Training

This article covers the "why" , "what"  "how" and "where" of Service Training. While training is relevant to all organisations, it is more so in the high tech services industry which relies heavily on people as service representatives to create the right customer relations, and deliver customer satisfaction. 
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The purpose of service training is to reduce cost and to help in creating the right company image to help sales. It involves both technical and people skills. People working at the front end are under great stress and if they don't get it right the first time, they may not have a second chance with the customer. 

If you ask service  reps to state  their needs, they will often tell you that they need more time to complete tasks, that they need more support, more resources, more information, all of which relate to more training. It's not really surprising when you consider how and where they work.

For training to be effective, it has to operate on properly identified training needs and run on strict quality lines, requiring proper analysis, making a training plan and programmes with documentation that will cover what will be taught, and how and what will be expected as a result. Sometimes training sessions are set up to simply fill a void and to be seen to be doing something positive. Without the analysis and planning, training can be wasteful, and can be considered as an excuse to deflect from other problems.

Effective analysis  can pin point the person, if indeed it's the person that is the problem.  Using the "symptom, problem, solution" analysis, field events and phone support data can be used to identify those  problems that can be  resolved. Where  problems may be due to design, workarounds will help till final  solutions are provided through retrofits and software updates. 

In cases where new technology is being introduced, a wholistic approach is necessary that requires conversion to new fundamentals and techniques. Dealing with a whole group, it becomes important to establish the present competences and supply the relevant information by setting priorities based on what is needed before product training can take place.

As an example, a Company may be converting from pneumatically operated products to computer driven devices that can control chemical processes.  In such a case it is obvious that training needs will arise and it would be necesary to look at the profile of each person to determine what competences exist and what training investments will be necessary to make the new products launch a success. Such investments will extend to technology fundamentals which will be needed in extensive courses to ensure understanding of yhe new products. A basic tra ining information analysis can be built up from previous performance asessments.

 Some managers think that they can  only get their people " trained on the job," that is to say, throwing them into the water and learning to swim. Learning while doing is good when using a simulator, but it does not work when carried out in front of the customer and at the customer's expense.  War games are good as offline games, but in a real battle, untrained people don't survive. Customers expect value for money. They pay for an expert.

Money spent on training has a high pay back both in the short and long term by decreasing complaints, product returns by dissatisfied customers, and repeat visits by staff. Training reduces the cost due to mean times to repair, and the use of spares. It also has a pay back in better customer and staff relations. It’s a win win situation for the management.

IDENTIFYING THE NEEDS

Having dealt with the why, we must now consider the what. As with any activity, the first step is to define it, and then plan its execution, carry out the plan, and check the result. These steps are best remembered from a process control loop as shown below.


The purpose of service training is to reduce cost and to help in creating the right company image to help sales. It involves both technical and people skills. People working at the front end are under great stress and if they don't get it right the first time, they may not have a second chance with the customer. 

If you ask service  reps to state  their needs, they will often tell you that they need more time to complete tasks, that they need more support, more resources, more information, all of which relate to more training. It's not really surprising when you consider how and where they work.

For training to be effective, it has to operate on properly identified training needs and run on strict quality lines, requiring proper analysis, making a training plan and programmes with documentation that will cover what will be taught, and how and what will be expected as a result. Without the analysis and planning, training can be wasteful, and can be considered as an excuse to deflect from other problems.

Effective analysis  can pin point the person,  and the knowledge. Using the "symptom, problem, solution" analysis, field and phone support data can be used to identify those  problems that can be  resolved. Where  problems may be due to design, training in workarounds will help till final  solutions are provided through retrofits and software updsates. 

Some Organisations  think that they can  only get their people " trained on the job," that is to say, throwing them into the water and learning to swim. Learning while doing is good when using a simulator, but it does not work when carried out in front of the customer and at the customer's expense.  War games are good as offline games, but in a real battle, untrained people don't survive. Customers expect value for money. They pay for an expert.

Money spent on training has a high pay back both in the short and long term by decreasing complaints, product returns by dissatisfied customers, and repeat visits by staff. Training reduces the cost due to mean times to repair, and the use of spares. It also has a pay back in better customer and staff relations. It’s a win win situation for the management.

IDENTIFYING THE NEEDS

Having dealt with the why, we must now consider the what. As with any activity, the first step is to define it, and then plan its execution, carry out the plan, and check the result. These steps are best remembered from a process control loop as shown below.

