Magazine Articles

Edited by Margery Weinstein Last year, Caesars Entertainment Corporation was facing stagnant customer service scores on weekly and quarterly surveys, the metric that determines success of customer loyalty and satisfaction. Each quarter and annually the organization strives for a 3 percent shift of non-A to A scores on customer service surveys year-over-year. Ingrained customer service behaviors helped keep the scores near the same level as the previous year, yet improvement to meet the goal of continuous improvement was becoming a challenge.

By Bob Pike CSP, CPAE, CPLP Fellow How long should training be? Almost every time I lead a seminar in the U.S. I get feedback that trainers are being pressured to deliver training faster. If, as a trainer, you believe it will take three days to develop the needed skills and knowledge, you’re asked to deliver it in two. If it can be done in two, then do it in one. If one, then a half-day should do it. If in an hour, then don’t you just have a pill people can take? In the U.S., it seems, it always will take too much time.

By Tony O’Driscoll Last month, I was sitting in a leadership development program listening to two talented executives share personal stories about how they had learned to lead. As they shared their leadership lessons with the participants, I noticed that one word kept coming up over and over again. That word was “CONTEXT.” “Before I tell you this story, let me set some context,” one said. “To understand why I made the decision I did, it is important for me to give you some more context,” said the other.

By Stacey Harris, VP of Research, Brandon Hall Group

The woman who checked me in at the Walt Disney World Coronado Springs Resort for the Training 2013 Conference & Expo last month was friendly, courteous, and helpful. She handed me my room key, drew the route to my room on the map, told me where I could get food and go swimming, and asked if I had any questions. I cheerfully (and, it turned out, mistakenly) replied, “No, I’m good.”

By Kent Sipes, Senior Consultant, CedarCrestone In customer service offices around the world, employees interact with customers, then intently study their computer screens, then interact with customers again. Often, the switch from customer to screen and back is awkward, and most customer service professionals are more comfortable dealing with people than with computers. There’s often a tendency to do all the “computer” work, then all the “people” work.

By Peter Post, Director, The Emily Post Institute Are companies really embracing social media? It appears so. The average midsize or large company (1,000 employees or more) has 178 “social media assets,” according to the Business2Community Website. That means that, on average, 178 individuals are tweeting, blogging, or posting on behalf of their organizations on company social media outlets.

By D’Anna Flowers, IT Training Manager, Accretive Health, Inc.

By Diane De Re, President, 321 FastDraw Inc. Since the dawn of time, mankind has used images to communicate. From the El Castillo cave in Cantabria, Spain, with artwork of bison, horses, aurochs, and deer painted on the cave walls by our ancestors nearly 40,000 years ago, to ancient Egypt as far back as 3200 B.C. where hieroglyphs were used as a writing system, it is clear that the use of artwork is one of our most basic and powerful forms of communication, seemingly hardwired into our genetics.

By Jason Bickle, Manager, Instructional Design & Development, Experlogix, Inc.