In-person Seminar. 2-day instructor-led training. Learn how call centers work, how they are put together,
what leads to call center success, and all the terminology you need to know to communicate
in the call center profession.
Overview
A call center is the area of office space where people addressing customer concerns
by phone sit together, right?
Well, no. Your call center is a full-fledged organizational function. Like sales,
accounting, manufacturing, or office administration, call centers have specific
human resource needs, specialized technologies, cost or profit targets, throughput
requirements, and strategic impact. With caller demands, call processing capabilities,
and customers to satisfy with a service product, call centers can be as complex
as small companies, complete with pyramidal reporting structures and internal business
functions. Or, they can be a simple as an organized, focused handful of skilled
people consistently delivering high-quality service.
If you are new to the call center industry, you are about to embark upon an exciting
phase of your career. Equally driven by intuition and experience as by science,
and with an impact powerful enough to break a company or drive it to stratospheric
achievements, the call center will provide real opportunities for you to personally
impact an organization's success.
This course was designed specifically for the business person entering or transferring
to a call center, and others responsible for interfacing with call center professionals.
Introduction to Call Centers 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 Objective
What you will learn:
- The overall structure of a call center
- The different types of call centers
- Call center trends
- How a call center delivers service
- How to manage customer expectations
- Call center functions and job roles
- How technology works in a call center
- The functional areas of a call center
- How call centers are evaluated
- The top 6 measures of call center performance
- The most commonly utilized metrics in a call center
- How to use a balanced scorecard approach to reporting agent or overall call center
performance
- Call delivery: How calls are received and routed to agents
- Call processing: The life of a customer contact from greeting to closure
- Call diagnostics: How the call handling process is tracked and measured
- Call center performance factors: Where to look when things go right and when things
go wrong
Who Should Participate
The Understanding Contact Center Fundamentals training course 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 call center clients and prospects
- Newcomers to the call center profession
- Managers and executives with call center oversight
- Leaders charged with forming a call center department or business
- Recently promoted agents and team leads and those with expanding responsibilities
Prerequisites:
There are no prerequisites for this introductory course.
Follow-on Courses
Course Outline
Day 1 - The Call Center Business
Introduction
- Overview of the Introduction to Call Centers course
- Goals and learning objectives for the Introduction to Call Centers course
Chapter 1 - Call Center Fundamentals
- Definition of the call center industry
- Call center industry statistics and the industry's overall role in the global economy
- The different types of call centers
- Types of contact center services
- Management goals and objectives for call center performance
- Customer expectations and objectives and how they are managed
- Trends for the 21st Century Call Center
Chapter 2 - Call Center Structure
- How call centers are organized
- Business functions and roles within a call center
- Infrastructure
- Agents
- Supervision
- Quality Assurance
- Human Resource Development
- Operations
- Training
- Marketing
- Information Technology
- Strategic Leadership
- Internal (intra-company) Support Functions and Roles
- External Support Functions and Roles
- Call center "stakeholders" and their role in the success of the center
Chapter 3 - Evaluating Call Center Performance
- The differences between a cost center and a profit center
- Internal vs. external call center support
- The meaning of "service level" and how service level impacts the call center
- The call center Cost/Satisfaction/Value equation
- The components of call center performance
- The top six key performance indicators of call center success
- The balanced scorecard concept and how it applies to individual and departmental
performance management
Day 2 - Call Center Anatomy, Processes and Terminology
Chapter 4 - Call Center Technology
- How a call is delivered to a call center using:
- Public Switched Telephone Network
- Private Branch Exchange
- Voice over Internet Protocol
- Automatic Call Distribution: Skills Based Routing and Priority Based Routing
- Interactive Voice Response: prompts, scripting and dialogue design
- Computer Telephony Integration
- Understand how and when technology can impact calls
- Blocked contacts
- Extended wait times
- Abandoned calls
- Self-service
- Call flow dynamics
- The queue
- Fluctuating demand
- Service level
- ASA- Average Speed of Answer
Chapter 5 - Call Processing: The Life Cycle of a Customer Contact
- Stages of the customer contact process
- Scripts
- Customer greeting
- Issue discovery
- Customer hold process
- Customer transfer process
- Customer escalation process
- Issue resolution
- Call wrap-up and closure
- After call work
- Customer satisfaction
- Customer Follow-up
Chapter 6 - How Call Handling is Tracked and Measured
- Key call center metrics and their importance to the call center
- AHT- Average Handle Time
- ATT- Average Talk Time
- Error Rates
- FCR- First Contact Resolution
- Hold Time
- Transfer Rate
- ACW - After Contact Work
Chapter 7 - How Agent Utilization, Efficiency, and Effectiveness are Tracked and
Measured
- Key call center metrics and their importance to the call center
- AUX - Auxiliary Time
- Available Time
- Contacts per Agent
- Conversion Rates
- FCR- First Contact Resolution
- Idle Time
- OCC - Occupancy
- Schedule Adherence
- Staff Shrinkage
Chapter 8 - Call Center Performance Factors: When Things Go Right and When Things
Go Wrong
- Forecasting and the critical success factors
- Scheduling and the critical success factors
- Understaffing and Overstaffing
- Absenteeism
- Burnout and stress
- Turnover and agent churn
- Common quality issues
- Strategies for reporting and marketing call center successes including:
- Customer satisfaction
- Quality scores
- Agent performance
- Key Performance Indicators
- Stakeholder objectives
Registration Fees
The per student registration fee for this training and certification is $1,795 and
includes:
- 2-day instructor-led training
- All training materials
- Refreshments
- Certificate of completion
Class begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM each day. Business casual attire is
appropriate.
To register, click on the "Add to Cart" button or call 443-909-6951.