The Desired Value Input to the loop is quite clear. When this is compared with the field feedback f customer satisfaction we get the training needs that need to be addressedby the training controller. The result of the training action can  only be determined after seeing its effecft on the field over time.

Tracking help-line calls and alerts will identify difficulties of individual customers or repeat knowledge based calls across the customer base. Field activity reports will also identify engineer training needs. On-going training needs and known design shortfalls may well need workarounds until permanent solutions are implemented. Staff training needs may be obtained by directly asking people  through "no threat" questionnaires. Making a list of  the various characteristics of a product  and asking people  to mark on a scale of five their strengths and training needs maybe used  to build up a profile of  needs to be addressed .

In addition to technical, there will be training needs in communication, in interpersonal relationships and account management. Its not enough to have the knowledge when visiting customers. The people interaction is also important. People form  relationships and customers may well ask for a specific person who is friendly, approachable and does not talk down to the users. These are vital skills for customer support personnel. There will also be career development needs to keep senior engineers motivated to stay and advance within the organisation. You’ve invested a lot of money in your people and can’t afford to lose them to competitors.

Some of the training can be subcontracted to specialists in both technology and management education. Either way, you as the manager will have to oversee the preparation especially in defining the needs and evaluating the results.

In continuing with the what and listing the specifics, we can make a list which while not exhaustive, will serve as an example of areas that will need addressing in the case of a technical products service. A similar list can be made for administrative services or banking, insurance etc.
.


Induction
Technical Fundamentals
Communication & Relationships
Trainer Training
Product training
Workshop Practice
Field Troubleshooting
Customer Training
User Club Updates
Management Training
Operational Exercises


INDUCTION TRAINING.

You need to make sure that people know their way around your organisation. Every  person needs to know the company rules and who does what. Procedures in filling out time sheets, defect reports, expenses and the rest, all need explaining.

TECHNICAL FUNDAMENTALS

This is the foundation of product training. When dealing with a new product, people shouldn’t struggle with the fundamentals. By identifying the different technologies of your products and providing the basics in advance you’ll save time to be used in dealing with the real product issues.

COMMUNICATION AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

This is a  must for every service representative on the phone or on site. Speaking with, and understanding what is said from how it‘s said, is part of the daily service problem. Being patient and pleasant on the phone with a real understanding of customer difficulties is essential. Humility is important. The service rep may be an expert on their product but the customer is an expert in their own field so the rep must be prepared to explain and in some cases to teach. A person who communicates well, and relates to customers is also the person that is likely to help  make the next sale. The term “representative” says it all.

TRAINER TRAINING

Your senior  experienced staff may be involved  in training  customers and other junior engineers. They will probably take part in  presentations to user groups. Using your own people to deliver the training has the advantage that the trainers relate well to the trainees. Selecting those who have the ability to teach is not enough. They need to go through trainer training to be effective.  Senior engineers also benefit from trainer training in analysing, planning, and implementing the programmes. Presentation and control of groups, as well as the psychology of learning serve them well, in their personal  development.

PRODUCT TRAINING

This  is the most common service training activity. The purpose of product training is to know “where to grease and less on how to grease” which should be covered elsewhere as much as possible. Short programmes repeated with updates, tend to be more effective than long winded sessions. Breaking up the material with periods in the field helps to refresh and retain the information.

WORKSHOP PRACTICE

This  is the best way to build up engineer skills away from the customer premises. Customers need to have confidence that service staff are familiar with their equipment and trouble shooting procedures. Practicing in-house  should be properly structured with  exercises targeted at specific needs. A user environment with  simulators and actual machines should form the hands on training.

TROUBLE SHOOTING UPDATES

Those repeat problems identified from customer calls and engineer field defect reports  may well be design related problems and they can often be dealt with using workarounds to temporarily manage the situation. These are short sharp programmes carried out by experienced engineers.

CUSTOMER TRAINING

Lack of effective customer training can be very expensive. Operators who may not know how to properly use the equipment can cause problems during warranty  and be responsible for unnecessary service calls. This training  should be held initially  at  your premises.  This not only helps grouping of customers, but it also enables you to form a lasting partnership. Customers benefit by meeting their engineers, the telephone consultants, and see the inventories in spares/repairs.

Retraining is also necessary at the customer premises to reinforce badly understood principles and to train new operators. In a way, you can regard customer users as your unpaid staff because if well trained they will fix their own problems  and they will not block your telephone lines every morning.

