service tech training expert – jimbaston.com

Technology’s Revolutionary Impact on the Relative Importance of Soft Skills

Jim — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 13:00:14 +0000

If you are in the service business, then you know a little bit about change. Just about everything to do with field service has been impacted by technology; and it has changed the way we do business. Technology is also having a revolutionary impact on the relative importance of soft skills.

Technology has allowed us to improve efficiencies. It has enabled us to get a more accurate picture of the effectiveness of our business practices. And it has allowed us to empower our field personnel. Most of these changes have been good for the customer, for us and for our field teams.

Closing the Competency Gap

As the pace of technology increases, we can see the shift it is having on the relative importance of soft skills. And it truly is revolutionary. Emerging technologies in the field service business are reducing the competency gap between top service professionals and less skilled service providers. The result is that it is becoming harder to differentiate on technical skills. With remote diagnostics, artificial intelligence, visual reality and embedded information in the serviced equipment, the field service professionals rely more on their tools to troubleshoot and repair and less on their experience and technical expertise. This opens up the door for less “qualified” individuals who use these same tools to give comparable levels of technical service.

This means that, even though it is highly competitive now, it will become even more so in the future. Customers will have an even more difficult time distinguishing between service providers. Service professionals and service organizations alike will have to rely more on the service experience that they create when interacting with a customer to differentiate them from their competitors. The basis of competition will shift from who is doing the best job of servicing the equipment; to who can create the best service experience while doing the job.

It’s All About The Brand

This is not to say that technical competence will go by the wayside. Obviously, it won’t. Technical competence will remain important. But as technology levels the playing field between service professionals of different capabilities, technical competence of the individual and the organizations that employ them will no longer be a factor of differentiation. The winning service organizations of the future will be the ones that create a service “brand.” They will clearly define the service experience they want to create and invest in the processes and soft skills training of their field service team to achieve it.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

– Buckminster Fuller

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Are You the Reason Your Technicians Are Not Enthusiastically Promoting your Services?

Jim — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 13:30:34 +0000

It is no secret that field service technicians represent an excellent opportunity to increase revenues without adding to overheads. They understand the technology, know their products and services and are familiar with the customers’ equipment and their goals. And, of course, they have the ear of the customer.

Chances are you already have one or two techs who are great at developing new business and you recognize that, by getting all of your techs to act like them, you will experience tremendous growth.

If, despite your best efforts, your technicians are still not generating as much business as you think they are capable of, then perhaps you are the reason your technicians are not enthusiastically promoting your services. Perhaps it is your perception that is standing in the way.

Review Our Perception

Ask yourself this question: “Am I prepared to tell my customers what I have asked my technicians to do?” If your answer is “no”, then it may be because your perception is that your field service technicians’ proactive promotion of services is “selling” and that you don’t see value in this from the customers’ perspective. As a result, you are uncomfortable promoting this to them. After all, how compelling is the following: “We have trained our service technicians to sell so that we can get more business from you.” Now, I am sure that you would not be as blunt as that, but clearly there is not a positive message here for the customer.

Change Our Perception from Selling to Serving

But if we change our perception to one that recognizes the tech’s proactive efforts as a serving activity rather than a selling activity, then we start to look at what they are doing through the lens of how it benefits the customer. As a service, the technician is looking to uncover opportunities for products and/or services to help the customer achieve their goals. The focus is on identifying and solving customer problems rather than on generating more revenue. When this is the case, it makes good business sense to let the customer know what your technicians are doing. In fact, their proactive efforts can become a significant differentiator.

If our perception changes from selling to serving, our conversation with the customer can communicate the value of the technicians’ actions from the customers’ perspective: “We have encouraged our technicians to use their knowledge and expertise to identify steps that you can take to help you achieve your business goals. Would you have any objection if, in the course of doing their service work, they identify a product or service that will help you to be better off that they bring their recommendation to your attention?”

Benefits of this Change in Perception

This change in perspective will positively affect a number of factors that will be critical for success and which I will cover in a future blog. These include:

The technicians’ perception of their role.
The processes and systems that you create to support the techs.
How you talk about proactive recommendations.
The customers’ trust levels.
Sales of new contracts.
Our customers’ perception of us.

