Frontline Foundations

An industry-leading programme designed to reduce early attrition of new contact centre talent.

Retaining talent in the contact centre industry is an ongoing challenge for many business leaders. Organisations can’t afford to lose new talent; its affecting businesses in lost productivity and invested funds in recruitment and training.

The UK National Contact Centre Academy has created its Frontline Foundations course, to help reduce attrition rates, and give new starters a taster into what it’s like to work in your contact centre and provide an understanding of the skills required to be successful in the role.

Equipping new talent to the industry with all the information they need to start their career, will increase new joiner ‘stickiness’ to the role and your organisation. This full day face-to-face training programme provides the foundations in customer service skills, whilst exploring the role of a contact centre frontline colleague.

Benefits to your business

Supports your recruitment and onboarding process – provide new employees with an introduction on how to be a great frontline advisor.
Increase employee retention in the first six months – when new employees see their potential for growth, they are more likely to remain engaged and committed to the role.
Enhance employee engagement – investing in the development of new employees, results in them being motivated and engaged in their work.
Pre-skilled talent in customer experience – pre-skilled employees can provide a higher level of service to customers from day one.

What will the course include?

The training is split into modules covering a range of skills, which are critical to the role of a frontline colleague.

It introduces how to build rapport and trust with customers, master the art of difficult conversations, communicate more effectively with vulnerable customers and explore how to connect emotionally with customers. This programme has it all.

This training can be delivered at your site, for groups of up to 12 frontline colleagues.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, candidates or new recruits will be able to:

Build rapport and truly connect with your customers confidently
Understand the art of ‘being present’
Have great conversations with all customers
Respond to customers with empathy and care
Communicate clearly with customers and colleagues
Connect to customers in a human way
Demonstrate effective listening skills
Use the best questioning techniques
Plus know 100% if a career in the contact centre is for them

Course Content

Rapport and building trust
Being present: the theory of ‘circles of presence’
The conversation cycle: Ask/Listen/Acknowledge/Inform
Acknowledging the customers’ situation with empathy and why it’s important
Communication skills: tone and language
Emotionally connecting with your customer
Dealing with difficult conversations
Active listening skills
Questioning techniques

When to use Frontline Foundations Training

We will work closely with you to help you reduce early attrition of new contact centre talent. The programme is designed to support organisations during the following stages:

The onboarding phase – provide new recruits with Frontline Foundations training to kick-start their learning, ensuring stickiness to the role and skilling new employees from an early stage.
During your recruitment process – offer candidates a taster to what it’s like to work as a frontline colleague and pre-skill your recruits. Also, attract more candidate applications by offering something different during the recruitment process.

Case Study

The UK National Contact Centre Academy provides the Frontline Foundations training programme as part of Reed Talent Solutions’ Recruit, Train, Deploy (RTD) programme. RTD supports organisations in the identification of new talent and helps in the deployment of new recruits, based on an organisations resource requirement.

Reed Talent Solutions supported mobile network operator, EE, with the RTD programme to dramatically reduce new starter attrition. The solution saw EE’s retention rate increase to 94% for new joiners starting our in frontline advisor roles.

To find out more about this programme, please ask a member of the CCMA team.

About the trainer

Mike Axford

Mike started his career in the contact centre industry over 25 years ago.

He is an enthusiastic and passionate trainer with a wealth of experience.

What delegates say

“Mike’s delivery, and his ability to read and adapt to his audience, underpinned by his expert knowledge, helped me understand the content, and retain the information given”

“Covered lots of strategies for dealing with customers, really engaging and everyone was involved in activities”.

“All members of the group had instant ‘takeaways’ that can be put to use straight away”.

Enquiry Form

To request information about this course or book it please fill in the form or email info@ccma.org.uk.

Format

Full day training face-to-face (6 hours learning, 1 hour break)

Who is it for?

Candidates going through your onboarding and recruitment process and new starters (frontline colleagues).

Why you should book?

Improves employee retention and stickiness to the role and organisation
Increase employee engagement
Provides an introduction to life in the contact centre

How much is it?

CCMA members: £1,800 +VAT

Non-members: £2,400 +VAT

Price quoted is for face-to-face delivery of the training for a group of up to 12 people.