The CCMA Accreditation Programme

Underpinned by the Contact Centre Standards Framework

Celebrate What’s Working and Discover What’s Possible

Your contact centre is so much more than calls, queues and KPIs. It’s a vibrant, people-powered environment where brand, customer and colleague experience meet.

The CCMA Accreditation Programme shines a light on what you’re doing brilliantly and offers clear, practical insight into where you can go even further. Built around five essential pillars, the programme gives you independent recognition, expert feedback and ongoing support you can use to make real change – for your people, your customers and your future.

Why Take Part?

This isn’t just about a badge on a website (though you’ll get those too). It’s about what sits underneath – the culture, the thinking, the leadership, the service, the heart of your operation.

When you join the programme, you’re not only benchmarking against best practice – you’re investing in meaningful progress.

What You’ll Gain

A detailed, independent view of what’s working and what’s possible.
A people-first assessment that looks beyond the surface.
Powerful insights to guide decision-making and inspire improvement.
Recognition that celebrates the how, not just the what.

What You Can Do With It

Use your scores and insights to shape strategy and change.
Share your achievements with clients, boards and key stakeholders.
Energise internal teams with independent recognition.
Support improvement planning with meaningful feedback.
Attract great talent and boost colleague pride.
Back up business cases with solid evidence.

What Else Can You Do with Your Accreditation?

Strengthen Your Brand and Reputation

Share your digital badge on your website, email footers, and social media to showcase excellence and credibility. Use pillar achievements in marketing, PR and awards submissions. Build trust with current and prospective clients, regulators and stakeholders.

Support Business Development

Include your accreditation and scores in tender submissions or RFPs to stand out from competitors. Demonstrate operational maturity and service quality in client pitches. Leverage independent validation to win and retain contracts.

Elevate Internal Communications

Celebrate success across teams through internal comms campaigns. Create stories and spotlight content around each badge to recognise departments or initiatives. Use your scores to drive healthy competition and pride between teams or sites.

Focus and Prioritise Improvement

Focus and Prioritise Improvement. Use the report’s recommendations to prioritise investment and improvement efforts. Identify where to focus resources for the biggest people or performance impact. Create pillar-based action plans to assign ownership and measure progress.

Guide Transformation and Change

Use accreditation results as a baseline before or after transformation projects. Demonstrate progress in culture or operational change over time. Measure the impact of major initiatives (e.g. new tech, hybrid working, CX redesign).

Drive Culture and Engagement

Recognise and celebrate the role your people played in your results. Increase engagement by showing colleagues how their work connects to success. Use the experience to co-create a shared improvement mindset across roles.

Feed into Strategic Planning

Align the accreditation feedback with your long-term strategic goals. Use it to evidence culture, service, and performance improvements to boards or exec teams. Map scores and themes into your OKRs, KPIs or annual operating plans.

Embed Learning and Development

Design L&D activity around pillar insights (e.g. leadership, CX, knowledge management). Use feedback to inform your talent, training and coaching priorities. Turn accreditation insights into bespoke team development initiatives.

What Will You Be Assessed On?

The Contact Centre Standards Framework is structured around five key pillars – Strategy & Leadership, Innovation, Colleague Experience, Operational Excellence, Customer Experience.

How Do You Become An Accredited Contact Centre?

Members apply for assessment via the this form.
Non-members may apply for assessment and will become members at the same time.
Book a discovery call with Mel to understand operation and pricing.
Schedule an onboarding call for guidance on documents to upload to the portal, and set assessment site visit date.
Appropriate assessor given access to evidence the week before visit.
One day site visit will run.
Within 21 days, you will receive your report, badge, and trophy.
Within 14 days of having the report, a call will be booked with Mel to review your recommendations to look at how we can support your CI through Membership.
Ongoing support calls every 6 months to check progress against plans.
Opportunity to apply for reaccreditation in 2 years.

What Does the Independent Assessment Provide?

