What You Will Learn:

Participants will learn to:

• Assess callers' service expectations
• Develop question skills to elicit critical information
• Apply proven communication processes and methods
• Move calls forward to resolution
• Properly document techniques
• Execute follow-up activities
• Effectively communicate with customers through email and web chat
• Diffuse conflict and create a less-stressful, positive experience for the customer
• Maximize the productivity and effectiveness of the team
• Direct personal contributions toward team synergy and successes

Overview

Contact Center Professional Training and Certification is designed for call center, help desk, customer service and technical support professionals. Attendees will learn best practices, skills and techniques for effective, high-quality front-line customer care.  The course presents opportunities to learn and practice skills that build customer relationships and create a positive business image.

After the training, participants will be able to recognize customers' needs and adapt strategies to meet those needs.  The course focuses on relationship building skills and problem resolution techniques that can be applied first and foremost to customer interactions, but also to everyday communication (and conflicts) within the team and with team leads and supervisors.

Attendees will:

• Explore the personal paradigms, attitudes and motivators that influence caller behavior
• Learn how to assess customers' preferred communications styles
• Practice steps in the contact resolution process, including effective listening, response and conflict management skills
• Apply newly-learned skills that result in quality, efficiency, and professionalism throughout customer interactions

The post-course CCCP certification exam is highly recommended for all attendees.  A formal, standardized certification exam ensures that information has been absorbed and that every member of your contact center team uses consistent terminology, best practices, and skills.  Your contact center staff will "be on the same page" and will better understand criteria by which their performance is evaluated.  Standardization also improves intra-team communications, agent-supervisor communications, and increases the productivity of coaching sessions. 

Core 2-day Certification Course Chapters

• Chapter 1 - Understanding the Customer
• Chapter 2 - Listening Skills
• Chapter 3 - Questioning Skills
• Chapter 4 - Professional Communication Skills
• Chapter 5 - Call Handling Skills
• Chapter 6 - Adaptive Communication Skills

Expanded 3-day Course Chapters

An expanded 3-day version of this course can be delivered on-site at your location. On the additional day, participants will learn about difficult caller behaviors, online chat and effective writing skills, conflict management, and will participate in team-building exercises.  This final module promotes team cohesiveness through intra-team understanding, appreciation, communication, and the expression of common purpose.

• Chapter 7 - Managing Caller Behaviors and Emotions
• Chapter 8 - Conflict Management Skills
• Chapter 9 - Email and Chat Writing Skills
• Chapter 10 - Team-Building Skills

Refresher Training for the Already-Certified
    and 1-Day Continuing Education Courses

Do you have CCCP-certified professionals due for a 2-day annual refresher training?  Veteran contact center professionals as well as the newly on-boarded will benefit from the same core CCCP skills training (days 1 & 2).  Would other professionals benefit from a 1-day Continuing Education course delivered on-site at your location?  Offer a Continuing Education opportunity to your center's experienced front-line professionals by inviting them to attend day 3 of an extended CCCP.  Day 3 topics are perfect for fulfilling annual training and career development requirements.   For just $395 per person, anyone in the contact center can join a 1-day CCCP Elective training course (day 3 of an extended CCCP) up to a class maximum of 28 participants.  Day 3 electives include:

• Elective A - How Customers Perceive Quality
• Elective B - Stress Management and Contentment in the Contact Center
• Elective C - Managing Personal Productivity with Metric Scorecards
• Elective D - How Your Timing Impacts the Customer Experience
• Elective E - Fundamentals of Incident Management (for help desk and IT support analysts)
• Elective F - Standard Operating Procedures Workshop
• Elective G - The Continuous Quality Improvement Process

Who Should Participate

The Contact Center Professional training course is ideal for:

• Front-line contact center and help desk professionals, and team leads
• Quality assurance professionals, coaches, and mentors that lead, evaluate quality, and develop front-line contact center and help desk service professionals.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this introductory course.

