Call Center Challenge - American Public Transportation Association

Give Your Top Call Center Employee the Recognition They Deserve

APTA’s Call Center Challenge celebrates the outstanding efforts of transit system call center personnel. Each year, in conjunction with APTA’s Marketing & Communications Workshop, the best public transit call center personnel face off in a competition to crown the best in the industry. Participants are challenged with real life call center scenarios and judged on their ability to resolve each scenario in a friendly and professional manner.

Who’s Eligible

The Call Center Challenge is open to all APTA member transit system call center personnel. Each system may enter one employee.

Call center personnel are defined as employees who handle incoming calls relating to trip planning and/or customer service issues.

Application Process

Please note, each transit system may have only one call center operator participate.

All interested personnel must have a website account login (this can be created at the time of submission). Applications were accepted through December 9, 2019.

Preliminary Competition

Applicants were contacted (via contestant and supervisor email addresses submitted on the online application) on Monday, December 16, 2019, with the scheduled time of their preliminary round phone call on January 3, 6, or 7, 2020.

During the recorded phone test, contestants are asked to resolve two customer call center inquiries. Recordings will be made for judging and training purposes. A panel of APTA member judges will select five finalists for the final competition in Orlando, FL, at the 2020 APTA Marketing and Communications Workshop, February 23 – 26, 2019. All applicants will be contacted on or just after January 31, 2020 and about their finalist status.

Final Competition

The final competition will take place in front of a live audience at APTA’s 2020 Marketing & Communications Workshop, in Orlando. Finalists will be presented with randomly selected customer service scenarios and will be judged on their ability to handle each inquiry. The contestant with the highest score, as determined by a panel of APTA member judges, will be named public transportation’s best telephone customer information agent, and the Call Center Challenge champion.

One M&C Workshop registration will be provided to each of the five finalists.

Transit systems are responsible for all travel related expenses for final contestants.

Please contact Stephen Kendrick at skendrick@apta.com with questions.