I wove the concept of leadership throughout the content and practice around presentation skills and communication styles. Before the workshop I asked them to take the Inscape Personal Profile online to determine their dominant communication style. Then in the session I explained each style in more detail and how to interact with each. We applied this information to their leadership style in exercises, video scenarios, role plays, case studies and even a board game. By the end of the 5 days they were much more adept at understanding their own style and how to adapt to their team member’s styles.

We spent half of each day discussing and practicing presentation skills. They gave a brief talk describing their leadership style. Each person received feedback as well as video taping. They had the opportunity to do it again a few days later so they could work on improving their presentations. All showed marked improvement!

Included were other fun exercises — even going outside for one process. They all enjoyed themselves and had some major epiphanies about how to be a better leader.

By the end of the fifth day, they walked out with the skills and motivation to be much more effective leaders.

Here’s what participants said:

• “It was a wonderful and unforgettable training with you. It helped me to improve and build my confidence. I would like to thank you for the valuable training, sharing your expertise and experience with us especially me. You are my inspiration.”
• “Thank you for spending a memorable week and sharing your wisdom. I hope we will have a continued learning process with you soon.”
• “Thanks so much for a wonderful 5 days.”
• “I had such a great time last week with you and the rest of the colleagues. Every day after our session I shared all the activities that we covered with my wife since she is works in the same bank. She is hoping that she could be the next to participate in the training.”
• “I have been raving on and on about the workshop/course to just about anyone who will listen. My husband even commented that you’d think that this is the only course I’ve ever attended as I talk SO much about it! I thoroughly enjoyed my five days with you as I am sure the others did as well. You have enriched our lives in so more ways than one and for that I am personally truly grateful. I look forward to that other opportunity to meet you hopefully in July.”
• “Thank you again for the great training. It was a true experience for me that I could not believe that we all can stretched beyond our thoughts. It has been wonderful.”
• “By far one of the best trainings I’ve been to. Not only did I enjoy the course but also it kept me engaged and it really enhanced our spirit, teamwork and relationship further with fellow colleagues as well as you. It was really a truly enthralling experience for us.
  “Thanks you for the marvelous course.”
  “I really enjoyed the training and consider myself lucky to have you as my  trainer. Everyone was still excited about it at work. I just want to say thank you so much for your wonderful presentation.”
  “It was a very perfect training for me and I am very grateful I was there.”
• “Thanks you for the marvelous course.”
• “I really enjoyed the training and consider myself lucky to have you as my  trainer. Everyone was still excited about it at work. I just want to say thank you so much for your wonderful presentation.”
• “It was a very perfect training for me and I am very grateful I was there.”

We’ll be doing Part 2 in a few months to review the skills they learned and add to them.

Several newspapers wrote about the program:

Brunei Times, 5/2/09 and 5/3/09

Borneo Bulletin

Brudirect

If you’d like information on how I could customize a program for your leaders, please contact me. Read the description/outline.

My seminar “Effective Customer Complaint Management: Customer Service Excellence Strategies for Driving Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Experience” is a comprehensive program and can be geared toward executives determining which data to gather and mine, to managers overseeing customer complaints, to the front line skills needed to calm down upset customers and turn them into satisfied, loyal customers.

Excellent service recovery will cement customer loyalty. Every organization has customer complaints. It’s how the complaint is managed that determines if the customer is satisfied and their loyalty solidified. Your employees can create astronomical customer retention or can drive your customers away. It all depends on how you approach complaint management.

To be a first class complaint center requires processes to prevent complaints from happening in the first place, as well as recurring. Service recovery should be a subset of a customer service excellence plan. Ideally, your processes and staff make it easy for your customers to get what they want and need, so complaints are reduced. Without a solid overall plan, you keep putting band aids on big problems. So we’ll include ideas on how to make sure your overall customer service program supports your service recovery efforts.

