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Posts Tagged ‘Training’

Business Writing Training ? Importance in Today?s Global Market

In today’s global market, why is:

Business writing sought after by every organization? Improving writing skills an important aid in one’s career development? Business writing training of crucial importance?

Let us look at the answer to these pertinent questions: you will realize how business writing skills training contributes to one’s professional development and drives the productivity of an organization.

Business Writing is sought after by every organization in today’s global village

In today’s global market place – whatever be the language and culture – it is vital to communicate in a clear and precise manner. Business writing is, till date, the only method of formal communication that is used by all organizations. All outputs are given in written form. Research has shown that business counterparts have to transact of a piece of information for an average of seven times, before it is completely understood by the intended receiver. When the time spent over an email is calculated over a month, it shows an enormous drain on productivity for all parties involved.

While reading a report, email or other written forms of communication, the impact left on the reader must be such that he/she is able form thoughts out of the words. The appreciation achieved from this builds up over time. It may be intangible, but this will reap returns and increase your organization’s dependability and resourcefulness.

2. Improving writing skills an important aid in an individual’s career development

In an AC Nielson research project conducted upon employers in 1999, literacy skills and business writing skills were rated as very important. This result stands true even today. It has been further found that job applicants – both external and internal – who scored poorly in these areas did not fare well when seeking positions of employment. [Source: AC Nielsen Research Services. (1999). Employer Satisfaction with Graduate Skills]

In today’s text messaging world, formal business writing may seem an impossible task. But as you can see from the above source, this is exactly what organizations are seeking. If you are not well versed with formal business writing, all efforts put into the work and into the report preparation can go to absolute waste.

While knowing how to read, write & speak can lead us to believe that the receiver can understand and comprehend our thoughts and ideas, it is generally not the case.

As opposed to the earlier days when writing lengthy reports that took two hours to read were the norm, today’s organizations are looking for people who can write in clear, concise and bulleted forms.

3. Business Writing training is of crucial important in today’s global market

The reasons stated above are more than ample evidence to understand the importance of Writing Skills Training in today’s scenario. Hence, an increasing number of organizations are now incorporating Business Writing training for its employees.

The direct beneficial impacts on workforce productivity are:

Employees become aware of the various intricacies involved in Business Writing. On a personal note, this increases focus and confidence. For the organization, this means productivity in terms of time and effort.

Through the facts put forward in this article, you would have realized with strengthened belief, how business writing skills training contributes to one’s professional development and drives the productivity of an organization.

At MMM Training Solutions, we understand that adult learners learn better through experiential learning. It especially works best for topics like Business Writing, which is generally seen as “dull” and “boring”, nevertheless important. Our Business Writing Training systematically introduces business writing techniques to participants.

For further details, visit http://www.mmmts.com/writing_skills.htm

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You can find more articles at http://www.mmmts.com

Pursuing Business Administration Career Training

Businesses run smoothly based on the decisions and work conducted by administrators. Students that are pursuing career training in business administration have numerous avenues available to them. Colleges and universities provide students with several program levels and concentration areas.

From a general business standpoint students will learn to work in a managerial fashion to create a positive and smoothly ran environment. Becoming a business savvy team leader is possible in several areas. Students are able to work through programs at many levels. Training is available at the associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degree level. Several concentration areas can be pursued, which may include:

Finance
Leadership
Management
Accounting

Students can pursue an education according to their personal interests. For example, students interested in marketing can work through a concentration that prepares them to become marketing administrators. Students can expect to learn to apply foundational and advanced business principles to marketing.

Students that work through undergraduate training are able to enter entry-level careers. Training prepares students to work in health care, government, business, and more. Management and business theories are covered inside an associate’s degree program through coursework that provides students with a strong knowledge base. Areas such as financial reporting, computer software, information technology, and entrepreneurship are common course topics. Undergraduate training at the bachelor’s degree level is a great place to start education when pursuing management positions.

