International Office Staff Driven to Customer Service Excellence

Employee training and development is essential for any organization’s success. It is important to ensure the employees’ skills, abilities and knowledge levels are being regularly updated. Timely and relevant training helps boost productivity. By closing skills, knowledge and performance gaps, and arming the employees with new ideas, best practices and skills provides them the platform to emulate the acquired awareness in their jobs immediately.

By making training and development a strategic priority of the organization, and implementing it in a thoughtful and deliberate manner, a company can benefit from measurable Return on Investment (ROI). We can measure for impact, for qualitative and quantitative ROI. The Customer Care Department (CCD) under the leadership of Ms. Lim Shui Chin, the Director - International Office and Special Projects provides in-house training to the Sunway administrative staff specifically on Customer Service Excellence and Communication Skills.

CCD’s core values are integral to making positive and meaningful differences in the business outcomes of both our internal and external customers and their experiences. Each training stint is researched, designed and custom made based on the employee’s individual / department learning and development needs.

Thirty International Office staff members attended a workshop entitled ‘How Happy Are Your Customers?’ on the 19th and 20th April 2016. The training was facilitated by CCD’s in-house trainer, Mr. Busky Baskaran from the International Office.

The objectives of the programme include the following:

• To realize the relationship between Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction
• To identify qualities of Excellent Customer Service
• To enhance Service Communication Skills
• To receive praiseworthy feedback on International Office Customer Service

The workshop was designed to emphasize on the International Office Service Charter which is to, Serve with Excellence to Enhance Students’ Experience and the Sunway On Brand Service Promise. Several crucial topics namely Service Communication, Ways to measure and improve Customer Satisfaction, Customer Expectations, Customer Service Killers and Understanding Satisfaction Drivers were discussed during the workshop. The trainer also incorporated numerous energizers, indoor games, engaging activities, viewing of relevant videos, role plays on real life scenarios and a worksheet on Self Reflection which made the workshop interesting, informative and beneficial to the participants. Overall the participants were receptive and responsive. They enjoyed the session and one of the pro-active participants quipped that she is looking forward to the subsequent workshop.

The learning outcomes from this training session had increased their competence, ability and confidence. As a result, the participants are able to make better decisions, and perform in their jobs more efficiently in managing customers. This positive feedback was received from students, parents and agents.

In essence, by investing in employees training and development, we are helping them to be team players. In addition, they feel more connected, valued, accountable and focused. This eventually results in increased employee satisfaction and retention.

Article written by: Baskaran (Busky), International Office