Wait, it's week 6 already?!

Where do these weeks go?? Time is seriously flying...

This week was a short one for me due to a death in the family. But, I have a great ETC family who sent flowers and was very accommodating! They're way too nice to me :) Despite a short work week, it was still a very productive one.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been busy working on customer service and de-escalation training for Client Service Representatives. On Friday, I met with Kathy, Phil, Jessica, Beth, and Rob to present the training I created. It covers the basics of customer service, techniques for approaching escalated calls, a basic overview of why client satisfaction is important, and what not to do while on the phone with a client. While most of the topics covered may sound like common sense, Jessica, the CST team, and I found it valuable to review them with the Reps. Having little to no personal interaction with clients, it is obviously very important that the company provides excellent customer service over the phones. The training concludes with client scenarios that the Reps will be responding too. Jessica always emphasizes the importance of making training interactive, so I included a fun beach ball activity.

The reaction that Jessica and I received to the training was much more enthusiastic than I expected; CST loved it! In fact, they liked it so much that we are starting training sessions on Tuesday and Thursday, just three days after presenting the concept. I won't lie, I'm feeling pretty good about this one. It's really awesome to see all of my hard work paying off and my presentation being utilized so quickly. All of the current Client Service Reps will be going through training this week in shifts before the new class comes in on August 13. The new class of Reps will also go through the customer service training as part of their new hire training. 

In an effort to reinforce the "continuing education" aspect of the customer service training, CST has adopted a theme on their floor to act as a reminder of how to be client service friendly. Next week I'm working on a beach themed bulletin board that will review all of the topics covered in the training. Kathy mentioned hanging small beach balls in each cubicle as a reminder of how to deal with the client scenarios acted out in the beach ball activity. It's a subtle way to incorporate training into daily calls. 

Stay tuned for next week!