NVQ success for contact centre staff

For contact centre operatives, excellent customer service skills are paramount. That’s why for the last five years, City of Bristol College has been working with Bristol Wessex Billing Services contact centre to upskill staff with relevant, work-based qualifications.

Gaining qualified staff

Bristol Wessex Billing Services recognises the importance of staff training and offers continued professional development. So they wanted to offer qualifications to encourage staff and recognise their skills. Stephanie Martin, Contact Centre Manager, explains:

“We don’t run any other courses with external training providers, only in-house courses which don’t result in recognised qualifications.

We felt that it was beneficial for employees to be trained on the job and earn something at the end to show the effort and time they’d put in resulted in a qualification. For us it means we’re assured that they’re doing their job really well and getting a qualification for it at the end of the day."

Staff training - a selling point

Stephanie continues:

“Offering staff the opportunity to gain a qualification can really add value to the training programme. And, it’s also a good selling point when we interview people as we can tell them about the workforce development programme so they know we support staff who wish to pursue an NVQ.”

New skills boost morale

“The training process also brings new skills and helps staff focus on a particular skill area. We have seen widespread uptake and enthusiasm from all age groups within the company – from younger employees who have started working with us straight from school, to others who are returning to work and want to learn a new skill. By doing this training it has helped people grow in their role. We feel it has really empowered our staff and boosted morale."

Why City of Bristol College?

Stephanie told us why they chose City of Bristol College;

“We felt the College was a good quality training provider with clear goals for the training and we felt confident they wanted our contact centre operatives to succeed. It’s worked out really well. The assessors were supportive and flexible enough to fit with the shift patterns of the call centre.”

A partnership that works!

Five years later, Bristol Wessex Billing Services is still training with City of Bristol College so it’s a partnership that’s working.

Interested?

To find out more about our staff training programmes, contact us on 0117 312 5020 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it