A personalised report providing:

An Executive Summary.
Scores against each assessment statement.
Achievement for each of the five areas assessed.
Overall accreditation achieved.
A trophy to display and celebrate your accreditation.
A digital badge for marketing purposes and internal recognition.
Valid for 24 months.
Top-performing accredited contact centres also receive the opportunity to be nominated for the Contact Centre Excellence Award at the UK National Contact Centre Awards.

The Contact Centre Standards Framework

The Contact Centre Standards Framework provides organisations and their contact centres a pathway to higher performance and ongoing operational excellence.

A Commitment to Continuous Improvement

The CCMA has been supporting the contact centre industry for over 30 years, and the Contact Centre Standards Framework has been created by professional, experienced leaders at the forefront of driving change and continuous improvements within contact centres.

Approved by the CCMA’s Standards Advisory Board, the Standards Framework is a highly-regarded, credible and independent improvement programme for UK contact centres, providing leaders with a clear route to better understanding where their operations are exceptional, and to discover gaps in capability with the intention of increasing contact centre performance.

Why Undertake the Contact Centre Standards Framework?

Contact centre leaders from in-house or outsourced operations that gain accreditation through the framework are demonstrating their commitment to achieving the highest standards of customer and colleague experience, for the benefit of their organisation.

Be assessed against a robust five pillar framework to help highlight gaps and drive improvements.

Receive a personalised report which provides an executive summary, overview of performance against the framework and realistic recommendations to support continuous improvements and growth.

Become an accredited contact centre – a stamp of approval that’s used by fellow accredited organisations to secure business case funding to raise contact centre standards. It also helps supports business growth as a desirable brand to do business with and highlights your contact centre as a great place to work.

Strategy and leadership – receive an external view on how clear and effective your company strategy is playing out.

Help your customer excellence programme by looking through the lens of the customer and how customers interact with your brand.

Explore innovation opportunities to support your brand to stand out from competitors.

Understand the colleague experience – being a desirable employer where employees are proud to work for your brand can be challenge. Being recognised in this pillar will help attract, retain and grow talent within your business.

Receive an expert review of operational processes to help drive further efficiency and value into your contact centre.

The Contact Centre Standards Framework measures the inputs across all areas of the contact centre and our CCMA Benchmark measures the outputs. Combining the two is a powerful tool to bust myths about contact centres in the boardroom and drive improvements.

Top-performing accredited contact centres will have the opportunity to be nominated for the Contact Centre Excellence Award at the UK National Contact Centre Awards.

What Does the Standards Framework Entail?

The process is a positive experience, offering a professional , experienced external view to support leaders to raise standards for their contact centre.

The Contact Centre Standards Framework is structured around five key pillars.

Strategy and Leadership

Assessing how clearly the contact centre’s strategic direction is defined, aligned, and communicated – and how well it is lived through everyday behaviours. Strong performance demonstrates a culture of purpose and alignment, where the vision is not just known but felt, and leadership is accountable for creating clarity, stability, and trust across the organisation.

Innovation

Evaluating how well contact centres embed continuous improvement across the operation, actively involving colleagues and customers in shaping better outcomes and fostering a psychologically safe culture where ideas can be raised and acted upon.

Colleague Experience

Focusing on the entire colleague experience – from attracting the right talent to growing future leaders. A high-performing contact centre nurtures a culture where people feel they belong, are trusted to succeed, and are supported through structured development.

Operational Excellence

Examining how efficiently and effectively the contact centre operates, how data is used to inform decisions and how processes and environments support people to perform at their best. High-performing contact centres make excellence a habit, not a heroic effort.

Customer Experience

Analysing how contact centres design, measure and improve customer interactions – across all channels and segments. It also assesses how customer feedback is valued, complaints are resolved and services are personalised.

Take the First Step

For more information about the CCMA Accreditation Programme and to apply, please email Mel via [email protected] or enquire here.

FAQs

Preparing for your Contact Centre Standards Assessment

Your journey to accreditation begins with a discovery meeting with our Accreditation Manager, Mel. She’ll take the time to understand your key drivers for accreditation and how it aligns with your future plans. Mel will also walk you through the process, outlining key milestones and providing ongoing support along the way.

