There are many reasons to go to Boston, Massachusetts in June. It is the best time of year before the summer heat rolls in to visit the city’s wealth of attractions, many steeped (including literally) in American history, to check out Quincy Market, the quaint streets of neighborhoods like Beacon Hill and yes catch a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.

(Full disclosure: I grew up in New England and naturally belong to ‘Sox Nation.’ My parents live on the ‘Cape’ i.e. Cape Cod)

There is one more excellent reason to put Boston on the itinerary: immersing oneself in a comprehensive set of one-stop-shop contact center training courses offered by the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance June 6-10 2011.

These sessions include:

--Supervisory and Leadership Skills for Contact Center Supervisors (June 6-7)
--Call Center Metrics, Data Analytics and Reporting (June 6-8)
--Call Center Engineering Boot Camp (June 6-10)
--The Art Managing Difficult Callers (June 8-9)
--Call Center Manager Training and Certification (June 8-10)
--Designing Six Sigma Contact Centers (June 9-10)

The sessions are taking place at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, which is located on the scenic Charles River, near the Mass. Pike (I-90) that then links into the tunnels to Logan Airport. The hotel is also not far from Amtrak’s Back Bay station.

(The hotel is also near Fenway Park; alas the ‘Sox will be away June 6-10 but they are playing Oakland at home June 5.)

The Hyatt Regency offers complementary shuttles to “the T”: the city’s famous and lauded transit system. Take the shuttle to Kendall and board the Red Line train that then emerges from underneath Cambridge and crosses the Charles on the Longfellow Bridge, makes one above-ground stop then dives beneath Beacon Hill, stopping at the city’s Hub i.e. Park Street a.k.a. “PAAAHK Street.”

(WTTW, unless you’re experienced with Boston driving, take a taxi and/or the T. The parking, traffic and streets—and other drivers—can get maddening)

The timing is excellent. Contact centers are facing many pressures. There are the rightfully demanding customers that are increasingly relying on time/money-consuming mobile devices to contact organizations. And they are not shy about relating their experiences to the world via social media. There are the contact center agents who will churn more as the economy improves for better compensation, flexibility, appreciation and career options. At the same time senior management wants more output from centers for fewer resources. Contact center professionals literally have to be on their game.

The fall marks the key busy season for many contact centers. The better they are prepared the more successful they will be in meeting customers’ and managements’ needs. That is the benefit of taking such classes in June.