Call Center Management Featured Article
Call Center Certification Program Aims to Improve Call Center Management of Social Media
A certification program for call center managers recently got a touch-up to reflect changes in the industry, specifically the use of social media to connect with customers. In its ninth year, the Call Center Industry Advisory Council (CIAC) certification has call center managers at firms such as Coca-Cola Refreshments and State Farm Insurance, saying the program has helped them respond to the challenges facing call centers and strengthen call center management skills.
Techtarget.com reported that the consulting and training firm International Customer Management Institute, which offers the certification, unveiled the revamped process earlier this spring. The CIAC program will continue to be based on domains that cover leadership, operations, technologies and staff management in a call center.
“The update was really a refinement,” said Glenn Gemmill, vice president of customer care for Coca-Cola Refreshments. “The environment is changing. Social media is changing. A couple of years ago, it was a blip on the radar. Now, it’s front and center on many managers’ screens.”
To Gemmill, it made sense to include social media in CIAC competency training and testing because of the growing use of sites like Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert) in call centers. It wasn’t that long ago that call centers found it a challenge to figure out how to integrate email messages into their channels.
“Now, it’s phone calls, messages, chat and social media,” Gemmill said.
A main goal Gemmill has for the outcome of the CIAC certification process it to improve call center management skill. The program offers training on skills like maintaining a consistent voice across multiple channels; legal considerations for social channels; the impact of social channels on existing workloads; and the processes needed for social media such as forecasting, staffing, scheduling and improvement. The training will give call center managers a better sense of how to analyze social media without forgetting about the customer relationship.
Sometimes, managers fail to connect company goals to their work, but with certification, they start to recognize how steps such as budgeting and involving employees in decisions fit with the company vision, Gemmill said.
“The training and testing of CIAC makes call center managers say, ’Now I know why the leaders stress vision, and why my daily metrics tie back into the organization,’” Gemmill said.
According to Linda Riggs, training director for ICMI, aside from incorporating social media, the phrasing in some training and testing sections was streamlined to be less wordy. Riggs wants to make sure call center managers are succinct in what they say, and everything they say can be translated in other countries.
After Web training, CIAC administers a test on each of the four domains. Recertification is required every three years, but instead of taking a test, the applicant will write an essay on work experience and earns credits that are approved by CIAC.
To date, about 600 people have been certified, and about 900 are going through the process, which can last up to 18 months.
Edited by Braden Becker