We offer tremendous value when our field service team takes proactive efforts to make recommendations to our customers that will help them to be better off. If your attempts to engage them enthusiastically are falling short of your expectations, look closely on how you perceive what it is that you have asked them to do. You may be the reason that your technicians are not enthusiastically promoting your services.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“If you want to make the world a better place,
take a look at yourself and make a change.”

– Michael Jackson

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3 Ways to Support Business Development by Your Field Service Team

Jim — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:30:23 +0000

More and more service organizations recognize the value their field service professionals bring when they make recommendations to their customers that will help them to be better off. The challenge is to get the field team to embrace this business development mindset and maintain focus over the long haul.

To achieve this, we would be well served by supporting business development by our field service team like any other service we provide. Here are three things we can do.

1. Support the proactive efforts of the field service team with tools and processes.

Imagine that you have decided to offer a new service for your customers. Would you simply announce the new service and wish your team luck in delivering on it or would you provide every effort to ensure that the initiative was a success? I suspect that you would not leave anything to chance and that you would make the necessary investments to ensure that the field team was properly equipped and directed to make the new service a success.

Now think about the field team’s proactive efforts to make recommendations of products and services to your customers. Here are just a few questions to consider:

Have you made the same level of effort to ensure their success in recommending your services as you have in ensuring that they can deliver upon them?
What processes and tools have you employed to ensure that your field team can effectively identify and speak to the customer about your services?
How have you employed your field automation and/or other tools to support the efforts of your team?
Have you defined clear steps for your field team to take when making recommendations?
How will the current status of opportunities identified be communicated and updated?

2. Train the field service team on the details of the service that they are about to deliver and the skills required to do so.

Thinking back to the new service offering:

What training would you provide on that service and how would you explain why it is of value to the customer?
What would you want the field professional to know about the benefits of the recommended service and the types of problems the new service addresses or avoids?
How would you equip your service team to speak intelligently about the new service and explain how it will help each customer?
What skills will you equip your team with to deliver the service flawlessly?

Now consider the business development expectations you have for your technicians:

How will you equip your field team so that they can explain the benefit of their proactive efforts to the customer?
How is this different from simply promoting services?
What specific benefits can the customer expect from the field team’s recommendations?
How can the field team present recommendations in a manner that helps the customer see the benefit of taking action?
What specific steps do you expect the field service team to take when delivering on this service?

A field team that recognizes that their efforts are not solely intended for the purpose of increasing revenues, but rather to improve the level of service provided, will be more engaged and enthusiastic in doing just that. The fact that revenues will rise as a result of their efforts is a secondary reward for their ability to improve overall service levels. A clear understanding of expectations will also help to engage the team in this important service activity.

3. Measure performance for continuous improvement

Any new service offering will have to demonstrate a return on investment. Feedback about actual performance against plan will be analyzed and addressed. Without feedback you or your team would not have a clear view of the effectiveness of their efforts.

The same is true for engaging field teams in making proactive recommendations. Feedback on their performance will provide insights into what is working well and what is not. It will give you a clearer view of the effectiveness of the effort and guide steps to make continuous improvement.

An obvious measure is revenue but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Other related and critical measures are customer satisfaction and retention scores. In addition, if we are making recommendations that will help our customer to be better off, we should see a decrease in unplanned maintenance and an improvement in overall labour planning. These are just a few of the measures we can take to evaluate performance. There are several more.

We Need Ensure that Our Field Team is Properly Equipped

Engaging our field team to proactively identify and recommend products and services to our customers that will help them to be better off is a valuable service. When we view our field team’s efforts as a service, we can take a step back and evaluate if we are providing the right level of support to ensure their enthusiastic participation and their sustained success. Like any service we provide, we need to ensure that our team is equipped with the right tools, skills and processes and measure our performance against plan to focus on continuously improving.

Jim Baston

“One of the greatest compliments that we can receive is
when our customer tells us that they are better off for having known us”

– Jim Baston

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6 Steps to Delivering Your Brand Promise Through Your Field Service Team

Jim — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 15:30:29 +0000

The definition of our brand, when boiled down to its simplest form, is what our customers and prospective customers think and feel about our service and our organizations. We all have a brand. The question is, did we choose it, or did we let others choose it for us?

