Toronto Education

 Professionals with Contact Centre Operations Training are responsible for managing those employees who answer your phone calls when you pay a bill via customer service, inquire about something concerning your bank account, order a product from The Shopping Channel or even call for pizza delivery. In order to be able to move up in the realm of contact centre operations, one must obtain post-secondary training at an institution such as Centennial College.

This Toronto-based college offers a fast-paced Contact Centre Operations Course that offers students the training to handle in-coming and out-going calls in industries such as financial institutions, manufacturing, transportation, health and pharmaceuticals, government agencies, telecommunication as well as art and entertainment. To apply for this contact centre operations training all you need is a minimum of an Ontario Secondary School Diploma or equivalent or be 19 years of age or older at the start of the program.

Once you have been accepted to the contact centre operations training, you’ll attend the classes every Monday to Friday from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm for one semester. This timetable is convenient for those students who are also employed at part-time jobs that have shifts in the afternoon. During your time at Centennial College, you’ll learn techniques to cross-sell, up-set and market the centre’s services and products. This is achieved by becoming comfortable with multitasking and manipulating a variety of applications and databases so that you may browse for information while the caller is expressing his or her needs. In addition, the “real life” focus of the Contact Centre Operations Training simulates the contact centre environment, so that you actually develop superior communication and customer service skills. This includes the ability to communicate with a variety of callers such as senior citizens, those whose second language is English and emotionally distraught callers. Specific course within the program include: Computer Applications, Communication Skills, Customer Service & Sales, Soft Skills Development and Contact Centre Environment.

As the Contact Centre Operations training comes to an end, you will participate in a career day. This is the time for recruiters from major contact centres to meet, interview and possibly hire you! To ensure that you are field-ready, you must obtain a minimum C grade average and an overall minimum GPA of 2.0 for graduation.

The people who work Contact Centre Operations have a variety of duties such as: professionally answering phones, responding to customer inquiries, researching required information, handling and resolving customer complaints, processing orders and applications, routing calls, completing call logs and call reports as well as following up customer calls when necessary. This customer service-based industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in Canada.