USER CLUB UPDATES

These keep customers up-to-date with latest developments and sharing of customer experience. 

MANAGEMENT TRAINING

 This is the development route for your selected high fliers. By sponsoring them on management courses they can develop within service and beyond. Not everyone wants to be or can be a manager but management training benefits also those who choose a technological career.

Identifying and developing people for promotion is also good for your own career. Senior management considers service an excellent source of talent. In developing your people you not only get the staff motivation and performance from them but you are recognised for your leadership qualities and corporate responsibilities.

In training and developing people you also develop yourself. You are part of the corporate management team. The higher you push your people, the higher you have to stretch your self. You also need management training to contribute to corporate strategy by understanding the political and economic environment in which you operate. You have to understand the business thinking and the language of corporate finance to properly represent the interests of your staff and your customers.

SERVICE OPERATIONS TRAINING

This  does not take place in a class room. It  is getting the whole team to know each other’s role just as fire-fighters do in emergencies. You simulate an alert and follow through the exercise to identify your weak points and correct them. Take a leaf from the military. Train your force to be an efficient fighting  machine. You may have a problem when you come to implement an action quickly when your people are spread all over the country. Spares may not be where you thought they are. Transport may not be as reliable as you imagined and you maybe committed to terms in contracts that could be costly if you fail to deliver.
.

TRAINING ORGANISATION

You should check your training organisation for procedures. The training manager is the controller receiving the inputs on needs and acting on them. He should build up and maintain a data base; an inventory of knowledge for each individual. This will help send the right engineers to the various customers. Audits on the preparation standards should be carried out. Quality standards should be used with zero tolerance for bad planning and execution. Effective training starts with good preparation. The use of signed -  off check lists ensure that  individuals involved are made accountable. The more that items are written down, the less likelihood of things going wrong.

In conclusion, providing service training and people development makes it possible to improve productivity and do more with less. Remember,  “it’s not the size of your service force - it’s the quality that matters.

Tracking help-line calls and alerts will identify difficulties of individual customers or repeat knowledge based calls across the customer base. Field activity reports will also identify engineer training needs. On-going training needs and known design shortfalls may well need workarounds until permanent solutions are implemented. Staff training needs may be obtained by directly asking people  through "no threat" questionnaires. Making a list of  the various characteristics of a product  and asking people  to mark on a scale of five their strengths and training needs maybe used  to build up a profile of  needs to be addressed .

In addition to technical, there will be training needs in communication, in interpersonal relationships and account management. Its not enough to have the knowledge when visiting customers. The people interaction is also important. People form  relationships and customers may well ask for a specific person who is friendly, approachable and does not talk down to the users. These are vital skills for customer support personnel. There will also be career development needs to keep senior engineers motivated to stay and advance within the organisation. You’ve invested a lot of money in your people and can’t afford to lose them to competitors.

Some of the training can be subcontracted to specialists in both technology and management education. Either way, you as the manager will have to oversee the preparation especially in defining the needs and evaluating the results.

In continuing with the what and listing the specifics, we can make a list which while not exhaustive, will serve as an example of areas that will need addressing in the case of a technical products service. A similar list can be made for administrative services or banking, insurance etc.
.


Induction
Technical Fundamentals
Communication & Relationships
Trainer Training
Product training
Workshop Practice
Field Troubleshooting
Customer Training
User Club Updates
Management Training
Operational Exercises


INDUCTION TRAINING.

You need to make sure that people know their way around your organisation. Every  person needs to know the company rules and who does what. Procedures in filling out time sheets, defect reports, expenses and the rest, all need explaining.

TECHNICAL FUNDAMENTALS

This is the foundation of product training. When dealing with a new product, people shouldn’t struggle with the fundamentals. By identifying the different technologies of your products and providing the basics in advance you’ll save time to be used in dealing with the real product issues.

COMMUNICATION AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

This is a  must for every service representative on the phone or on site. Speaking with, and understanding what is said from how it‘s said, is part of the daily service problem. Being patient and pleasant on the phone with a real understanding of customer difficulties is essential. Humility is important. The service rep may be an expert on their product but the customer is an expert in their own field so the rep must be prepared to explain and in some cases to teach. A person who communicates well, and relates to customers is also the person that is likely to help  make the next sale. The term “representative” says it all.

