What does recognised CRM training actually teach?

What a unit of competency is

The Outcome Standards define a unit of competency as the specification of the standards of performance required in the workplace as defined in a training product.

A training product, in the same definitions, is an AQF qualification, a skill set, a unit of competency, an accredited short course or a module.

The standards also set what a course built on a unit must deliver: training that is engaging and well structured, and that enables students to gain the skills and knowledge the training product calls for.

On the register, a unit's parts are its elements, which describe the essential outcomes, and its performance criteria, which set out the performance needed to show an element has been achieved.

What the two units say they cover

FNSCUS504, Manage premium customer relationships, is a unit the register describes as covering the skills and knowledge for building and maintaining relationships with premium or high value customers, including services tailored to their specific needs. It applies to people in senior roles who use management and specialist techniques to deliver a high level of service across the financial services industry, and the register files it under the unit sector Customer service. No licensing, legislative or certification requirements applied to it at the time of publication.

SIRXCEG003, Build customer relationships and loyalty, is the frontline counterpart: a unit covering the skills and knowledge for building customer relationships and fostering customer loyalty, applying to people in frontline customer service roles across a range of industry sectors and business contexts, working with independence and under limited supervision. The register files it under the competency field Customer Engagement and the unit sector Cross-Sector, and no occupational licensing or certification requirements applied to it at the time of publication.

Both are current on the register as this page reads them: FNSCUS504 is release 1, released 25 March 2015, and SIRXCEG003 is release 1, released 31 March 2016.

The frontline unit, compared

The register's usage lists put the two units in different places. FNSCUS504 sits in seven current qualifications, six diplomas and one Advanced Diploma, and is marked as not essential in every one of them.

SIRXCEG003 is marked as essential, a core unit, in the Certificate III in Retail, the Certificate III in Business to Business Sales and the skill set Retail Customer Relationship.

So the same subject arrives two ways: as a core unit of a Certificate III written for frontline roles, and as a unit of diploma and advanced diploma qualifications written for senior roles in financial services.

This guide is short by design: it sets out what the register records about the two units, and the units' own documents, where the register keeps them in full, are linked at the foot of this page.