• Learn something every day. Never stop learning.

  • Change is constant. To implement change you must listen, engage, and empower individuals in the change process.

  • Employee loyalty builds customer loyalty, which builds brand loyalty. It’s as simple - and as difficult - as that.

  • 78% of consumers say their most satisfying experience occurred because of a capable and competent customer service representative.

  • No one of us is as smart as all of us – when teams function well, miracles happen.

  • Leadership is being the best you can be, and helping others be the best they can be.

  • The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. Vince Lombardi

  • 50 – 70% of how employees perceive their organization can be traced back to the actions of one person – the leader.

  • Corporations can work five times harder and spend five times more money to gain new customers, or they can keep the ones they have.

  • If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow rice. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people. – Chinese Proverb

  • The key to keeping customers satisfied and loyal is to value and train employees while making them an integral part of corporate success.

  • The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving. Oliver Wendell Holmes

  • Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. Winston Churchill

  • It is estimated that 80% of mergers and acquisitions that occur today fail to meet initial expectations.

  • 70% of organizational changes fail and these failures can be traced to ineffective leadership.

  • The number one fear in the world is public speaking. “You” vs. “I” messages are powerful tools for capturing your audience’s attention.

  • Effective coaching is a key method for increasing productivity and profitability in an organization. Recent studies have shown that 85% of the workforce wants holistic coaching so that they can continually improve and grow.

  • It costs 10 times more to gain a new customer than it does to keep an existing customer.

  • People are the core strategic asset. To be successful, a company must listen, involve, encourage, nurture, support, empower, and reward all its constituencies.

  • Leadership IQ being equal, it is believed emotional intelligence – how we manage ourselves, our emotions and the emotions of others – accounts for 85 – 90% of what separates the most outstanding leaders from their peers.

  • 85% of business leaders agree that traditional differentiators alone are no longer a sustainable business strategy.

  • A survey of 350 executives across 14 industries, 68% confirmed their companies experienced unanticipated problems in their change process. – International Consortium of Executive Development Research.

  • The key to building a culture based on Trust and Personal Responsibility is getting all employees to be committed to the organization’s Vision and the Values That Build Trust.

  • The brighter you are, the more you have to learn.

  • First, people don’t grow and change much unless they’re in a supportive environment where people know what they want to do and encourage them to do it.

  • "High performing organizations are constantly focusing on improving their capabilities through learning systems, building knowledge capital and transformational learning throughout the organization.” - Ken Blanchard

  • 25 of every 27 customers who have a bad experience fail to report it because they don’t believe anything will change.

  • Companies Don’t Solve Problems.
    People Do.

Mass High Tech - Technical support reps learn to relate to customers

Mass High Tech

By Jeff Miller

Monday, September 24

Technical support.

Two words that can cause even the most steely-eyed executives to grow faint of heart.

The problem? For the less-than-technically savvy, tech talk is often a foreign language. And for those who know what they’re doing, tech support reps sometimes come off as condescending.

Of course, the poor tech support rep on the other end of the line doesn't necessarily know the caller's level of expertise. So what's a rep to do?

Go to training, says Genuity Inc.

On Wednesday last week, for instance, 15 network and systems analysts gathered in a conference room adjacent to the cafeteria at Genuity's Burlington office. Jeans and sandals, a goatee here and there, not a tie in the room. The group wasn't exactly surly, but they didn't look particularly chipper on this gray September morning.

John Barrett, the silver-haired instructor from training company Loyalty Factor, asked each student what his or her expectations were for the daylong course. Most said they didn't have any in mind.

"I'm open," said network analyst Scott Lefevre. 'This was dropped on me this morning."

Genuity, however, has some very definite expectations.

"We need to round out their skills in interfacing with technical and non-technical people," said Craig Bailey, vice president of Genuity. "Their peers understand the tech jargon. Business managers may not. They need to understand how to translate and relate."

As part of the day's instruction, Barrett had students take a personality test that categorizes people into one of four communication styles: thinkers, feelers, sensors or intuitors. Reactions to stress, for example, differ widely depending on one's style, Barrett said.

Thinkers want the facts. Feelers are concerned about how the problem affects relationships.

Or so the theory goes.

The analysts in the room seemed to find the rubric useful.

"Oh yeah, this has been helpful," Lefevre said. "Apparently, I'm a thinker. I give cold hard facts whereas a lot of people want to know how you feel about it. Personally, I don't care about that. I just want to get the problem solved. But this gives me some tools to deal with these people."

Halfway through the day, Barrett placed three chairs in two rows back-to-back in the middle of the room. He announced that the class was going to role-play a customer call. Genuity had detected that a customer’s Internet connection was down, and it suspected a bad router on the customer’s end.

He chose three "feelers" to pose as customers. One analyst volunteered to play a Genuity employee making the call; others had to be chosen through what Barrett called "the military version of volunteering."

One person on each side was designated to start the conversation, but others could jump in at any time.

The "customer," when told his network was down, asked if Genuity could wait until 5:30 to do the testing. The "reps" fumbled a bit, and then another "customer" got on the phone.

"This is Rocky’s supervisor," he said. "Rocky's out of a job. Test this immediately."

The room erupted in laughter.

"If you have a person who's very bottom-line oriented and you start getting into the tech, they’re going to turn you off," said Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor. "Likewise, if you’ve got someone who wants the nitty-gritty and you go right to the bottom line, they’re upset."

"So what we do is give them a test where they understand their style first and how you relate to other styles in this world. We all react slightly differently under pressure."

Copyright © 2014 Loyalty Factor. All Rights Reserved.