training for call centres

Many moons ago we put a number of our agents through an NVQ in Customer Service. I think we used BSI at the time...

We have used NVQ's for call centre staff, though this was promoted as on the job training & evaluation, there is still an amount of time that is off call. As we are an outsouring contact centre, this is not the best option for us as each call is revenue generated. Saying that we understand that as a company involving agents in addtitional training allows growth & a home grown timber attitude which we promote. The feedback from the agents is that there is no training as such provided just an evalution that allows them to sit a test at the end of it & gain a certificate that can be added to their CV. I do feel that more specific training as in Call Control, Assertive Call Handling etc is more worthwhile.