Inside a general business concentration students explore all areas related to administration. Training provides students with the concepts and theories to act as team leaders by managing the work environment and its employees. Human resources, microeconomics, computer-based systems, and research methods are curriculum areas that train students for the professional workplace. A specific concentration in marketing for instance teaches students about administration in regards to the marketing department of a business. Career training works through business concepts while teaching students to navigate merchandising campaigns, sales, and more. Marketing research and advertising are highly covered through coursework that includes subjects on strategy, consumer behavior, and business law. Continuing education gives students the opportunity to earn a master’s of business administration degree.

Several areas can be focused on at the master’s degree level. Many students that are interested in advanced management careers pursue this level of education. For example, leadership is a commonly pursued concentration at this level of training. Real world case studies are explored as students examine organizational behavior, psychology, and communication. Programs focus on developing the sills needed to motivate others and a business. Talent identification, mentoring, 360-degree feedback, and planning are topics studied within a typical leadership program. Students that obtain a master’s degree are able to compete for jobs more successfully inside the popular industry of business administration.

Students can pursue several training options that enable them to enter managerial positions inside small and large corporations. Education is highly focused and students can expect to learn the skills needed for their career goals. Explore accredited business administration degree options today and learn how to properly pursue a career. Full accreditation is provided by agencies like the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (ACCSB) to programs that offer a quality education.

DISCLAIMER: Above is a GENERIC OUTLINE and may or may not depict precise methods, courses and/or focuses related to ANY ONE specific school(s) that may or may not be advertised at PETAP.org.

Copyright 2010 – All rights reserved by PETAP.org.

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What is customer service? Have you ever stopped to really think about this question? We have trained literally thousands of people and hundreds of organisations in customer service. No matter who the person or what the organisation, the answer to this question is always generic. They will say: “Customer service is about giving customers what they want” or perhaps “it’s about satisfying customers” some times they will say that it is about “making customers happy.”

While at first glance these answers may sound correct, nothing could be further from the truth. Say for example that you ran a restaurant. If a customer were to enter your restaurant and ask for some office supplies would you be able to give the customer what they want? Would you be able to satisfy a customer who was looking for some jewellery if you worked in a hardware store? No, it would be impossible. The best that you could do would be to politely tell the customer where they can go and get Jewry. Obviously, customer service is not about giving customers what they want, or even satisfying customers.

The same is true for the way we give customer service. When we ask the question: what is the most important thing for good customer service, almost everyone we ask will answer: smile. While this may be good in some cases it is not appropriate in all cases. Just imagine if a distressed mother came up to you and told you that she had lost her 2 year old child in your store. Imagine how she would respond if you were to smile at her? Or imagine if a customer told you that he/she slipped while climbing the stairs or escalator in your store and as they explained their excruciating injuries you smiled back at them.

The truth is that customer service is not about practicalities, it’s about principles. The practicalities may change but the principles stay the same. Staff are not meant to smile all the time, to give customers everything they want, or to satisfy all their needs. Staff are meant to promote the organisation and its values. If you want to increase the impact of your customer service teach staff to represent your organisation and its unique traits.

When we teach customer service training modules we first focus on what the organisation values, what it’s all about and what does it want customers to see. Once we have done this, we move on to how to serve in light of these values. This is a very easy way of getting staff to change the way they serve, it produces better results and is a lot more fun to teach.

Here is something you can do to help your staff engage in effective customer service. Take a black/white board and draw a very basic house. Ask staff to take a piece of chalk or the white board marker and to take turns to turn this basic house into your organisation/company. They may add pictures or words to the basic drawing. Some will add words like: quality, professionalism, friendliness, service, money, speed, or simplicity while others may draw things like customers and staff.

Now ask staff this simple question: in light of this picture, what does a good customer service representative do? The participants will now find it easy to see what customer service is really about in your organisation. They may say for example, in light of us being a friendly company we should smile. Or perhaps they will highlight the organisation’s professionalism and explain that it’s professional to stand up straight and to dress appropriately.

Instead of teaching staff practicalities teach them principles and the practicalities will follow naturally.

The preamble to the United States Constitution begins, ‘we, the people.’ I feel strongly that we, the people, are what make the difference in life, both personally and professionally.

The interaction anyone has at any level with your employees, including you, gives a customer– whether current, potential, internal or external–an opportunity to make a judgment about you, your company, all companies like yours. I’m not just talking about call centers here. All technical support or help desk personnel are included as well. As a matter of fact, anyone who is in the customer service business period.