Agenda

Day 1

Chapter 1 - Understanding the Customer

• The role of the contact center professional
  • Customer focus
  • The tactically-skilled contact center professional
• The contact center professional skill set
  • Customer service
  • Listening
  • Questioning
  • Professional communication techniques
  • Contact handling
  • Conflict resolution
  • Call Control
• Understanding stakeholders and stakeholder value
• Understanding customer needs and expectations
• Why customers contact the center

Chapter 2 - Listening Skills

• Listening v.s. hearing
• Characteristics of personal listening styles
• Steps in processing verbal communication
• Challenges: distractions, interference, mental drift, and more
• Active listening skills
• Strategies to use to overcome active listening blocks and barriers
  • Impatience
  • Flagging Concentration
  • Focus
  • Open-mindedness
  • Personal biases
  • Noise
  • Poor transmission
  • Physical fatigue
  • Slang, jargon and acronyms to avoid
• Strategies for enabling and restoring active listening
• Assessing a caller's true expectations - how to listen for what a customer really wants
• How fact and opinion differ
  • Listening for words that convey facts
  • Listening for words that convey opinions
  • Strategies for addressing customer opinions
• Listening for what the customer is not saying
  • Verbal and non-verbal paralinguistic cues
  • Cues that signal emotions and changes in attitudes

Chapter 3 - Questioning Skills

• The art of skillful questioning
• Asking the right question at the right time for the customer
• The four types of questions; how and when to use each
  • Open-ended
  • Closed-ended
  • Probing
  • Verification
• Structure and key words to use with each question type
• Strategies for applying questioning techniques – how, when, and why
• Techniques for handling awkward questions and reviving failed communications
  • Unraveling the customer question that can’t be understood
  • How to respond to a question for which you have no answers, but should
  • Explaining a solution that the customer just can’t grasp
  • Conveying a correct, but unwelcome, resolution
• Gathering information from an unresponsive customer

Day 2

Chapter 4 - Professional Communication Skills

• Using components of communication to your advantage
  • Words
  • Tone
  • Body Language
• Effectively selecting and using tone and word alternatives 
  • How to use positive language and avoid negative language 
  • Using tone to engage the customer 
  • Techniques for improving tone 
• How and when to use volume to:
  • Convey meaning
  • Control the conversation
  • Maintain interest
  • Impart authority
• Steering a conversation with inflection 
• What conversational pace conveys to the customer 
• Techniques for controlling rate of speech – yours and the caller’s
• Empathy and sincerity 
  • What empathetic phases convey to the customer 
  • Using proper verbiage to impart empathy
• Minimizing the emotional impact of a call
• How to say no without saying “no”
• Body language that will impact your performance
• Key words to avoid in conversations with customers

Chapter 5- Call Handling Skills

• The four phases of the contact resolution process 
• Managing the first impression 
  • The five components of a greeting 
• Asking the right questions to gather accurate, needed information 
  • Steps to follow in contact discovery 
• Moving a call forward to resolution - the process of combining knowledge and resources
  • Steps to follow in contact resolution
• Contact closure - communicating the resolution and the reason
  • Steps to follow when closing a contact
  • Properly documenting customer contacts
    • Classification
    • Assigning priority attributes
  • Follow-up contacts
  • Setting realistic timeframes
• Customer hold, transfer and escalation processes
  • Steps to follow before putting a customer on hold
  • Routing the unresolved contact
  • The transfer process 
    • Transfer with hold 
    • Live transfer 
  • The escalation process 
• Call handling strategies 
  • Managing customer expectations 
  • Setting customer expectations for 
    • Hold time 
    • Timeframes 
    • Delivery times 
    • Call backs 
    • Follow-up 
    • Priority levels 
    • Pricing 
    • Service level 

Chapter 6 - Adaptive Communication Skills

• Communication style profiling
• Predictable communication styles
• What communication style profiling can tell you about the caller
  • Preferred work environment
  • Preferred speaking pace
  • How one gains security
  • Motivations
  • Measures of progress
  • Fears
  • Irritations
  • Major limitations
  • Effectiveness enhancers
• Adapting your communication style to the caller’s
  • Dominant style
  • Influential style
  • Steady style
  • Conscientious style
• Predictable communication shortcomings and flashpoints
• How to assess a caller’s communication style in real time
• Assessing a caller’s conflict communication style
• How to alter your communication style, caller by caller, for optimal results
  • Voice
  • Opening
  • Interaction Style
  • Response to Concerns
  • Reaction to Emotions
  • Method for Communicating Justification, Evidence and Support
  • Requests
  • What not to say