Our Brand Promises a Certain Customer Experience

We communicate our brand through every customer touch point, including through our websites, promotional materials and our written proposals for example. Our brand promises a certain customer experience. The delivery of our brand promise comes through the interaction between our field service team and our customers. It is critical that our field team acts and communicates in a way that is consistent with our brand and its promise because those interactions are our customer’s reality.

Here are six steps you can take to ensure that your field service representatives deliver your brand promise.

1. Define – Define your brand

By clearly articulating your brand and your brand promise, you can set the foundation to guide your technicians’ actions so that they are consistent with your brand promise. Start by answering these three questions:

How do you want others to think about you?
How do you want others to feel about you?
What do you want others to say about you?

For example, a service organization that wishes to build their brand promise around the proactive efforts of their field service team may define their brand as follows:

How we want others to think about us: “Our service provider does more than simply keeping our equipment/facilities/processes running well, they take steps to help us achieve our business goals.”
How we want others to feel about us: “We feel assured / We are in good hands”
What we want other to say about us: “We are better off for having engaged our service provider.”

2. Translate – Translate the brand into actions

Having a brand promise is not enough. We must translate that promise into action. What specifically do we expect our field service team to do to? How do we want our team to conduct themselves in order to communicate and reinforce our brand?

In our example above, one of the actions we would define for our field service technicians are what steps to take to identify and recommend opportunities that will help the customer. One large waste management firm who positions itself as an integral part of the community which they serve, teaches their drivers to be courteous and helpful to their “neighbours” as they go about their routes. They also train their drivers to look for and report any suspicious activity they see along their routes in an effort to prevent crime.

3. Train – Ensure your team has the skills to execute on the brand

F. Fournes, in his book Coaching for Improving Work Performance noted that the most significant reasons why employees don’t do what they are supposed to do are because they don’t know what to do or they don’t know how to do it. Once we have clearly defined the actions, it is important that we ensure that our team has the knowledge and the skills to execute them.

4. Leverage – Use technology and processes to support your brand

We need to evaluate the technology, tools and processes that we have at our disposal to determine how we can utilize them to support the efforts of our field service team. For example, how can the hand-held devices be used to help keep the field professional focused on delivering on the brand? What processes need to be modified to facilitate our field service professionals’ actions.

5. Model – Model the behaviour you would like to see

What we say and how we act are important indicators of how serious we are about the initiative. We must take care that our words and deeds are consistent with the brand promise. Our team will pick up on our behaviours and match them accordingly.

6. Measure – Measure

If we don’t measure how well we are delivering on our brand promise, how can we possibly know if we are successful, let alone have the information to allow us to continually improve? This measurement is more than simply asking if the customer is satisfied or if they would recommend us to others, but delves into how well we have met the promise that we made through our brand. For example, you might ask, “How well did we … [insert brand promise here]?”

Jim Baston

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

– M. Ghandi

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Building Personal and Professional Credibility

Jim — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 14:56:12 +0000

There is a lot of interest in teaching field service technicians to promote services. This makes sense as the field service professional is in the best position to recognize opportunities and to discuss these with their customers. To help them, many firms look to courses to train their field teams how to sell. But, if you’re serious about engaging your technicians in product and service promotion as part of your strategy to enhance service levels, then building personal and professional credibility are the most important skills needed for proactive service teams.

Remember That They Are NOT Salespeople

Regardless of how proactive you want your technicians to be, it is important to remember that they are not salespeople and, in the interests of your business success, you don’t want them to be. You want your customers to see them as trusted advisors who are using their expertise to help them achieve their business goals. The most important skills they need are the abilities to communicate their personal and professional credibility to the customer.

Establishing Trust Between Field Service Professionals and Customers

Field service professionals who are recognized as skilled in promoting services know how important it is that the customer trusts them. That trust must be in their personal motives (trusting that they are making recommendations in the interest of the customer and not their own) and their professional competence (they know what they are talking about).

These successful field engineers understand that their personal and professional credibility is earned over time by the way they interact with their customers. They take steps to build their credibility through every customer interaction, regardless of how insignificant it might seem.

