Instructional Design
If readers are subject matter experts and not necessarily instructors, they require a blueprint to turn their expertise into a logical and flexible progression of lessons that results in the desired learning.
I have been an educator my entire adult life. For each curricula, I’ve designed and developed all my own lessons and evaluations. However, my most rewarding instructional experience is at the corporate level.
I am passionate about adult learning, especially in the corporate setting.
Many times requests for ‘refresher training’ are an attempt to rectify obvious symptoms of poor employee behavior. This is especially true for soft skills. A quick fix to whip offenders into shape and get them out of the classroom and back to their workstations as soon as possible is the company’s vision of effective training. After all, time is money.
Since my approach to instructional design is learner centered, I preform detailed root cause analyses to identify reasons for identified problems. This is especially true for problems presenting in previously capable employees, seemingly for no reason.
In one 24/7 in bound call center, customer complaints spiked abruptly and plateaued at the spike. Callers had no complaints about the products but were offended by servicing they received. Customers made additional calls to the company to complain about agents’ behavior. Customer service representatives were becoming call drivers.
It may not be a training issue.
Research revealed high employee turnover in response to corporate wide changes causing chronic short staffing. Short staffing led to the need for overtime. Telephone agents were regularly compelled to work back-to-back 12 and 16 hour shifts for weeks on end. Of course they were abrupt and terse with customers. They were tired!
Management also saw the overtime as a contributing factor to persistent turnover. But they saw no way to avoid it in view of the massive changes recently instituted by corporate.
Understanding the problem wasn’t staff but personnel turnover due to overtime demands, I didn’t recommend immediate soft skills training as a resolution.
Soft Skills Training Request Research
When I examined employee feedback and management observations, I saw that each correctly identified corporate required changes and forced overtime as possible contributing factors for the high turnover.
My suggestions to management included:
• Additional training for the new software platform
• Suspension of the new quality standards with a slower reintroduction, fewer new/changed requirements at a time
• Roll back of new/changed employee processes to be introduced in concert with new quality requisites, several at a time, not all at once
• An explanation to the representatives about the efficacy of department reconfiguration
Sometimes, however, the problem is actually the representatives. In another much smaller department, lack of empathy and absence of conversational niceties were seen as acceptable treatment of customers. Because the department was not a corporate money generator customers weren’t particularly valued.
Times changed and soon the underappreciated customer population became the company’s focus as the demographic began to grow exponentially. New department management was appalled at the absence of basic business courtesy displayed by otherwise intelligent, capable call center employees.
Management observations:
• Quality was punitive, not used as a learning experience
• Quality was focused only on accuracy of information, not deportment, demeanor or vocal tone
• Agents were rarely, if ever, recognized for good work
• No one in the department (representatives, quality analysts , junior management) had ever had soft skills training such as active listening or empathy
I was able to develop a series of classes and workshops to address these issues along with regularly scheduled follow-up coaching.