With continued focus on customer satisfaction, customer retention, and lifetime value of the customer, it is no surprise that contact center operations continue to increase in importance as the primary hub of a customer’s experience. For the customer, the person on the other end of the phone is the company. The contact center is still the most common way that customers get in touch with businesses. In fact, Gartner reports 92% of all contact is through the center. And it’s been reported that 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven by human nature, having nothing to do with technology. State of the art technology is a necessity today, but it is meant to enable human endeavors, not to disable them.

I often talk about taking customer service and ‘kicking it up a notch.’ In the food industry, the word ‘lagniappe’ is often used. Its definition is “a small present given to a customer with a purchase. For example, when you go to the bakery and buy a dozen donuts or bagels, you oftentimes get a ‘free’ one or a baker’s dozen. That’s what customer service should be about–giving the customer more than they expected! Let’s bring lagniappe into the contact center industry.

If we’re going to speak about world class customer service, let’s have a working definition it so we’re all on the same page. Customer service is those activities provided by a company’s employees that enhance the ability of a customer to realize the full potential value of a product or service before and after the sale is made, thereby leading to satisfaction and repurchase.

Let’s look at the first W which is Why?

The state of customer service today is not good, be it over the phone or self service. Because 92% of people feel their call experience is important in shaping the image of a company, this reinforces the importance of centers in branding the image of their companies.

In a Mobius Management Systems Survey, here’s what happened because of poor customer service:

60% cancelled accounts with banks

36% changed insurance providers

40% changed telephone companies

35% changed credit card providers

375 changed Internet service providers

Are you one of these statistics? I certainly am.

In a study done by Purdue University and BenchmarkPortal.com, in answer to (1) how did agents satisfy your needs and handle the call, and (2) based on any negative experience, would you stop using this company in the future? the findings reveal a strong correlation between the participant’s age and the tendency to stop using the company after a bad experience.

What does this mean? Younger participants were less tolerant and more likely to move to the competition. People over 65 were found to be more demanding than those in middle age.

What can you do? Give younger callers a ‘wow’ experience–maintain their loyalty. People over 36 probably have more of an ‘emotional bank account’ with the company they are dealing with–maybe had some good experience and therefore are more willing to ‘forgive.’

In a recent study (CRM Magazine/PeopleSoft Web Seminar on How Usability Helps to Drive a Profitable Contact Center), the number of applications required for agents to access customer inquiries were:

3.7% just 1

81.5% 2 – 5

7.4% 5 – 10

7.4% more than 10

As you can see, the majority of applications are 2 – 5. The goal, of course, is to link every point of contact to one central location for a customer-centric, synchronized approach satisfying customer experiences with every interaction.

Strategies for success for world class service should include:

Respond promptly

Handle requests through the customers’ choice of medium

Be brief and clear

Reduce back and forth communications (especially in writing, i.e., email, kick it up to a phone call if it goes beyond two)

Personalized service

Delight the customer

What do we mean by delighting the customer?

Inform and educate them

Establish your expertise and professionalism

Offer options

Diffuse upset, anger, when and if necessary

Escalate, if required

Take Ownership of the call

Remember we’re still on the first W – the Why. Today’s pressures on agents are different than in the past. They are asked to handle more customer, more volume, more complex and/or complicated calls. After all if we could handle our issues with self service, we probably would not call. But if we tried self service and it didn’t work, now we’re upset and it’s an escalated call from the get go.

They’re asked to provide more information, do it faster and be available and accessible. But they are to lower costs, generate revenue, incorporate new technologies, ensure closure and commitment, deliver ‘great’ service and when? Yesterday, of course.

As a matter of fact the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has said that the causes of death for people under 65 are:

21% – environment – war, accidents, crimes

9% – health care system – doctors, hospitals, medications

17% – human biology – not because of lifestyle

53% – because of the way people choose to live their lives!!!

This is the good news and the bad news. It’s bad news because it’s more than half. However, the good news is that this is something we can do something about, it’s about choice.

The #2 W is Who should be trained?