Understanding Good Communication Skills

Their success in promoting services is not because they are polished sales professionals, but because customers trust their motives and their judgment and are willing to listen to them and take action. Understanding good communication skills helps of course.

The ability to present a recommendation to the customer in a way that communicates the benefits of taking action from the customer’s perspective helps the customer see the value in taking action. The skill of exploring hesitation can help customers make informed decisions and avoid problems. But, if your technicians do not have personal and professional credibility with the customer, they won’t be successful in promoting services, regardless of how helpful the recommendation is or how skilled they are in promoting it.

So, if you really want your technicians to enthusiastically embrace your strategy to engage them in business development, focus on teaching them how to build credibility with the customer. Ensure that they know that they are not selling, but rather providing a valuable service to the customer. Then provide them with some basic approaches to communicate the benefits of their recommendations effectively so that the customer can make an informed decision.

Jim Baston

“Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.”

– Seth Godin

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SMART Meeting Requests

Jim — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 13:00:46 +0000

As managers and field service professionals, we are often in a position to arrange meetings with customers and co-workers. Using meeting requests are an excellent way to get the meeting synchronized in everyone’s calendar. However, meeting requests often lack key information and this can cause extra work for all participants.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can borrow from the SMART Email concept and write meeting requests that save time and add value.

SMART Emails

Several months ago, I wrote a blog on SMART emails. You may recall that SMART is an acronym intended to help us to write emails that stand out and that communicate professionalism and value.

S = Subject Line
M = Message
A = Action
R = Response
T = Timeline

You Can Use the SMART approach for Meeting Requests

We can use the same approach to create meeting requests that communicate relevant meeting information and help attendees come prepared. This will also reflect positively on our professionalism and competence.

Sample Scenario

Let’s assume that we have arranged to have a conference call with a customer next month to review an upcoming project. Specifically, the call is to discuss the site preparations needed to employ a large crane to lift a piece of equipment (let’s call it a “widget”) onto the roof of the customer’s building. There are to be three participants in the meeting, namely the customer (Mary Smith), the representative from the crane rental company (John Doe) and ourselves. A conference number and password has been arranged.

In a situation like this, it is not unusual to receive a meeting request like the one below:

When Mary and John accept the invitation, their calendars are populated with the above information. Five weeks from now when they see that they have a conference call on their calendar, there is very little information that will assist them. As a result, they may have to spend time and energy just to understand the exact purpose of the meeting. Chances are they will likely not attend the meeting fully prepared and valuable time will be wasted.

Applying the SMART Approach

Now let’s consider what we can do to apply the SMART email approach to this meeting request.

S = Subject line:	In an email, the subject line is like the headline in a newspaper. It should garner attention and provide the reader with an idea of what the email is about. The same can be true of a meeting request. Although our calendar invitation may not actually have a “subject line”, the headline should be included in the event description. This is where you can put a few summary words that will communicate the key purpose of the meeting and provide attendees with an understanding of what will take place before opening up the calendar event. There is also a field typically dedicated to “Location” where contact details can be included. In a face-to-face meeting it will likely be the meeting location. For conference calls or web meetings, it should include phone numbers, passwords or other connection instructions and information.
M = Message:	Most calendar invitations have a “notes” section. Here you should include important details for the meeting, including the agenda.
A = Action:	Like emails, you want to be clear of any actions that you expect participants to take in preparation for the meeting. For example, if Mary is to distribute electronic copies of the site map, or if we are to make inquiries with the city regarding a road closing permit, this should be clearly indicated in the notes section.
R = Response:	Responses that are required before the meeting should be identified, including how the response is to be provided.
T = Time Line:	The time line for the response or action requested should also be requested in the meeting request.

Revised Meeting Request Using the SMART Approach

Let’s consider rewriting the meeting that we are organizing with Mary Smith and John Doe using the SMART approach. The meeting request might look like this:

A meeting request of this nature provides all attendees with the information they need to be prepared and productive participants to the meeting. Notice some actions that can be taken to make the meeting request more valuable:

Our Events Summary makes a reference to the notes below.
We have included a reminder seven days prior to the event. This can remind us to send a confirming SMART email to the meeting participants and follow up on any actions not yet completed.
Although we did not use this feature, in most if not all calendar programs, meeting requests can also include attachments that may be referred to in the meeting. If this is the case, refer to the attachment in the notes so that they do not get overlooked.

