Nina Kawalek is principal of The Resource Center for Customer Service Professionals (RCCSP), a contact center training organization with courses and programs in the United States, Canada, and Caribbean/Latin America.

 

We approached her, recently, to identify and discuss key training trends and what is driving them.

 

 

Given the current economic challenges, and the fact the many companies have cut discretionary spending budgets for items like training and travel, an obvious trend has been an increased interest in distance learning options like Web-based virtual courses and self-study courses. There has been a surge in registrations for the online Service Representative Certification training courses and exams. The program is suitable for both call center customer care and internal tech support professionals.

 

“We see support managers registering themselves, trying it out, and then purchasing the course at a volume discount for the rest of the team,” said Kawalek.

 

Companies are also taking advantage of the online multi-part specialty certification courses, with exceptional savings. Training managers arrange for a single internet and audio connection in a company training room or boardroom. Entire teams of professionals can attend one class per week at the same cost as purchasing a virtual course for a single employee. Virtual training and certification courses in the series format are available for Contact Center Supervisors, Quality Assurance, Workforce Management and Operations Management training.

 

 

For those companies that still have available training dollars, but have had travel budgets curtailed, in-house classroom training is becoming more attractive. Historically, in-house courses required roughly ten or more participants to be cost-effective. But today, training companies are lowering the minimum base fees associated with on-site training to permit scheduling of in-house courses with as few as five attendees. Right now, we see some of the best pricing ever for private on-site training courses.

 

The market is showing the greatest interest in on-site Supervisor Training, especially in small call centers with under eight supervisors; and in Call Center Foundations. This last one is a training option for company professionals that work outside the call center, but need to understand how the department functions in order to support it: like HR, IT, Sales and Marketing, and Finance. Getting various stakeholders together in one on-site training course to discuss customer support can result in a very productive, and enlightening, balancing of perspectives.

 

“In a private training environment, there’s an opportunity to get all the skeletons out of the closet, too, in a discussion facilitated by an objective outside expert,” explains Kawalek. “Participants can openly discuss the contact center’s most serious deficiencies without jeopardizing company confidentiality or exacerbating internal conflict.”

 

 

As a result of all these stay-at-home trends, outside training providers have cut back their public open-enrollment classroom course schedules. Those that continue to offer training courses around the country have reduced minimum enrollment requirements. The result is more intimate classes with fewer attendees and a much more personalized experience. Customer satisfaction ratings for public contact center management courses have never been higher.

 

For those unaffected by travel restrictions, it’s a great time to join one of higher-level public open-enrollment courses taught by industry experts, like those on management, new-age technologies, metrics, or six sigma design, recommends Kawalek. There is plenty of free consulting to be had as part of a smaller group, whereas two or three days of the same consultant’s time would run three times the price of the course.

 

 

Again, the slowed economy is the driver. High quality customer support has become a defining and differentiating feature in commoditized product and service markets. Contact center departments long regarded as cost centers are gaining respect as their customer retention value -- a critical element in business survival today -- is being appreciated. Quality has become paramount, and management teams are looking for ways to capitalize on the market's demand for quality service.

 

RCCSP’s one-day and two-day courses, Fundamentals of Call Center Quality Management, and Quality Management Training and Certification, respectively, have been in much greater demand, especially on-site where quality as a competitive strategy can be discussed and brainstormed openly. Even a one-day hands-on workshop on how to identify and monitoring quality components can have dramatic effects on quality scores and customer perceptions, says Kawalek. Hands-on instruction in quality monitoring forms design has been added into the curriculum so that participants walk away with finished product.

 

 

Optimization of contact center throughput has also become critical to survival. Reducing headcount as a cost saving measure can be catastrophic at a time where quality has become the currency of the day. The alternative -- optimizing throughput using sophisticated contact center engineering techniques -- is just now basking in the mainstream attention it deserves.

 

Contact center engineering training courses offer an extremely high return on investment. Implementing just one single engineering change to agent pooling and routing can reduce wait times by 50 percent, boosting service levels and customer satisfaction. It also lessens the burden and stress on overworked or understaffed service teams.

 

“It’s a shame that so many contact centers still struggle with 20th century skill-based routing approaches to optimization, when a simple switch to 21st century contact center engineering mathematics can have far more dramatic, and guaranteed, effects,” Kawalek points out.

 

 

Offshore outsourcing training needs have been impacted by the U.S. financial crisis as well. Whereas labor arbitrage has always been the number one reason to outsource, U.S. companies have more recently been seeking new ways to deal with surges in caller demand and overflow. The financial industry was obviously impacted, having been deluged by unforecasted calls from account holders who had never even looked up the bank’s phone number before. The overflow had to go somewhere, and fast. Offshore financial outsourcing call centers found themselves in the right place at the right time, provided that they could deliver seamless service to financial customers, meaning, outsourcers had to be able to ensure levels of call center quality identical to the client’s onshore center.

 

For the first time, a seamless service level, whether delivered from a domestic or offshore contact center, is equally valuable and the expense equally justified. Offshore centers and onshore service buyers alike agree that top-notch, high quality customer care is worth the expense. The result is an increased offshore demand – and domestic buyer expectation – for highly skilled offshore agents and management teams. This year, training and certifying offshore contact center resources is no longer cost prohibitive for outsourcers. It is an investment that can be recouped through increased pricing for superior quality services. U.S. buyers are no longer shopping on price alone and awarding contract to the low bidder. Contracts are going to the center that provides superior service, no matter where they are located.

 

“It’s a change in outsourcing thinking that’s well overdue,” Kawalek points out. “Outsourcing service providers in regions that heretofore could not compete on global pricing alone are now seizing market share as quality expectations level the playing field. The nearshore region is a perfect example.”