Empowering their Contact Center (Duke Energy)

With approximately seven million U.S. customers, Duke Energy is the nation’s largest electric power holding company and a major distributor of natural gas. When its customer service leaders aspired to spark improvement, they turned to ICMI Professional Certification.

“I wanted to broaden my knowledge of call centers,” said Todd Arnold, retired SVP of Customer Service. “I had years of experience in customer service but did not have direct call center experience when I became head of customer care for Cinergy,” (Duke Energy acquired Cinergy in 2006.) “I had done a fair amount of self-study but wanted a process that would provide knowledge across all aspects of call center leadership and then certify my knowledge level.”

“I was asked to take on leadership of Cinergy’s call centers in 2000,” said Larry Eiser, retired VP of Call Center Operations. “Coming in, I had an overly simplistic view of what a call center was all about, I read as much as I could and attended forums to learn from peers in the industry. ICMI Professional Certification provided a much more structured and comprehensive development process.”

 “The program was also very well thought-out and holistically designed,” Eiser said. “This included partnering with organizations that housed proctored testing sites and others that developed a variety of training options,” he continued.

The training’s far-reaching benefits quickly became apparent. “ICMI Professional Certification broadened and deepened our knowledge and enabled us to understand what was required of us to empower our call center leadership team to deliver excellence,” Arnold said. “Our entire supervisor/manager team undertook ICMI Professional Certification, as well as some our staff positions in Workforce Management, Training and QA.”

“By going through this program, our supervisors were being certified as call center managers – a level above where they were currently operating,” said Eiser. “This provided a great development opportunity for these individuals as potential candidates for future call center manager openings.”

Before long, improvement was evident organization-wide. “It helped tear down some walls that had existed in the past between areas such as Workforce Management, Training, QA and Call Center Supervisors,” said Arnold.

Eiser agreed. “We observed the team having a much better understanding of how people, process and technology are interrelated and work together to deliver call center excellence,” he said.

ICMI Professional Certification – the industry standard for professional excellence in contact center management – is available through ICMI, the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals for more than 25 years.

To learn how ICMI Professional Certification can provide the same benefits to your organization’s contact center, visit www.icmi.com/icmicertification and request information today at www.icmi.com/Certification/Request-Information, or contact Todd Piccuillo at [email protected] or 203-242-6632.