The Very Best Value for Your Training Time and Dollars ~ One Full Week of Comprehensive Management Training Including a Two-Day Hands-On Workshop With One-on-One Guidance

What you will learn:

• Assessing the current state of your call center
• How to determine your contact center's mission
• How to create a call center Standard Operating Procedures manual that includes best practices for call handling, documentation and customer service
• How to create effective Service Level Agreements with customers
• Relationships and inter-dependencies between the contact center and other company departments
• How to create effective Operating Level Agreements with internal staff and groups
• Key call center metrics and the relationship between key metrics
• The stages of contact processing to measure, track, report, and act on, and how to do it
• Organizing contact center management activities, responsibilities and impact -- from investment and capitalization, to resource utilization, efficiency improvements, effectiveness measures, productivity, and returns
• How to use a balanced scorecard approach to reporting agent or overall call center performance
• Current channels of customer communication and what to expect in the future
• What physically happens to a call, from arrival at the center to resolution and disposition
• How technologies work in a call center
• How to manage the center's human resource capacity, from building the workforce, forecasting workload and scheduling workers, to managing absenteeism and maximizing agent utilization in real time
• Best practices for forecasting call volume, call work load, and scheduling staff
• How to use Erlang formulas and workforce management tools to calculate the staffing needed to meet service levels commitments
• Preserving the workforce: Understanding why people leave, what it costs, and how to improve agent retention
• Keys to building a successful motivation and retention plan
• To establish a training budget and training plans for new hire, mentoring, and on-going training
• Guidelines for facilitating effective training meetings
• Processes you can implement to achieve continuous quality improvement
• How to create a quality monitoring process
• How to establish quality monitoring requirements for the call center
• How to build monitoring forms
• How to conduct a successful coaching conversation
• How to facilitate an effective meeting with staff and agents
• How to build a road map for implementing projects identified in class
• Beginning your project
• Best practices for project planning and project management

Overview

This 5-day learning experience is perfect for management professionals making a lateral move to a call center, as well as those charged with building a new call center or improving an existing one.

Call Center Management Training 5-Day Boot Camp Activity Plan

The course presents the 'big picture", and introduces attendees to the component parts, job roles, and performance factors that make up today's world-class call center. You'll learn how calls flow into and through the center, and how to pinpoint the areas of the operation that present opportunities for the most significant performance improvements.

Having built a solid foundation and understanding of contact center structure and purpose, the curriculum then focuses on comprehensive skills and knowledge necessary to manage the day-to-day operations of a contact center. Course content covers tactical in-the-trenches management responsibilities, from the most fundamental tasks of hiring, training, coaching, maintaining morale, forecasting, scheduling, and using performance metrics; all the way through quality assurance, cost management, strategy, leadership and more.

Each participant is put through the paces in this hands-on course, with self-assurance and confidence-building as instructional objectives. During the last two days of the course, participants will begin work on a process improvement or performance improvement project of their own choosing. Under the guidance of a RCCSP certification project reviewer, you will complete project objectives, scope, design, and planning steps. Participants will begin work on their project, in class, using RCCSP-provided checklists, templates, a forms library, customized action plans, and sample formats.

Participants interested in addressing specific design issues may devote 100% of the hands-on workshop time receiving intensive instruction and guidance from a specialized industry authority. Intensive call center design workshops are available for IVR design or redesign, Six Sigma design and optimization, and Quality Assurance process design and implementation.

For those pursuing CCCM certification, this is an opportunity for you to jump-start work on your certification project requirement. Call Center Management Boot Camp is the fast-track to completing CCCM certification requirements in the least amount of time.

Course Modules

• Contact Center Performance Evaluation
• Strategy and Assessment
• The Life of a Call
• Metrics and Key Performance Indicators
• Modeling Contact Center Structure and Business Functions
• Call Center Technology
• Call Arrival and Delivery
• Forecasting and Scheduling
• Call Center Staffing
• Agent Resource Utilization
• Training and Retention
• Coaching and Communication
• Managing Quality
• Quality Monitoring
• Call Center Project Planning
• Launching a Contact Center Process Improvement Project

Deliverables and Tools

• Current call center assessment
• SWOT analysis template for assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your call center
• Templates for creating service level and operating level agreements
• Template for creating a standard operating procedures manual
• Revelation by RCCSP™ - a leading workforce planning, scheduling, and performance analysis software tool.
• Quality monitoring form templates
• Sample metrics reports and tools
• Skill needs analysis template
• Phone screening interview template
• Interviewing questions based on skill needs
• Sample hiring letter
• Sample rejection letter
• Sample customer satisfaction survey tools
• Coaching discussion planner template to plan and script coaching discussions based on readiness levels
• 3 days of instructor led training, with activities, discussion, and practical application of new skills
• Student course manual and call center management reference
• CD containing tools, templates, and software used in class
• Post-course instructor coaching and email support