For executives and managers, we explore their strategy for resolving customer complaints, tracking and analyzing complaints to determine trends, and encouraging customers to complain so you can identify problem areas. We discuss how to then shore up those holes, determining how much each saved customer is worth to you, and hiring people who are naturally good complaint handlers. Then how to train them – and on what — so they can consistently respond professionally. How do you monitor their performance to ensure they continue to react with excellence?

This is a “roll-up-your sleeves” program. The more information and data you bring from your organization and industry, the more you will walk away with how to hone your own strategy and plan. There is time allotted to work on attendees’ specific situations.

We purposefully include examples and case studies from disparate industries so you can borrow innovative ideas that your industry may not be implementing. While industry-specific best-practices are useful, too much insular thinking only provides stale solutions rather than creative ones.

This highly interactive workshop is designed to provide attendees with the tools required to create and implement an effective complaint recovery strategy. We’ve has gathered a variety of tools to help you walk out with a draft of a plan, or to hone one you’ve already designed.

Call today for more info. 408/998-7977

I was excited about flying Emirates Air, as my friend Randy Gage waxed on about their service. Granted, Randy flew in one of their First Class suites (private bedroom, shower available). I was in coach. Although I’d flown Singapore Air a number of times, I wanted to check out the Emirates service to see how it compared.

My 15-hour non-stop flight trip from SFO to Dubai got off to a rocky start at check in. The gate agent was insistent that my carry-on not exceed their 7 kg limit. I flew internationally four times last year. Singapore Air had the 7 kg rule, but no one stuck to it stringently.

I took everything out of my Travel Pro bag (the kind flight crews carry) and empty it weighed 5 kg. My laptop weighed another 3. I was already over the weight limit and I didn’t even have my purse, jewelry or on-flight reading in the bag. I told him I wasn’t comfortable checking my jewelry and he didn’t allow an exception. So I quickly stuffed my jewelry boxes into the outside zipper compartment of my checked bag, as he wouldn’t allow me to board with an overweight bag.

Big mistake.

When I unpacked in my room in Dubai, the outside zipper was partly undone and the case for a pearl necklace and earrings was gone. I felt stupid for 1) checking the jewelry in the first place when in the light of hindsight it would have been smarter to just wear it or put it in my pocket; and 2), not taking the time to unlock my bag and put it in the locked compartment.

The agents in Dubai were little help. When I tried to explain what happened they kept thinking I lost the jewelry from my carry on bag. They said I should have reported it before I left the Dubai airport. How could I report it when I didn’t know it was missing until I unpacked?

I decided the best way to handle it would be in person at the airport. The agents there were of no help either. I thought, “How hard can this be? It either fell out in SFO or in Dubai. Don’t they have a luggage lost and found?” Evidently, no.

When I brought this up with the supervisor at the gate she, too didn’t seem to understand. I asked politely for her supervisor. None came. She said to check at SFO. But she did upgrade me to business class!

Business class was great — lie-flat seats, an extra 1″ mattress to make it more comfortable, in-seat massage units, larger video screens, better amenities and food. The 15 hours passed quickly.

At SFO I went immediately to baggage claim to ask about lost and found. While pleasant, they said I had to call LA to report the loss. Again, couldn’t they just check lost and found? Evidently this was impossible. I took the names and phone numbers of the men “helping” me and gave them mine. I asked them if they would check lost and found and call me in the next two days, no matter what they discovered. They agreed.

I called the LA number the next business day and left a message with the pertinent info. I waited a week. No return call and nothing from the men in SFO who promised to call whether they found something or not. I called the LA number again and got a public affairs man. We talked for 20 minutes. He, too, didn’t listen, thinking I lost something on board even though I clearly explained I was forced to put my jewelry in the checked bag at check in.

He informed me that jewelry is not covered as stated in their rules of carriage. Since I did not intend to pack my pearl necklace and earrings, I didn’t review their policy that states they don’t cover jewelry. However, I’d have appreciated the agent refreshing my memory as he saw me pack my jewelry in the checked bag.