TRAINER TRAINING

Your senior  experienced staff may be involved  in training  customers and other junior engineers. They will probably take part in  presentations to user groups. Using your own people to deliver the training has the advantage that the trainers relate well to the trainees. Selecting those who have the ability to teach is not enough. They need to go through trainer training to be effective.  Senior engineers also benefit from trainer training in analysing, planning, and implementing the programmes. Presentation and control of groups, as well as the psychology of learning serve them well, in their personal  development.

PRODUCT TRAINING

This  is the most common service training activity. The purpose of product training is to know “where to grease and less on how to grease” which should be covered elsewhere as much as possible. Short programmes repeated with updates, tend to be more effective than long winded sessions. Breaking up the material with periods in the field helps to refresh and retain the information.

WORKSHOP PRACTICE

This  is the best way to build up engineer skills away from the customer premises. Customers need to have confidence that service staff are familiar with their equipment and trouble shooting procedures. Practicing in-house  should be properly structured with  exercises targeted at specific needs. A user environment with  simulators and actual machines should form the hands on training.

TROUBLE SHOOTING UPDATES

Those repeat problems identified from customer calls and engineer field defect reports  may well be design related problems and they can often be dealt with using workarounds to temporarily manage the situation. These are short sharp programmes carried out by experienced engineers.

CUSTOMER TRAINING

Lack of effective customer training can be very expensive. Operators who may not know how to properly use the equipment can cause problems during warranty  and be responsible for unnecessary service calls. This training  should be held initially  at  your premises.  This not only helps grouping of customers, but it also enables you to form a lasting partnership. Customers benefit by meeting their engineers, the telephone consultants, and see the inventories in spares/repairs.

Retraining is also necessary at the customer premises to reinforce badly understood principles and to train new operators. In a way, you can regard customer users as your unpaid staff because if well trained they will fix their own problems  and they will not block your telephone lines every morning.

USER CLUB UPDATES

These keep customers up-to-date with latest developments and sharing of customer experience. 

MANAGEMENT TRAINING

 This is the development route for your selected high fliers. By sponsoring them on management courses they can develop within service and beyond. Not everyone wants to be or can be a manager but management training benefits also those who choose a technological career.

Identifying and developing people for promotion is also good for your own career. Senior management considers service an excellent source of talent. In developing your people you not only get the staff motivation and performance from them but you are recognised for your leadership qualities and corporate responsibilities.

In training and developing people you also develop yourself. You are part of the corporate management team. The higher you push your people, the higher you have to stretch your self. You also need management training to contribute to corporate strategy by understanding the political and economic environment in which you operate. You have to understand the business thinking and the language of corporate finance to properly represent the interests of your staff and your customers.

SERVICE OPERATIONS TRAINING

This  does not take place in a class room. It  is getting the whole team to know each other’s role just as fire-fighters do in emergencies. You simulate an alert and follow through the exercise to identify your weak points and correct them. Take a leaf from the military. Train your force to be an efficient fighting  machine. You may have a problem when you come to implement an action quickly when your people are spread all over the country. Spares may not be where you thought they are. Transport may not be as reliable as you imagined and you maybe committed to terms in contracts that could be costly if you fail to deliver.
.

TRAINING ORGANISATION

You should check your training organisation for procedures. The training manager is the controller receiving the inputs on needs and acting on them. He should build up and maintain a data base; an inventory of knowledge for each individual. This will help send the right engineers to the various customers. Audits on the preparation standards should be carried out. Quality standards should be used with zero tolerance for bad planning and execution. Effective training starts with good preparation. The use of signed -  off check lists ensure that  individuals involved are made accountable. The more that items are written down, the less likelihood of things going wrong.

In conclusion, providing service training and people development makes it possible to improve productivity and do more with less. Remember,  “it’s not the size of your service force - it’s the quality that matters.

An environmentally friendly manufacturing strategy

Manufacturers are being encouraged to make their products environmentally friendlier using more recyclable and degradable parts. The purpose in all this is to reduce the amount of scrap and make better use of valuable materials. A more environmentally friendly strategy would be to build products with longer lifetimes but this would not help the turn over necessary to maintain turn over and higher profitability. It is even doubtful if customers would be prepared to pay for the extra cost in using higher reliability components There is surely a better way to conserve valuable commodities and that is by extending the useful product life of instrumentation. By using a strategy of good maintenance and refurbishment to extend the useful life of products, the amount of raw material used for manufacture would be reduced. This would also increase the lifetime value of customers' investments. Admittedly, sales of new products would fall, and other ways would have to be found to maintain the profitability of suppliers.

