Public Sector
Local Government
Following the results of a mystery customer exercise across Telford and Wrekin Council, the Senior Management Team identified a need for customer service training under the organisational priority of ‘making every contact count’.
In the past, customer service training would have been delivered as a classroom event at Telford and Wrekin Council and not all teams would have attended. By creating an online training programme, the course content could be made available for all staff and made relevant to as many council services as possible.
Creating diverse scenarios and engaging subject matter that all employees would benefit from was key. Producing bite-sized video clips designed to fit into specific sections of each of the courses and enabling each video to reinforce the learning would appeal to a variety of staff with differing learning styles and IT abilities.
The content was split into three courses followed by a quiz on their learning management system. Scenarios were scripted and filmed twice by the college students, capturing an inappropriate response and the recommended response using best practice and Customer Charter guidelines.
The “wrong response” showed what it feels like to receive poor customer service and asked learners to identify what was wrong. Then showing the “right response”, learners were asked to compare their answers to the recommended actions.
“It would have been logistically and financially impossible to deliver the estimated 60 conventional face to face sessions, and delivering the training via e-learning successfully cut costs by 50%.”
To encourage the learners to complete the online training, pop-ups greeted staff when they signed on to their network account, once a month for the first three months of the course being live, reminding them of the learning.
As well as allowing college students to practice their skills in a workplace setting, those involved were invited to a presentation evening where they met Senior Managers and Councillors and were presented with Certificates marking their hard work.
The project has not only delivered an interactive and engaging bespoke Customer Service programme, it has also strengthened relationships with a key local partner who the council plan to work with again in the future. Feedback has been positive from across the organisation and course completions to date have totalled 2,247.
It’s included for all staff induction, the course helps to reinforce the importance of customer service in the organisation and prioritise “Making Every Contact Count”.
Get started by telling us what you need and one of our team will be in touch very soon.
