    • Differentiating contact centers from help desks
    • Types of contact center services
  • Contact center configurations and business models
  • Today's alternative contact center configurations
    • Single/Centralized
    • Multi/Decentralized
    • Domestic and offshore
    • Virtual
    • Distributed
    • On-demand
    • Remote agents and home workers
    • and beyond
  • The contact center's contribution to the organization
    • Cost centers vs. profit centers
    • Contact center products and returns

Chapter 2 - Tracking the Life of a Call

  • Flow of the contact center resolution process
  • The relationship between customer perceptions and internal contact center operations
  • Customer expectations
    • Callers' top three expectations of a contact center
    • Metrics that monitor performance on top customer expectations
    • Best practices for setting customer expectations
    • Service Level Agreements, service catalogs, and other tools
  • Contact center capacity - measuring customer access to the contact center
    • Blocked contacts
    • Wait time
    • Speed of Answer
    • Self-service usage
    • Abandoned calls
  • Contact center efficiency - measuring call handling effort and speed
    • How efficiency is measured
    • Talk time
    • After contact work
    • Hold time
    • Average handle time
    • How to increase efficiency systemically
  • Contact center effectiveness - measuring results
    • Conversion rates
    • First Contact Resultion
    • Quality
    • Customer satisfaction
  • Contact center productivity - measuring operational throughput
    • Abandonment rate
    • Inbound calls per agent
    • Emails per agent
    • Outbound calls per agent
    • Closed contacts
    • Escalation rate
    • Transfer rate

Chapter 3 - Contact Center Structure and Staffing

  • Business functions within a contact center
  • The contact center organization
  • Roles and responsibilities of contact center employees
    • The agent workforce
    • Front-line service delivery
    • Financial management
    • Human resource development
    • Training
    • Technology and telephony
    • Workforce management
    • Quality assurance
    • Strategic leadership
  • Cooperative relationships and dependencies between the contact center and other departments

Chapter 4 - Call Arrival and Delivery Technologies

  • Public Switched Telephone Network
  • Private Branch Exchange
  • Voice over Internet Protocol
  • Automatic Call Distribution
    • Skills Based Routing
    • Priority Based Routing
  • Interactive Voice Response: prompts, scripting and dialogue design
  • Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)

Chapter 5 - Agent Resource Utilization

  • Tracking agent resource capacity and uses
  • Building the agent workforce
    • Hiring
    • Training
    • Motivation and retention
  • Maintaining the agent workforce
    • Attrition
    • Burnout and stress
    • Turnover and agent churn
    • Staff shrinkage
    • Absenteeism
  • Forecasting future workload and agent resource needs
  • Scheduling efficiency
  • Disappearing resources
    • Schedule adherence
    • Auxiliary time
  • What available agents do
    • Available time
    • Idle time
    • Occupancy rate
    • Agent utilization

Chapter 6 - How Calls are Handled, in Detail

  • Four stages of the customer contact process
  • Best practices:
    • Scripts
    • Customer greeting
    • Issue discovery
    • Issue resolution
    • Call closure
    • After call work
    • Customer follow-up
    • Customer hold process
    • Customer transfer process
    • Customer escalation process

Chapter 7 - How Quality is Managed

  • Quality monitoring
    • Characteristics and behaviors associated with quality
    • Documenting agent characteristic and behaviors
    • Quality monitors
    • Scoring
  • The continuous quality improvement cycle
  • Coaching and feedback
    • Communicating feedback
      • Frequency
      • Methods
  • Customer satisfaction
    • Determining customer satisfaction
    • Setting satisfaction targets
    • Sample size
    • Steps to conducting a survey

Chapter 8 - How Performance is Evaluated

  • Factors effecting management's evaluation of contact center performance
  • Components of contact center value
  • Management initiatives and effects
  • Key Performance Indicators of contact center success
  • The Actionable Balanced Scorecard
  • Actionable Process Metrics
  • Resource Capacity and Utilization
  • Efficiency
  • Productivity
  • Effectiveness and Quality
  • Managing stakeholder expectations
  • Strategies for reporting and marketing call center successes
    • Customer satisfaction
    • Quality scores
    • Agent performance
    • Key Performance Indicators
    • Stakeholder objectives

Contact Center Fundamentals Certification

An optional certification exam is available for participants pursuing Contact Center Fundamental sCertification.

Contact Center Fundamentals Knowledge Assessment Exam: After the course, participants will have four weeks in which to take the online knowledge assessment exam. The certification exam is comprised of 75 questions and candidates are given 90 minutes to complete the exam. Candidates must achieve at least an 80% score in order to obtain their Contact Center Fundamentals certificate.