He also said they didn’t cover pilferage. I said, “You hire people who steal?” He said it happens, and if someone is caught they are fired and punished. He said he’d send me a form to complete.

I is a month later and I have yet to receive their form, let alone an apology.

What did I learn?

• Buy a lighter carry-on bag
• Buy a lighter laptop
• Never check your jewelry, wear it all if you have to

I am grateful for the Dubai agent who did not have to upgrade me. It does not replace my pearls, but it was a nice treat.

However, the lack of anyone taking any ownership of my issue, including not following through with promised phone calls or mailing me complaint documents, is their problem.

Am I overly picky because I’m an expert on customer complaint management? Perhaps. But actually, I’m always looking for great examples to include in my seminars. Unfortunately, this example will be on the thumbs down side when I wish it had been thumbs up.

Will I fly Emirates again? If I am going to Dubai, yes, as the non-stop from SFO saves me 10 hours over any other airline. Will I come better prepared with lighter carry ons? Absolutely! Do I hate Emirates? No. Do I love them? Not as much as Singapore Airlines, but way better than most US carriers when flying internationally.

You may think that accounting, HR, facilities, and other support staff are immune from cementing relationships with customers, encouraging current clients to buy more, or unearthing new opportunities. Even engineers, manufacturing workers and receptionists can step up to have a sales attitude. When trained and incented, these people can become solid lead generators.

But how do you turn someone who doesn’t have a sales personality into someone who seeks out sales possibilities? That’s where we come in. We partner with you to develop a meaningful reward system and give them the knowledge and skills to take the plunge. The concepts can be easy, like expanding their connections in LinkedIn to encouraging them to have upsell conversations any time they interact with a customer.

When people understand that they are not only helping your current and potential customers, but are possibly saving their own jobs, they are motivated to act! But only when given the right resources to be successful.

Review our basic outline here. This can be customized specifically to your company’s target group. Depending on the group’s technical capabilities, we can include how they can appropriately respond to blogs mentioning your company, using Twitter effectively, and expanding their presence at LinkedIn and other professional social media.

Call us today to discuss how we can help you expand your sales force to every employee! 408/998-7977

One former Continental pilot Bruce Meyer, said he had to hide that
he was putting a safety cushion of fuel on board.

Then US Airways pilots took out an ad that said the airline “embarked on a program of intimidation to pressure your captain to reduce fuel loads.” Senior pilots — those who are well aware of the vagaries of flights — were targeted for (gasp!) fuel conservation training.

Their punishment was training!

Part of this is the humiliation they felt at being senior pilots and being relegated to re-training as if they were rookies or didn’t know what they were doing.

One pilot said he felt the airline was “selecting a few and hoping to intimidate the remainder of our pilot group to not add fuel when they feel they might need a little fuel. So hoping if they punish a few, the rest of the pilot group will get in line.”

Again, punishment is related to training.

Do your people see training as punishment? Even if you think of it as sharpening their ax, refining their skills, reinforcing previous trainings, if they feel it’s punishment it will not only be a waste of everyone’s time, but will have a negative impact, not the positive one you were hoping for.

I’ve encountered this way too many times in my nearly 30 years in the training and development profession. Groups enter the classroom telling me they don’t want to be there, it’s a waste of time, they have more important things to do, their boss sent them. They start the day disengaged — arms crossed, texting on their phones, answering emails on their laptops, even reading. There is very little even a great instructor can do to turn around a group who believes they are being punished by attending forced training.

Much more successful is making training a reward for high potentials, as a chance to enhance their skills and make them more promotable. But very few managers know how to do this properly. I help my clients position training in a way that gets the maximum ROI. How they frame it to their people is important.

If you’d like to discuss how to do this with your team, just give me a call.

Of course, the airlines in the above examples, insisted that the re-training was not for disciplinary reasons. Try explaining that to the pilots with a straight face.