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, outsourcing, and hosted 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, achievable performance 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
• Quality monitoring processes
• Continuous quality improvement and how to achieve it
• Reporting agent and overall call center performance

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 function, people responsible for the design or implementation of a new center, and professionals that advise, sell to, or support contact center professionals.

Understanding Contact Center Fundamentals 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 your call center's service product affects customers. 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

• Missions, Models, and Contributions
• The Life of a Call
• Contact Center Structure and Business Functions
• Call Arrival and Delivery
• Agent Resource Utilization
• Call Handling
• Managing Quality
• Contact Center Performance Evaluation

Who Should Participate

Understanding 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
• Training managers and specialists
• Financial analysts and directors

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this introductory course.

Agenda

Introduction

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

Chapter 1 - Contact Center Missions, Models, and Contributions

• Defining your contact center service mission
  • Attributes of a contact center
  • Contact center evolution
  • 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 - 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

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
  • 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

Registration Fees

The per student registration fee for public training and certification program is $1,795 and includes:

• 2-day instructor-led training
• All training materials
• Certificate of completion
• Refreshments each day

Class begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM each day.

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

Seminar Schedule

Mar 28-29, '11	New York, NY	Sheraton LaGuardia
Apr 11-12, '11	Chicago, IL	Hyatt Lodge
Apr 25-26, '11	Houston, TX	Alden Houston Hotel
May 16-17, '11	Atlanta, GA	Grand Hyatt Buckhead
June 6-7, '11	Boston, MA	Hyatt Cambridge
June 20-21, '11	Las Vegas, NV	The Platinum Hotel
July 11-12, '11	Toronto, ON	Park Hyatt
July 25-26, '11	Greenville, SC	Westin Poinsett
Aug 1-2, '11	Chicago, IL	Hyatt Lodge
Sept 12-13, '11	Washington, DC	Henley Park Hotel
Oct 17-18, '11	Phoenix, AZ	Sheraton Crescent City Center
Nov 7-8, '11	Dallas, TX	The Adolphus
Nov 14-15, '11	Ft. Lauderdale, FL	Riverside Hotel
Dec 5-6, '11	Las Vegas, NV	The Platinum Hotel

Maximize Your Training Investment - Attend Courses Back-to-Back

Contact Center Foundations immediately precedes these courses in select locations:

• Supervisory and Leadership Skills for Contact Center Supervisors
• Call Center Manager Training and Certification
• Fundamentals of Call Center Workforce Management
• The Art and Science of Contact Center Workforce Management: Hands-on Certification Boot Camp

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 - $7,200 includes:
  • 2-day instructor-led training course
  • All training materials and shipping
  • Certificate of completion
  • 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:

• Two easels with paper and markers
• LCD projection unit and projection screen

Request In-House Training

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.