Safeguarding Call Center Staff
Dealing with challanging and vulnerable customers
Duration: 3h Vulnerable, call center
Delivery Method: Virtually
Course Capacity: 16
Course Description
Call center staff have to handle many challenging and vulnerable callers each day. Some of these customers are deeply distressed, angry, confused, or desperate. The nature of your role or business means that you will encounter very challenging situations, and you are required to safeguard your staff. Callers may even threaten suicide. How do you respond to these challenges? How do you prioritize your responses, and what should you do? Operational policies are sometimes vague about what to do or say, so providing some training around this difficult issue is essential.
Dealing with challenging situations on the phone may leave you feeling upset, angry, or deeply uncomfortable. This can be damaging to your own mental health, particularly over an extended time, so knowing how to protect yourself is also important. Employers have a very clear duty of care towards their call handlers and must understand the risks to which their employees are exposed.
This three-hour workshop will improve awareness and confidence around how to manage vulnerable callers, how operators can protect their own mental health, and build resilience.
Learning Outcomes
Session 1
This session will help you to:
- Gain knowledge and confidence in positively managing difficult calls.
- Improve understanding of caller vulnerability, prioritisation, and effective signposting.
- Understand compassion stress, secondary trauma, burnout, and the importance of professional boundaries.
- Learn about personal resilience and how to build effective coping mechanisms.
- Recognise when to seek help and how to access internal support structures.
Tailored delivery
Since introducing this course, we have tailored content to organisations, at their request. Different organisations manage callers with different issues. Similarly, some people may respond in different ways.