SMART meeting requests provide us with the opportunity to stand out from the crowd and convey our professionalism and competency. It may take a little more time to set up, but it will save everyone time in the end.

Jim Baston

“When you go to meetings or auditions and you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”

– Paula Abdul

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Help Your Technicians Handle Customer Objections

Jim — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 12:29:05 +0000

One of your technicians has just made a recommendation on a critical piece of equipment. It is old, parts are hard to find and a failure will have catastrophic results. The customer hesitates and says something like, “Leave it with me and let me think about it.” Underlying this statement could be an objection. It is for times like these that it makes sense to help your technicians have the skills/tools ready to (or be prepared to) handle customer objections.

You might be wondering why I am using sales terminology when I insist that the technician’s act of making recommendations is not a sale but a service. It is because in situations like these letting the matter go without investigating the customer’s reason for their hesitation does not fulfill our obligation to serve the customer in the best way possible. Let’s examine why.

Why the customer may hesitate

The customer may hesitate for several reasons. Perhaps they really do want to think about it, do the math and make a financial determination and that will take time. Perhaps they need the approval of someone else or have another company that they would have do the work. Maybe they are sceptical of the solution or don’t fully trust the technician. Or maybe they do not fully understand the risk of not taking action or the benefit of moving forward and therefore cannot make a fully informed decision.

Regardless, if the stakes are high, then the technician should be prepared to explore the cause of hesitation further and try to address their concerns if appropriate. By not doing so, they are letting the customer make a choice that he/she may later regret and they certainly won’t thank us if they do. And, it certainly won’t be helpful if we say something like, “You should have listened to me when I told you to …” when things do go as the technician predicted.

What we can do

Ensure your technicians are aware of and expect that the customer may have concerns about any recommendation.
Help your technicians be prepared to explore any concerns and have a plan to address them if they do arise.
Have a backup plan if the technician is unsuccessful.

“Do you mind if I ask the reason for your hesitation?”

Let’s go back to the example of an imminent equipment failure. The risk to the customer is high and yet they may say, “Leave it with me and let me think about it.”

Keeping in mind that the customer may genuinely wish to think about the issue, your technician can ask a simple question to help them get to the underlying concern. “Do you mind if I ask the reason for your hesitation?” Chances are, the customer will answer this question with underlying cause for their hesitation.

By exploring the apparent concern of the customer, the technician will be in a better position to help the customer assess the recommendation and make a more informed decision.

Here are just a few examples of what to expect:

Hesitation based on scepticism: “My last service company never mentioned this” (often happens when you win a contract from a competitor and the technician has not had time to build trust) or “You guys have been looking after my equipment for the past 10 years, how come you’re just bringing this up now?”

Hesitation based on current buying habits: “I already have a company that can do that work for me.”

Hesitation based on uncertainty: “I am not sure if it will …”

Hesitation based on pricing and/or budgets: “We don’t have any reserve in the budget.”

With these examples in hand, you can help spend some time during your safety/service meetings with your technicians to help them develop a professional response to each of them if they do arise. The customer may still say “no” despite your technician’s best efforts but at least the decision will be a better informed one.

Have a back up plan.

What if the technician was unable to deal with the customer’s underlying concern and the matter is of some urgency? An equipment failure for example could be catastrophic. Should they push harder? My answer is that they should not.

However, they should not drop the matter either. I suggest that you have in place a process where in these circumstances, the technician can alert management so that a responsible follow-up with the customer can be taken by the manager or the sales team.

Jim Baston

“He who hesitates is last.”

– Mae West

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The One Question Every Field Service Technician Should Ask

Jim — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 14:16:56 +0000

What is a simple question that delivers exceptional service and generates profitable revenue? It’s the one question that every field service technician should ask. So, why isn’t every field service technician asking it?

In our workshops, we discuss the value that field service professionals provide by bringing opportunities to our customers’ attention that can help them operate their facilities/processes more effectively. One way to uncover these opportunities is to ask this question, “Is there anything else that I can help you with today?”

