Programme overview
Technical depth: Practitioner · Practical mode: Case study
Introduction
Contact centres carry most of an organisation's customer conversations, yet many are run on averages that hide the problem: service levels collapse at peak hours, quality scores stay high while customers complain, and agents leave faster than they can be trained. Staffing, quality and coaching are often managed by different people with different numbers. This Core Concept course equips managers to run a contact centre against ISO 18295-1 and recognised performance frameworks, link staffing to service level and build a quality monitoring routine that customers would recognise. Participants leave with a Contact Centre Performance and Quality Plan.
Course Objectives
- Assess a contact centre's channel mix, operating model and KPI set against ISO 18295-1 requirements
- Calculate staffing requirements with Erlang C, shrinkage and occupancy and manage schedule adherence
- Design a weighted quality evaluation form and run calibration sessions that produce consistent scores
- Diagnose repeat contacts, failure demand and gaps between quality scores and customer feedback
- Coach agents from quality evidence and address the drivers of attrition and disengagement
- Produce a Contact Centre Performance and Quality Plan ready for approval by operations leadership
Target Audience
- Contact centre managers responsible for service levels and operating budgets
- Quality assurance managers and leads who design and run monitoring programmes
- Workforce planning managers who forecast demand and schedule staff
- Team leaders and supervisors moving into centre-wide management responsibilities
- Client-side managers who oversee outsourced contact centre contracts
Course Outline
Day 1: The Contact Centre Landscape and Current Performance
- Contact Centre Operating Models: In-House, Outsourced and Hybrid
- Channel Mix Analysis: Voice, Chat, Email, Messaging and Self-Service
- ISO 18295-1 Requirements for Customer Contact Centres
- Core KPI Set: Service Level, ASA, AHT, FCR and Abandonment Rate
- Operational Health Check Scorecard for the Current State
Day 2: Performance, Staffing and Quality Frameworks
- COPC CX Standard Performance Management Framework
- ISO 18295-2 Requirements for Clients Using Contact Centre Services
- Erlang C Staffing Model and Its Assumptions
- Shrinkage, Occupancy and Utilisation Calculation
- Quality Monitoring Frameworks: Customer-Critical, Business-Critical and Compliance-Critical Errors
Day 3: Running Daily Operations and Quality Monitoring
- Volume Forecasting from Interval History and Seasonality
- Schedule Design and Real-Time Adherence Management
- Weighted Quality Evaluation Form Design
- Evaluation of Recorded Calls and Chat Transcripts
- Calibration Sessions and Inter-Rater Agreement Scoring
Day 4: Optimisation, Risk and People Issues
- Speech and Text Analytics for Full Interaction Coverage
- Agent Coaching Conversations Using the GROW Model
- Attrition and Agent Engagement Diagnostics
- Payment Card Data Controls in Recordings under PCI DSS
- Failure Demand and Repeat Contact Root Cause Analysis
Day 5: Case Work and the Performance and Quality Plan
- Telecoms Contact Centre Case Study: Recovering a Collapsed Service Level
- Public Helpline Case Study: Closing the Gap Between Quality Scores and Customer Feedback
- Staffing Model Build for a Sample Interval Forecast
- Contact Centre Performance and Quality Plan Drafting
- Peer Review Panel and Plan Defence
Skills You Will Gain
- Contact Centre Performance Management
- Workforce Planning
- Interaction Quality Assurance
- Score Calibration
- Agent Coaching
- Failure Demand Analysis
- Outsourced Contact Centre Oversight
Why Attend This Course
- Return to work with a Contact Centre Performance and Quality Plan built on your own centre's numbers
- Explain to senior management why service level falls at peak times and what staffing it would take to fix
- Make quality scores reflect what customers actually experience, not only what the form checks
- Compare operating practices with contact centre managers from other sectors and countries
Conclusion
A contact centre performs well when staffing, quality and coaching are managed as one system rather than three separate reports. This course moves from assessing the current operation, through ISO 18295, the COPC CX Standard and the staffing mathematics behind service level, to the quality monitoring, analytics and people issues that decide results day to day. The final day turns that material into a Contact Centre Performance and Quality Plan that participants take back to operations leadership as the basis for their next improvement cycle.