Optional Day 3

Chapter 7 - Managing Caller Behaviors and Emotions

• How to handle specific caller behaviors using strategies and learned skills and techniques
  • The confused caller 
  • The blame game caller 
  • The VIP customer 
  • The faux VIP 
  • The know-it-all caller 
  • The angry caller 
  • The talkative caller
  • The hostage caller
  • The emotional caller
  • The by-passer
• Managing unruly customers
  • Procedures to be followed when encountering an unruly customer
  • Effective disengagement - procedures for handling customers who have crossed the line
    • The disconnection process
    • Transferring with warning

Chapter 8 - Conflict Management Skills

• Identifying causes of conflict in a contact center setting
• The value of conflict management skills
• Conflict management styles
  • Assessing your own conflict management style
  • How to choose an effective conflict management style to achieve the desired outcome
  • Collaboration exercise
  • Accommodation exercise
• How to handle a complaint
  • The 12 steps of complaint handling
• Customer recovery  - What to do when expectations have not been met
• Conflict resolution best practices
• Words and phrases that exacerbate conflict
• Winning phrases that diffuse conflict

Chapter 9 - Effective Email and Chat Writing Skills

• Essential traits of a responsive customer service e-mail
• Your use of e-mail
• Component parts of e-mail
  • The heading
  • to:, cc:, or bcc:?  What recipient prefaces tell the recipients
  • Composing an effective subject line
  • Greeting alternatives
  • Techniques for writing an effective e-mail message
  • Proper closings and signatures
• Writing in an active voice v.s. passive voice
• Full sentences v.s. fragments and run-ons
• Strong verbs that add power to your writing
• Bullets and numbering, which to use and when
• Font, color, bold, italics, and underlining and what each means
• Polite, positive, personal tone
  • Words that affect tone
• Personalizing your email
• Idiomatic expressions and how to avoid them

Chapter 10 - Team Building Skills

• Assess your team's teaming IQ
  • Performing a Team SWOT Analysis
  • Identifying the team's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
  • Assess your own teaming abilities in key team-building performance areas
• Team architecture and balance
  • The role of a team
  • Identifying your own role within the team
  • Strengths and talents each team member brings to the team
• Developing effective intra-team communications
  • Performing a communication style self-assessment
  • Communication styles within the team
  • Best practices for effective communication and interaction
  • Strategies for effectively communicating with each team member based on their personal communication styles
• Team building exercises
• Five steps to becoming a better team
• Building an action plan for developing a more successful team effort

Certification Opportunities

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

The certification process consists of two parts:

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

Class Attendance: Participants will complete a minimum two-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 60 questions and candidates are given 90 minutes to complete the exam.  Candidates must achieve at least an 80% score in order to obtain certification.

Course Instructors

Members of the RCCSP faculty have both contact center management and training delivery experience.  They are certified at “Master Trainer” level for delivery of the CCCP course.  RCCSP instructors are located throughout the USA.

So that case studies and examples used in class can be presented in terms that are familiar to the attendees, your instructor may contact you in advance of the training seminar to discuss your specific organization, product or service, range of customers and experiences, and any special issues that need extra focus.

In-House Training Option

In-house, private training offers the added benefits of:

• Facilitated team interaction
• A confidential environment where customer interactions, team synergies, conflicts, and front-line policies can be openly discussed
• Minimal travel time and costs
• Accessibility
• Cost effectiveness

If your support center has a number of front-line professionals and team leads, an in-house program can maximize your training investment.  To discuss pricing and instructor availability, contact RCCSP at (708) 246-0320.

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

• Up to 6 participants - $8,995 (2-day abbreviated course) or $12,995 (3-day course) including:
  • Instructor-led training
  • Instructor's travel & lodging expenses in the continental USA
  • Course manuals
  • Shipping costs
  • One online certification exam administration for each attendee
  • Personal communication style profiles, one for each attendee
  • Certificates of completion
  • Engraved crystalline awards for those earning certification
• Additional participants in CCCP program, 7th and on - $695 each
• Additional non-CCCP Continuing Education participants for day 3 only - $395 each

Additional travel surcharges apply 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:

• An easel with self-stick flip chart 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.