You’ll be given a list of documents and processes to provide which will evidence your organisation’s commitment to the five pillars: Strategy and Leadership, Innovation, Colleague Experience, Operational Excellence, and Customer Experience.

Next, you’ll be assigned an independent appraiser who will review your evidence through our secure portal. This is followed by an on-site visit, where you’ll have the opportunity to showcase your contact centre in action, demonstrating how your team brings your policies and processes to life.

Using our assessment framework, the appraiser will evaluate all evidence and observations to generate a comprehensive report. This will highlight your strengths and provide tailored recommendations under each pillar, helping you take your contact centre to the next level.

What happens on the assessment day?

08:30 – Welcome and site tour

From 09:15 – Appraiser to lead the below sessions and work through the framework questions and gain clarity on evidence submitted.

Session 1– Strategy & Leadership
Session 2 – Innovation
Session 3 – Colleague
Session 4 – Operational Excellence
Session 5 – Customer Experience

16:30 – Focus Group

17:15 – Wrap Up

How much does the accreditation cost?

Our pricing is calculated based on the scale and operational structure of your contact centre, so please contact [email protected] for a quote.

How long does the accreditation last?

Your Standards Accreditation rating will last for 2 years. This is because whilst some of the recommendations provided in your report may be quite tactical, some may be more strategic and will need building into your 90 day plans.

Are the results shared?

We will be sharing your success and Accredited status across CCMA social media.

Lead Appraiser

Becky Simpson, Managing Consultant, Improvement Solutions

Having gone up through the contact centre ranks, Becky has worked across most industry sectors and led award-winning centres. Becky now specialises in designing and delivering transformation programmes.

Her experience in developing, training out and assessing contact centre vocational and degree level qualifications has been invaluable in supporting the development of our standards framework.

Standards Framework Advisory Board

Catherine Lindsay, Operations Director, Newcastle Strategic Solutions

Catherine has a wealth of Senior Contact Centre and Customer Experience leadership experience gained across multiple industries and from previous roles which she held with GE Capital, Santander, Hermes and Hitachi Capital.

Ketan Hindocha, Customer Director, Pennon Group

Ketan is an accomplished senior executive with over 20 years’ experience and a proven track record in driving award winning customer experience in the mobile and telecoms industry. He is a dedicated customer service and contact centre professional leading teams and driving large scale operational performance and change management.

Paul Greenwood, Customer Service Director, Ocado Retail

With 30 years experience in leadership roles, Paul’s approach is pragmatic. Paul focuses on developing and engaging people whilst implementing clear policies that create or reinforce team culture. He has a successful history of transforming underperforming operational teams with a record of inspiring culture change, and developing teams which exceed business expectations – he loves what he does!

Paul Whymark, COO, Sensée

Paul is Chief Operating Officer at Sensée, the UK’s leading pureplay homeworking BPO, having joined the business in January 2020. Prior to this Paul has spent most of his career in financial services contact centres, with senior leadership roles at Hastings Direct, Royal and Sun Alliance (RSA) and Direct Line Group.

Sabina Onwuka, Head of Customer Service, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

Sabina heads the Customer Services department at The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. She has worked in the Customer Services industry for over 20 years. She started in the private sector and then moved across into the public sector in 2012.

Her philosophy has always been about serving others, and being the voice of the residents, and staff is where she thrives. Sabina has been a mentor to her team members, as she believes in providing a safe place for her staff to feel supported, grow at work and outside of work. Among her notable achievements, she spearheaded a remarkable transformation within her department, transitioning from a solely office-based setup to a fully remote work model through the implementation of cutting-edge cloud technology. Continually seeking fresh and innovative approaches, Sabina remains vigilant in exploring innovative ways to enhance the experiences of both customers and employees.

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Case Studies

Dialect discovers pathway to excellence through accreditation

Dialect Communications were looking for a holistic assessment of their operation that would provide focus for the future.

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Cadent Gas becomes an Accredited Contact Centre

Cadent Gas were keen to learn from industry experts and gain valuable insights to enhance their performance.