We suggest front line agents/representatives, supervisors, team lads, managers, assistant managers, internal customers and other departments – anyone who is a touch point so that they can learn to speak the same language, and more importantly, not be in an adversarial position, but rather, together they are serving the external customer or end user.

The #3 W is Where should the training take place? Offsite vs onsite, and there are advantages and disadvantages for both.

Certainly it is most cost effective to have training on site. However, distractions are rampant as is the participant’s availability to a person or problem.

Offsite is more costly. However, there are no distractions and the participants are unavailable to other departments, their managers, or any issues. I believe there is psychic value in taking people away from their work stations and off site to acknowledge the touch jobs they have.

The #4 W is What should be included in any training? We believe the following modules provide a robust, powerful, and succinct training curriculum:

* Quality Customer Service

* Rapport Building

* Customer Expectations

* Perception Shifting

* Conflict Resolution

* Language Skills

* Anger Management

* E-Mail Protocol

* Stress Reduction

* Empathetic Responsiveness

* Change Management

* Communication/Listening Skills

* Interaction/Role Play

* Service with a Smile

Further suggested is university certification to up the ante. The more professionally you treat your employees, the more professionally they will treat your customers.

The #5 W is When. We say for new hires, monthly, ongoingly, consistently, whenever change occurs, when stressors increase, and as needed.

We further suggest that each employee get a minimum of 24 hours per year of ongoing training, spread out over time for the most absorption. We divide our trainings into two four hour sessions per day and deliver 6 days per employee. Therefore, 30 people can participate in the training per day. If there has been no ongoing training, we do four days once a month for four months and then a session three months later, and then another three months later. In this manner, training is customized, in real time, and can address whatever challenges are presented when they occur.

Customer Service Agents are the frontline staff of the company they are who customers speak with first. Essentially, they are the voice of the company.

If a Customer Service agent is professional, friendly, and can solve a customers needs, that customer will have a positive impression of the company. This pleasant experience can lead to repeat business and even referrals increasing profitability.

On the other hand, if a Customer Service Agent is unprofessional, uniformed, and unable to solve a customers needs, the customer will hang up the phone in frustration resulting in a negative impression. Consequently, the customer will indeed talk about your company, but with a very pessimistic tone which can discourage customers away from you and to your competitor decreasing productivity!

As a leader, it is your responsibility to train the staff with proper telephone skills and company and product knowledge as well as the requisite customer service skills necessary to excel customer expectations. With this education, you are arming the Customer Service Agent with the power to better assist customers and increase productivity creating many positive first impressions along the way!

The Customer Service Representative

As the leader of customer service agents, you will engage with a wide variety of personnel, different backgrounds, different ages, and different skill sets including:

• The young employee who is starting his first job.

• The single mother who needs a second job for additional income.

•  The recent college graduate who has not yet found his dream job, but needs a job to pay the bills.

• The middle-age mother who has gone back to work now that her children are grown just to give herself something to do.

• The business professional that has just been laid off from his real job due to downsizing.

These are just a few examples. Every Customer service agent has a different story and a different reason for working.

Your staff may or may not be excited to work at the company. For example, a recent high school graduate may be quite excited about his first job. Whereas, a single mother would much rather be at home with her children. It is your job as the leader to motivate everyone even the most disgruntled Customer Service Agent!

Every Customer Service Agent within your staff will have different skill sets. For example, the business professional may be quite computer-savvy, whereas the middle-age mother who has gone back to work may have very little knowledge of computers. It is your job as the leader to train everyone even the Customer Service Agent who thinks he knows it all!

A major component of your responsibility as a leader is motivating and training the Customer Service Agents so they are comfortable with the technological and people skills that are needed for the job. You also need to know what motivates each employee to keep them excited about being at work.

Call Center Challenges

As a call center leader, you face many challenges a day. Here is just a sample:

• A competitive workforce for qualified Customer Service Agents

• Lack of time to properly train Customer Service Agents

• High turnover rate among Customer Service Agents

 • Technological challenges for Customer Service Agents

• Unmotivated Customer Service Agents

• Different skill levels of Customer Service Agents

Throughout our training courses, you will learn how to deal with such situations, whilst your agents learn the critical success factors necessary to deliver excellent customer care.