Print version Recommend this page Press release
04/ 2006
Bonn, 03.02.2006
Dialogue marketing: Two recognised communication occupations planned for August 2006!
These are boom times for call centres, and have been for several years! Enterprises are resorting more and more often to the professional services of call centres for the purpose of, for example, establishing new customer contacts, better satisfying customers' wishes for more efficient service and gaining long-term customer loyalty. The tasks assumed by call centres are multifarious: They include product information, hotline service and the making of appointments as well as customer counselling - and they are often available to customers as contacts 24 hours a day. As the diversity of the tasks has increased, so have the demands on the call centre personnel - and the industry's need for qualified vocational education and training in their field of work, "dialogue marketing", has increased with it. Two new recognised occupations developed jointly by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and the social partners, the "service specialist in dialogue marketing " and the "commercial agent in dialogue marketing ", meet this need. The draft training regulations for both trades were adopted by the representatives of the social partners, the Conference of Ministers of Education and the relevant Ministries at their "joint meeting" on 27 January 2006 and are being finalised for the start of training in August 2006.
Communication with customers is at the centre of the two-year course of training for the "service specialist in dialogue marketing". This includes
- analysing customer requirements and advising customers and solving specific problems,
- processing and answering orders, complaints and customer inquiries,
- presenting and selling products and services,
- helping prepare and carry out projects and documenting project results.
The focus of the three-year course of training for "commercial agent in dialogue marketing" is on contact with the clients who wish to have their target group serviced by the call centre and on the control of the individual contracts. This includes
- planning, organising, con trolling and documenting campaigns and projects,
- procuring the personnel required for that purpose, planning their deployment and instructing them,
- helping design service offers and paving the way for, arranging and concluding agreements,
- presenting products and services for potential clients and selling such offerings,
- processing inquiries, orders and complaints.
The three years of training for commercial agent in dialogue marketing builds on the two-year training for service specialist in dialogue marketing. Trainees who have chosen the two-year recognised occupation can have that training credited towards the three-year occupation.
Graduates in both occupations can be deployed both in call centres and in the service centres of industrial, commercial and service enterprises as well as institutions that have established special organisational units for dialogue with their customers (including the civil service).
The approval of the relevant federal and state bodies is a precondition for the enactment of the two training regulations. Once it is obtained, they will be adopted and promulgated by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
Further information
- on the Internet for the service specialist in dialogue marketing occupation at www.bibb.de/de/20751.htm
- on the Internet for the commercial agent in dialogue marketing occupation at www.bibb.de/de/20720.htm
- at BIBB for both occupations, c/o Mr Martin Elsner, Section 4.1, Commercial service occupations and occupations in the media business, Phone 0228/107-2430; e-mail: elsner@bibb.de