Strangely, only 10% to 20% are asking this question

When I ask how many in attendance ask that question, I am amazed that typically only 10% or 20% put up their hands. And I am further amazed at how enthusiastic those who do ask the question are about the value that they are creating by asking it. To drive the point home of how valuable this question is for the customer, I simply ask those who do use the question a few questions. The discussion usually goes like this:

Jim: Tell me, when you ask the question, how does the customer respond? Do they tell you that it is none of your business?

Tech: [Chuckle] Of course not. Actually, they appreciate the question. I often get one of three responses:

Can’t think of anything.

Thanks for reminding me. We have been having …

You guys don’t happen to do [some service need], do you?

Jim: Do you think your customers appreciate the fact that you ask that question?

Tech: Sure do. It reminds them of something that they intended to speak to me about. Sometimes we get opportunities to provide services that they didn’t previously buy from us because they didn’t know we did it. It also provides clues to potential underlying problems that we can help with.

Jim: Can you think of any reason why you should not ask the question?

Tech: No. It’s a great question. It’s good for the customer and it’s good for us.

Why don’t more service managers ensure their field service teams asks?

If this question is of such value and is appreciated by customers, why don’t more of us as service managers ensure that everyone on our field service team ask it? One reason I suppose, is the one given to me by some of the attendees. They tell me that they don’t ask the question because they will not have time to respond to the customer’s request if it does arise. They have other customers to attend to and don’t have a lot of “spare time” to address additional issues. Although I can see their point, does it have to be a reason not to ask? And, if we don’t ask the question, who will the customer turn to to get any outstanding issues resolved?

Make asking the question a part of your service technician’s routine

My suggestion is to make the question part of the service discussion at the end (or the beginning) of each service call, and then teach the technicians how to address the three typical customer responses (see above). We can clarify with our field teams what our expectations are for “having a quick look” and what they can say to delay any follow up without giving the impression of putting the customer off. If time is really an issue, we can provide clear steps the field team can take to get another team member to deal with the issue.

This questions provides great customer service and may help your bottom line

By asking if there is anything else that we can do for the customer today, we provide an excellent service to the customer by reminding them of issues they wanted to talk to us about, uncovering larger issues that may be underlying the customer’s response and informing the customer of other things we do as a service organization. No doubt we have some on our team that provide this level of service for our customers. Why not all?

Jim Baston

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”

– Eugene Ionesco

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My Definition of Effective Communication for the Service Business

Jim — Tue, 31 May 2016 14:25:35 +0000

I was engaged in a conversation recently about why communication plays such an important role in the world of service. It was an interesting discussion and allowed me the opportunity to share my definition of effective communication for the service business.

The quality of our communication is relied on to assess our competence

The quality of our communication is a major source of information that our customers rely on to evaluate our competence and the value of our work. As an intangible service, it is almost impossible for a customer to accurately evaluate actual work quality or competence directly. For example, if it takes us one hour to troubleshoot a problem, how does the customer know that the hour spent was amazing and that it would have taken anyone else a day or more to figure out the problem? The answer is that they don’t really know, so they look to their perception of the quality of our communication as an important input that they use to assess our competence.

Communication can be intentional or unintentional

It is important to remember that communication can be intentional or unintentional. For example, we can send an email as a way of intentionally communicating specific information. Unintentional communication may also occur based on the quality of that email. How the email is constructed (does it use good sentence structure, is it free from spelling errors, etc.) may communicate information to the customer that they use to evaluate our competence. So, for example, a poorly constructed email that has incorrect grammar and plenty of spelling mistakes, may unintentionally communicate an image of us that is not very complimentary.

We can limit the amount of unintentional communication that takes place. If we recognize that the quality of the email that we send will also communicate something about our professionalism, then we can intentionally make an effort to ensure that the email is constructed in a manner that contributes to the communication of our professionalism.

Effective communication for the service business

Which brings me to my definition of effective communication for the service business. Effective communication will achieve three objectives:

Accurately transfer information
Create the feeling of assurance in the receiver
Reflect positively on the sender

Obviously, accurately transferring information is important. Presumably it is the reason we sent the email or had a telephone conversation in the first place. To be effective, the receiver must understand the meaning of the message in the way it was intended by us as the sender. The second and third points are also important because they contribute to the perceived value of our work.