Who Should Participate

The Call Center Management 5-day Certification Boot Camp training course is ideal for managers charged with making noticeable performance improvements within their centers, or establishing best practice processes, and those who wish to earn an internationally recognized call center manager certification.  The Boot Camp is ideal for:

• Contact center managers and executives
  • Being transferred into the call center
  • Responsible for improving contact center performance
  • Responsible for re-organizing the processes of an existing center
  • Charged with designing and implementing a new call center department or business

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course. Course materials are in English, and attendees must possess a high level of English fluency.

Agenda

Day 1

Fundamentals Chapter 1 - Contact Center Missions, Models, and Contributions

• Defining your contact center service mission
  • 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
  • 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

Fundamentals Chapter 2 - The Life of a Call

• Call arrival
  • Blocked contacts
  • Extended wait times
  • Self-service
  • Abandoned calls
• Call processing
  • Average speed of answer
  • Average talk time
  • After contact work
  • Hold time
  • Average handle time
• Call disposition
  • Transfer rate
  • Conversion rates
  • Error rates
• Productivity
  • Contacts per agent
  • Closed tickets per agent
• Quality
  • How customer's evaluate contact center performance
  • The top four performance expectations
  • Service level targets
  • Methods of managing customer expectations

Fundamentals 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

Fundamentals 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)

Fundamentals 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

Fundamentals 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

Fundamentals 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

Fundamentals Chapter 8 - How Performance is Evaluated

• Factors effecting management's evaluation of contact center performance
  • Customer loyalty and retention considerations
  • Corporate marketability
• 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

Day 3

Tactical Management Chapter 1 - Introduction and Call Center Assessment

• Introductions and overview of the CCMC course
  • Goals and learning objectives for the CCMC course
• Perform a current assessment of your call center
• Perform a call center SWOT analysis
• Define a call center vision statement
• Identify and document near-term strategies for your call center

Tactical Management Chapter 2 - Metrics and Key Performance Indicators

• Assess your current use of Key Performance Indicators
• Understand the importance difference between metrics and Key Performance Indicators
• How to classify metrics for a performance management scorecard
• Understand each of the top call center metrics and performance indicators
  • A definition of the measure
  • Useful scorecard classifications
  • How to calculate the measure
  • How to use the metric or KPI in managing the call center
  • The relationships between key metrics
  • Establishing call center metric target values
  • Evaluating results

  ABA - Abandonment Rate ACW - After Contact Work AUX - Auxiliary Time Available Time AHT - Average Handle Time ASA - Average Speed of Answer Attrition Rates ATT - Average Talk Time Blockage Calls in Queue Contacts per Agent Conversion Rates CPC - Cost Per Contact Customer Satisfaction

  Employee Satisfaction Error Rates FCR- First Contact Resolution Forecasting Accuracy Hold Time Idle Time OCC - Occupancy Quality Schedule Adherence Schedule Efficiency Self-Service Utilization SL - Service Level Staff Shrinkage Transfer Rate

• How to use metrics and KPIs to achieve call center success
  • Verify that selected KPI's are valid performance measures for your call center
  • Conduct a Stakeholder KPI Analysis
  • Linking KPI target values to call center strategies and objectives
  • Align key metrics with customer expectations and satisfaction
  • Create your KPI Scorecard
• Understand the importance and use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs)
  • How to create and manage SLAs and OLAs

Day 4

Tactical Management Chapter 3 - Call Center Technology

• The role of technology in the call center
• Tracking the flow of calls through various technologies in the call center
• Call center technology tools and how tools are being used within the call center structure
• Current trends in call center technology
• Best practices for creating IVR scripts
• The pros and cons of virtual call centers
  • Benefits and risks of virtual call center reps
  • Business considerations before adding virtual reps
  • What to include in your Telecommuting Standard Operating Procedures manual
• Workforce management software