Registration Fees

The per student registration fee for this training program is $1,895 and includes:

  • 2-day instructor-led training
  • All training materials
  • Course certificate of completion
  • Take-home CD-based Toolkit including articles, software tools, references, checklists, planning tools, and templates

Class begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM each day. Business casual attire is appropriate. No jeans or sneakers please.

Register securely online with confidence or please call (708) 246-0320.

Seminar Schedule
July 8-9, 2021 Harrisburg, PA Crowne Plaza Harrisburg-Hershey

In-House Training Option

In-house, on-site training offers the added benefits of facilitated team interaction; a confidential environment where plans, processes, and policies can be openly discussed; minimized travel costs; and little or no travel time.  For support centers with a number of managers, supervisors, and team leads, on-site training can maximize your training investment.

Pricing for an on-site course delivered at your location is determined based on a "base fee" for up to four attendees, and a per person fee for each attendee thereafter.  On-site fees are all inclusive:

  • Base fee for up to 6 participants - $8,995 includes:
    • 2-day instructor-led training course
    • All training materials and shipping
    • Certificates of completion
    • Contact Center Fundamentals knowledge assessment exam
    • Instructor's travel and lodging expenses
  • Additional participants - $795 each

Additional travel surcharges will be charged for travel outside of the continental USA and for seminars scheduled within three weeks, or paid for within three weeks, of the onsite delivery date.

The customer site must provide suitable meeting space, any desired meals or refreshments, and the following presentation supplies:

  • Easel with flipchart paper and markers

Register securely online with confidence or please call (708) 246-0320.

Request In-House Training

Contact Center Fundamentals On-Site Training, up to 6 participants, $8,995
Additional Attendees, $795 each                            

More Training and Certification Courses

See the complete calendar of RCCSP Professional Education Alliance Contact Center Training dates and locations.

For more IT, technical and field support training course options, see the RCCSP Help Desk, ITIL, and Support Center Calendar.


Dates, Locations and Registration

What some past attendees say...

"This course was well worth the investment.  It was an excellent overview for both experienced, non experienced and newcomers to the call center environment.   -- Nancy Robitaille, Operations Manager, Olympus NDT, Quebec

"Great foundations course.  All my questions were answered and I learned a lot of new material." -- Juliana Maldonado, Call Center Outsourcing Services

"The opportunity for individual attention was key to this learning experience, as well as the instructor's ability to understand our current environment and adapt conversations accordingly." -- Vice President Operations, Centris Group

"Good speakers, great instructors, very knowledgeable. Our organization expects to realize a return on this investment in education with better methods to handle support centers and uniformity amongst support centers." -- Partner Manager, ACT, Inc.

"It exceeded my expectations.  I would absolutely attend another RCCSP training or certification program." -- Director, Help Desk and Corporate Services, Centris Group

Learn From the Industry's Leading Authorities
Recommended Follow-on Courses:
Call Center Supervisor Certification

Call Center Management Certification

Fundamentals of Workforce Management
Home

Training & Certification:
  » Call Center
  » IT Support Center
  » ITIL
  » Help Desk

  » Telecom

Call Center Operations
Technical Support
Call Center Technology
Online Support
Customer Satisfaction
Knock Your Socks Off
Help Desk Institute
Telecom Books
Communication Skills
Call Center Monitoring
Metrics / Benchmarking
CRM
Hiring & Retention
Outbound Telesales
Novelty Gifts & Humor

About Us
Contact Us

Terms & Conditions

Seminar agenda and assigned instructors are subject to change.

Payment is due prior to the seminar.

Public seminar cancellation policy.  Registrants may cancel up to fourteen days in advance of the seminar start date for a full refund, less administrative fees of $400.  Or, you may transfer your registration to another date or member of your company at no additional charge.  Please notify us as soon as possible. Registrants cancelling within fourteen days of the seminar will receive credit, less administrative fees of $400, toward any other Resource Center seminar.

On-site training scheduling and cancellation policy.  On-site training fees must be paid to reserve a training date.  Additional travel surcharges will be charged for travel to training locations outside of the continental USA and for training courses scheduled within three weeks, or paid for within three weeks, of the on-site delivery date.Organizations may cancel up to 21 days in advance of the seminar delivery date for a full refund, less administrative fees of 25% of the base fee.

If for any reason you are unsatisfied with the training, please notify the instructor by the end of the first day. If you decide to cancel the remainder of the training program, the instructor will collect all training materials.  Fees paid, less a prorata one-day on-site training base fee plus any travel surcharges, will be refunded.

Cancellation by provider. In the unlikely event that a seminar must be cancelled by seminar provider due to unavoidable circumstances, you will be notified at least two weeks prior to the seminar date, and your payment will be refunded.

Seminar provider is not responsible for losses due to cancellation including losses and penalties on advanced or non-refundable airfares.

In all circumstances, seminar provider's liability shall be limited to fees received.

call center certification training course