The CONTAKT project aims to enhance the skill levels of call centre personnel, thus increasing operational value, encouraging positive perception, reducing off-shoring and improving upon the competitiveness of call centres. Project partners will initially undergo a comparative literature search across the participating partner countries, with regard to market and training issues for call centres. Beyond this, training activities will be benchmarked to identify 15 best practice call centre organisations representing different industry types and sectors. Partners will investigate a number of organisations and will produce individual case studies with identified ‘best practices’ being incorporated into an innovative training programme supporting the up-skilling of call centre employees. The project will design, test, validate, assess and disseminate the developed materials and will focus upon new forms of learning and teaching in VET, based upon 'best practice', for those working in the call centre industry. The developed materials will be piloted and disseminated via a dedicated project website and will be supported by CD-Rom and hard-copy publications. Project partners, including relevant trade union and call centre organisations will also be involved in the dissemination of the project results.