Tactical Management Chapter 4 - Forecasting and Scheduling

• Forecasting future call center volume and demands
  • Key forecasting principles
  • Metrics that effect forecasting
  • Forecasting limitations
  • Volume variation patterns that can facilitate forecasting
  • Planning for the forecasting process
    • Time intervals that correspond to variations in call volume
    • Selecting a forecasting time horizon
    • Planning for unanticipated changes or events
    • Assessing forecasting risks and hazards
    • Performing analyses
    • How and when judgment and intuition play a role in forecasting
• Forecasting call center agent workload
  • How to collect workload metrics
  • Analyzing historic call volumes and predicting variations and trends
  • How to calculate and forecast future workload
• Forecasting required staffing levels
  • Calculating staffing requirements using the Erlang C formula
  • Shrinkage and how it impacts call center productivity
    • Causes
    • How to correctly calculate shrinkage
    • Opportunities for controlling shrinkage
    • Developing a plan for controlling shrinkage
  • Adherence to schedule and how it impacts the call center
    • Schedule adherence variances
    • Calculating schedule adherence
    • Tactics for improving agents' adherence to scheduled
• Creating optimal staffing schedules
  • Schedule optimization techniques
  • Using workforce management software
• Developing an action plan for improving forecasting and scheduling in your call center

Tactical Management Chapter 5 - Staffing the Call Center

• Building your call center staff using the RCCSP 10-Step Staffing Model
• Assessing current call center staffing conditions
  • The current staff hiring process review
  • Skill gaps
  • Current attrition and its impact
    • Calculate the cost of attrition
    • Examine causes of attrition
    • Develop a plan to reduce attrition
  • The exit interview process
  • Working forecasted staffing requirements and workforce management practices into the process
• Prepare a business case
• Perform an Agent Skills Analysis
• Perform an Agent Skills Gap Analysis
• Call center job descriptions
• Conducting an agent search
  • Methods of searching for qualified candidates
  • HR Operating Level Agreements and the value of establishing parameters of support
  • Techniques for developing an employee referral program
• Pre-screening processes
• Correct use of candidate testing and assessments
  • Developing a testing process
  • Types of pre-employments skills tests and other assessments
• Simulation and observation techniques in hiring
  • Developing the process
  • How to select appropriate simulations
  • Methods of observation
  • Observation planning steps
• Face to face interviewing
  • Behavioral-based interviewing techniques
  • How to align the interviewing process with the job skills analysis
• The job offer
  • Verifying criteria for employment
  • How to draft effective offer and rejection letters

Tactical Management Chapter 6 - Training and Retention

• The impact of an effective training program
• Preparing the business case
  • Appropriate budget allocation for call center training
  • How to evaluate the current call center training plan and its effectiveness
• The continuous improvement call center agent training cycle
  • New hire training
  • Nested transitional training
  • Up training
  • Refresher training
• How to develop and communicate standard operation procedures
• A training program development design methodology
• Analysis of call center training needs
  • How to conduct a training needs analysis
  • Identifying training program stakeholders
  • Prepare a Stakeholder Impact Analysis
• Training program design
• How to establish training goals and objectives

Day 5

Tactical Management Chapter 7 - Coaching for Improved Performance

• Fundamentals of coaching
  • The special role of a coach
  • Your coaching role within the call center
  • Differences between coaching, critiquing, feedback and performance reviews
  • How to create a coaching culture
  • Qualities of an effective coach
  • Perform a coaching self-assessment
  • Assess your coaching fears and learn how to overcome them
  • Common coaching mistakes and strategies for avoiding mistakes
• How to define and prepare for a coaching session
  • Pre-coaching phase preparation
  • The coaching situation statement
  • Determining a person's disposition based on motivation and performance levels
    • The four dispositions
  • Selecting a coaching method and preparing for responses
    • Different types of coaching conversations and how to correctly conduct each for maximum effect
      • Performance Improvement
      • Counseling
      • Teaching
      • Motivating
      • Investigative
    • The five types of employee responses and how to address them
  • Establishing a coaching plan for team leads and supervisors
    • The 11-step coaching self-assessment
    • The coaching session Action Checklist
    • The 10-step coaching discussion planner
  • Practice coaching sessions
• Conducting the coaching session
  • Coaching techniques; how and when to utilize them
    • Active listening
    • Proactive questioning
    • Positive tone, words and body language
  • Notes, review, and good summarization technique
• Post-coaching follow-up action planning
• Fine-tuning your communication skills
  • Learn how to communicate effectively with different communication styles
  • Assess your communication style in class using the "Classic" (i.e. non-abbreviated) DISC Communication Style assessment
  • Strategies you can use to better communicate and adapt to others' communication styles