We’re in control

Fortunately, we can consciously construct our emails, conduct our telephone conversations and otherwise communicate in a manner that will intentionally convey our competence and professionalism. This will help ensure that the customer feels reassured by receiving our correspondence and recognize that they are in good hands. Correspondence of this nature will also reflect positively on us as professionals in our trade.

As service professionals, we have a choice. We can remain unconcerned about the importance that our correspondence has in providing insight to our customers about us and our competence and leave the resulting image that we create in their minds up to chance. Or, we can consciously and intentionally use our communication opportunities to effectively communicate so that we continually remind our customers that they are dealing with a competent professional.

Jim Baston

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

– George Bernard Shaw

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Are There Parallels Between How we Manage Food Budgets and Training Investments?

Jim — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 18:15:24 +0000

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that roughly 30% of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted, along with all of the resources (water, fuel, fertilizers, etc.) necessary to get that food to consumers.[1] The statistic brought to mind a compelling advertisement I saw a couple of years ago and got me wondering if we can draw parallels between how we manage food budgets and training investments.

The advertisement was created to make consumers aware of the enormity of the issue. I can’t recall the exact details but I remember the image of a man at a barbeque with a grill full of food. He is moving the food to a serving plate. Every second or third time he bypasses the plate and puts the food directly into a garbage bin. It is through the absurd nature of the act (who would cook dinner only to throw it directly in the garbage?) that makes the advertisement so effective. Its point is that, although we would never dream of wasting food by throwing it directly into the bin, we effectively do just that when we throw out the leftovers three days later. This compelling image was intended to help consumers look at the issue in a new light.

Which brings me to training investments. Like food consumers, no one knowingly makes an expenditure on training their teams with any intent of wasting that investment. And yet, depending on how well we as managers support the training, we are effectively doing so.

Several years ago, James D. Kirkpatrick, consultant, author and trainer, made a presentation at an event hosted by the Canadian Society for Training and Development. He presented a chart depicting the relative contribution to training effectiveness between management support and training quality. He indicated that 25% of a training program’s effectiveness can be attributed to how management positions and introduces the training before the event takes place. A further 50% of effectiveness will be the result of how management follows up and supports the training after the event. According to his presentation, only 25% of training effectiveness can be attributed to the quality of the training itself.

This is not to say that the quality of the training itself is not important. Obviously we want to ensure that the training content and delivery is of the highest quality. Rather, it is speaking to the important role management has in ensuring that participants get the most that they can from the training event. Without this support, Kirkpatrick’s research suggests that, like the food commercial outlined above, we are likely throwing training dollars directly into to the garbage bin.

Here are three things that we can do to get the greatest return from our training dollars in terms of skills adoption and behaviour change.

Before the Training Takes Place. Introduce the training in context of how it will benefit the participants. What will they learn? Why will this be beneficial? What results should they expect by implementing the new skills? Prepare for the training and provide necessary backup so that attendees can participate fully. Arrange a venue that is suitable for the training purpose.

During the Training. Although it is not always possible or practical to participate in all training that takes place, make a point of participating fully in training events when it makes sense. Get an advance copy of the training materials and review them carefully. Make notes in the margin of the workbook about examples from the day-to-day lives of the attendees that can help illustrate key points. Participate in the training and avoid sitting at the back of the room eyes glued to the computer or cell phone. Let others speak and avoid dominating the conversation, while making contributions of key points that are not otherwise raised. Network with participants during breaks to get a sense of how they feel about the workshop and the key points they are learning. Be enthusiastic throughout the workshop.

After the Training. Follow up with participants and assess how clearly they see the relevance of the training to their day-to-day activities. Spend time to see how well they are applying the new skills and constructively provide feedback and coaching where applicable. Identify key behaviours to review in future meetings and provide opportunities to practice new skills (role plays for example) when practical.

No one wants to throw training resources into the waste bin. A good way to prevent this from happening is to recognize and act on our role as managers to support, reinforce and coach new skills and behaviours. We must remember that, in reality, we are not paid for what we do but for what our team does. Therefore it makes sense to do what we can to help our teams to be the best that they can be.

Jim Baston

“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”

– Margaret Fuller

[1] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations at: http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/

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