STAFF REPORTER
The Chartered Institute of Customer Management (CICM) has launched an e-learning platform to help professionals within the customer experience and contact center industry enhance their skills amid the corona virus pandemic.
The e- learning platform will enable current students to continue and prospective students to start classes during the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown period.
Educational institutions across the globe – including Zimbabwe – have been hit hard by the COVID-19, and official figures from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Fund (UNESCO) show that by the end of March 2020 more than 160 countries had partially or completely closed schools and universities, which affected over 1.5 billion learners and 60.2 million teachers worldwide.
CICM’s new e-learning platform is aimed at ensuring that it minimise disruptions to its learners.
“Our new e-learning platform system will allow our learners to continue during this difficult phase, and we have worked to ensure that it has various advantages in terms of affordability, accessibility and feasibility,” said the Institute’s Chief Executive Officer Ricky Harris.
“The platform doesn’t have a physical limitation, and it can be accessed anytime, which has further enhanced our ability to extend our offerings across more borders. Beyond the pandemic, the e-learning platform will help us in creating and communicating new training, policies, concepts, and ideas.”
CICM is a global customer service and call centre professional and academic board currently represented in three continents through its global implementation and certification partnership network with its regional head offices in South Africa.
It offers certification programmes, with its reach extending to 24 countries, largely on the continent, although the institution also has a presence in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and India.
CICM marketing manager Lydia Matengambiri said there has been a positive response across the continent, with over 500 students having registered on the e-learning platform to date.
“The response has been very good; so far we have registered over 500 students on the platform, most of them existing learners across all our branches in Africa, but also new ones as the roles of call centres and customer experience have become more critical since the emergence of COVID-19,” she said.
The institution’s regional training manager Charlene Chibonda outlined the courses available on the e-learning platform.
“Currently the professional courses available on the e-learning platform include the Certified Customer Experience Practitioner, Certified Call Centre Practitioner, Certified Digital Markerter and the combined Certified Customer Experience and Call Centre Practitioner.
Available online academic courses include the Diploma in Customer Experience Management and the Diploma in Call Centre Management.”