Tactical Management Chapter 8 - The Quality Monitoring Process

• Establish the quality requirements for your call center
  • Quality management defined
  • Defining the organization's concept of quality
  • Developing a quality monitoring program mission statement
  • How to define quality monitoring standards
  • Aligning quality objectives with customer satisfaction
  • How to communicate quality monitoring goals and value to agents, customers, and management
• Designing a quality monitoring form
  • Build a new monitoring form based on seven best practices
  • How to determine and categorize characteristics of a call that lead to quality
  • Guidelines to be used in evaluating call quality
  • Monitoring forms that incorporate the key service categories and call components
  • Creating a quality monitoring scoring system
  • How to define agent scoring objectives
• Establishing quality team responsibilities and parameters
  • Who monitors
  • How often should calls be monitored
  • Who provides post-monitoring coaching
  • The volume of calls to monitor
  • Methods by which call can be monitored
  • Determining the frequency and timing of call monitoring activities
• Performance evaluation standards
  • Performance measures for the quality monitoring process
  • Performance measures for the quality monitoring team
• Implementing a coaching and feedback loop for continuous improvement
  • The who, how, and when of providing effective monitoring feedback
• The calibration process
  • Standard deviation and uniformity of scoring -- how they relate
  • How to compute and use standard deviation to improve quality in monitoring
• Quality monitoring software and capabilities
• How to document the quality program and manage changes in the process
• How to use quality scores as a marketing tool with key stakeholders

Tactical Management Chapter 9 - Performance Improvement Project Planning

• Selecting and prioritizing performance improvement projects
• How to identify high-impact, affordable, worthwhile improvement projects
  • Financing criteria
  • Staffing requirements
  • Impact criteria
• Creating a business plan
• Proposing plans to management for approval
• Selecting, planning, and implementing your CCMC certification project

Certification and Testing

The Certified Call Center Manager (CCCM) certification is officially recognized by the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance and its members.  This is an internationally-recognized certification.

The certification process consists of three parts:

• Class attendance
• Achieving a passing score on the online certification exam
• Completion of a certification project

Class Attendance: Participants will complete a three-day instructor-led course, where they will participate in hands-on learning and group exercises under the observation of a Certified RCCSP instructor.  Upon successful completion of the course, an online login and password will be sent by email with instructions for accessing the certification exam.

Certification Exam: After the course, participants will have four weeks in which to take the online certification 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 certification.

Certification Project: To be completed within 6 months of completing the course.

Participants will be given a list of project topics and will submit their topic for approval within two weeks of completing the certification exam.

Topics will include items covered in the certification class such as creating and implementing:

• A call center Service Level Agreement
• A marketing plan
• A metrics report using a balanced scorecard approach
• A coaching discussion planner
• A staffing or hiring business case
• A quality monitoring form or calibration process
• A call center team skills gap analysis
• A customer satisfaction survey
• Quality monitoring standard operating procedure manual
• Agent standard operating procedures manual
• And many other options

To increase the likelihood of every participant successfully completing the certification project, feedback will be provided by the instructor for the first four weeks after project submission. The Certified Call Center Manager CCCM certification will be awarded upon approval and acceptance of the candidate's completed project.

The most recently certified CCCMs are listed here.

Registration Fees

The per student registration fee for this training and certification program is $3,895 and includes:

• 5-day instructor-led training
• All training materials
• Course certificate of completion
• Certification exam fees
• Breakfast, lunch and refreshments each day.

Class begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM each day. Continental breakfast is served at 8:30 AM. Business casual attire is appropriate. No jeans or sneakers please.

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

Seminar Schedule

Feb 13-17, '12	Austin, TX	Omni Austin Downtown
Mar 5-9, '12	Chicago, IL	Oakbrook Marriott
Apr 23-27, '12	Salt Lake City, UT	Location to be Assigned
May 14-18, '12	Atlanta, GA	Georgian Terrace
June 18-22, '12	Chicago, IL	Oakbrook Marriott
July 30-Aug 3, '12	Atlanta, GA	Georgian Terrace
Aug 20-24, '12	Boston, MA	Sheraton Commander
Sept 10-14, '12	Austin, TX	Omni Austin Downtown
Oct 1-5, '12	Las Vegas, NV	The Platinum Hotel
Nov 12-16, '12	Philadelphia, PA	Doubletree
Dec 3-7, '12	Tampa, FL	Location to be Assigned

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 4 participants - $15,995 includes:
  • 5-day instructor-led training course
  • All training materials
  • Instructor's travel and lodging expenses (for onsite presentations of 18 or less participants, in the continental US)
  • Certification exam fees and certificates of completion
  • E-mail and phone support to provide post-course certification project guidance
• Additional participants - $1595 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:

• Flip chart  easel with self-stick-backed flip chart paper pads and markers
• LCD projection unit and projection screen

Language Options

In-house private instruction and the CCCM certification examination is available in:

• English

Request In-House Training

For more training course options, see the entire Contact Center Training Calendar of dates and locations.

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