Foster-Melliar tackles lack of service standard benchmarks for ICT industry with new training program

Foster-Melliar, specialist in IT service management, has launched "Significant Service", an intensive training workshop specifically aimed at developing customer service skills of frontline staff in the local ICT and business environments.

Conn Wood, Training Director at Foster-Melliar, elaborates: "Being successful and continually meeting or exceeding customer expectations in business is becoming more and more challenging in our ever increasingly competitive and unforgiving environment. Service quality is seen by many as the only sustainable competitive advantage in the long-term, besides being difficult to copy, establishing service excellence especially in an industry where the level of service is generally poor, offers huge opportunity to improve the bottom line and maximise business efficiencies."

Wood`s viewpoint falls very much in line with an independent report by market analyst Datamonitor that shows companies are increasingly opting to spend their hard-pressed technology budgets on call centre technologies that improve agent performance in pursuit of quantifiable results.

"The `Workforce Optimisation Technology Markets to 2007` report says that two-thirds of all call centre costs are directly related to the customer service agent and as customer inquiries become more complex, investment in staff is becoming more critical. Companies are focusing less on solutions that enable technological efficiency and more on those that enable human efficiency," quotes Wood.

Foster-Melliar has been instrumental in creating an awareness and adoption of IT service management (ITSM) in the South African ICT industry, a sector that has come under fire for poor performance when it comes to the softer skills of service and people skills.

"Foster-Melliar`s core competencies are structured around the successful management of an IT environment and aim specifically to create a balance between the efficient and effective use of technology and the organisation in terms of structure and people, and processes - known as the TOP Model," says Wood.

The "Significant Service" training program is a two-day interactive workshop addressing a more in-depth look at service excellence, not only from a hard skills perspective, but also from a soft skills approach in terms of people skills and the dynamics of human interaction. It is aimed at service desk agents including supervisory positions, call centre staff and frontline employees who transact directly with customers.

"The training program is particularly pertinent in environments where call centre agents and frontline staff are being negatively impacted by poor stress management, face a history of non-performance in customer service surveys and where companies need to define a clear path for career advancement for their employees," adds Wood.

"Significant Service" focuses on communication skills, managing customer service expectations, teamwork, measuring successes, reporting and conflict management. The course is NQF 4 and 5 aligned and follows on from Foster-Melliar`s `Service Excellence` course that is NQF 2 and 3 aligned.

"Service is a word that gets bandied about a lot in organisational strategy and marketing. Our goal is to assist organisations establish a true effective service culture that impacts the business offering, customer experience and is not just lip service," concludes Wood.