Standards to Live By: Looking Beyond Call Center Best Practices to Certification of Skills

For many years, ICMI has prepared many, many call center professionals to achieve certification from the Call Center Industry Advisory Council (CIAC). It’s not an easy task – these “grad-level” students must show their understanding of standards that were created by an independent body of call center professionals, practitioners and consultants in operations, people management, customer management, and business and leadership.

In my time at ICMI, I’ve visited and interviewed management teams from many of the world’s best call centers, and the majority of them have shared a strategy for pushing their call center and customer care leadership through ICMI Professional Certification. 

What I didn’t know, until last week in a meeting with ICMI’s Training leadership, is that during the preparation for testing, those call center leaders in ICMI’s certification courses are constantly tasked with demonstrating their understanding – and practice – of the CIAC standards throughout their coursework. It’s like your Six-Sigma belt projects. When I talked to Linda Riggs, our Strategic Training Director, and Brad Cleveland, co-founder of ICMI and our current Senior Advisor, I learned how much sharing of experience and putting these standards to work goes on here. 

I’m delighted to be able to bring you regular news and best practices from call centers all over the world, but I’ll be sharing with you in future posts the code to live your call center management by – these standards that ensure that call centers operate efficiently and cost effectively while delivering peak customer satisfaction.