When Companies bring out the same products in a "new dress" simply to maintain their sales volume, they create unnecessary obsolescence of older, perfectly good instruments with some years of useful life. In cases where the difference is simply the addition of a new feature, a module could be manufactured and sold as an add-on to be attached to the existing equipment. New products could be launched only where an add-on would not be possible in incorporating major improvements. A carefully thought-out design with this in mind could achieve savings in materials. Manufacturers would price their add-ons appropriately and would in addition increase their revenues through extended maintenance or leasing of their products. Their Service organisations would make money in selling the maintenance spare parts.

Another strategy for systems manufacturers would be to "sell the use" and retain the property of their instruments as is done with software. This would provide an extra incentive in extending the life of their hardware and thereby make a contribution to the environment. They would design, manufacture and maintain their products, selling value in use, thereby giving the customer the ability to do their work and not be responsible for the equipment. In the end, suppliers, customers and the rest of us would all be better off.

Recognising Performance

 When you decide on salaries you have to pay the market rate determined by the economic situation, and the availability of labour.  In tough times companies adjust the wages, paying below  inflation. They can also reduce staff by choosing to invest in more machinery to automate the work process. The opposite applies when the economy is growing.

Service employs administrative, support and field staff. While the administrative staff are easier to find, field staff  are part of a small number of people usually employed by competitors and therefore more costly to recruit. The alternative of training your own can be time consumming and extensive training is expensive. In determining the salary of the various groups, company HR may use general criteria such as qualifications  and years of service. A wage  budget  across the company can be settled for  various categories.

Where a large number are employed it is not easy to differentiate without upsetting the entire work force. The better worker may not be satisfied with a general negotiated salary and may look to go elsewhere for more. Working on customer sites where competitors may also have equipment makes comparisons easy and your engineers may be poached by the competition. If corporate HR provide a total sum as part of the company wide budget you will be forced to "rob Peter to pay Paul,"where Peter is at the bottom end. Service, needs some flexibility in the remuneration of its field people bearing in mind the conditions of work and the skills required. What do you do if you have a large number of high performers with no possibility for extra reward? Without monetary flexibility you end up demotivating and losing the best performers.

Bonus payments for productivity can overcome such problems. If performance exceeds real quantitative objectives then extra payment is justified in the form of bonus. "Standard hours" can be used to define every acivity so that from the database you can calculate the average number of annual visits per system, and the standard of hours and spares used  on each visit to diagnose and repair. Added to this,  you can add subjective items such as customer satisfaction ratings, and you have a set of measurable criteria. Performance over  the standard averages will lead to bonus  payments that do not infringe corporate  policy.

 Support staff can also be eligible for a bonus based on total service performance,  or on field performance of a group that they support. By linking everyone's performance and bonus to the work done for customers,  the end result is higher profitability and customer satisfaction which are the two main objectives of a service manager.

Thought Waves

The atom used to be the last stop in our descent into the micro-world. For convenience we learned to recognize its structure as a sort of planetary system with a central nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons. Then we found that this was not so. There was magic below the atom. The electrons did not orbit around the nucleus and they were not solid miniature planets. They were at the same time both particles and waves. As waves they spread out over space and their energies are related to their frequencies. So this compact atom seems to be made up of fuzzy waves that buzz full of different energies according to where they are. Well you might say, this is all very good but what has it to do with us? It's just that our bodies are made of atoms.

The French scientist De Broglie called the vibrations of the electrons "matter waves" and that made some sense since the electrons were part of the atoms that make up matter. With energy related to frequency, and from Einstein's famous energy being equal to mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light, E=MC squared, we see that energy is also related to mass so we come back to mass (particle) having wave properties. So we must be made up of energy waves.




Now consider the brain energy creating thought waves. We need to pump energy through sugar so that our brains can think. This energy creats thought waves and if electromagnetic radio waves are all around us and we don't see them but we can tune into them, why not tune into thought waves when we eventually develop the technology? Waves can interfere or add to each other or cancel out,so our waves can influence others. We also have the effect among people who think alike. Sometimes thought waves are magnified as might happen in a group of people undergoing some sort of religious experience. We often talk of people being on our wavelength where few words are necessary to convey an idea.


Science fiction writers use  the particle/wave duality to get teleportation where the atoms are decomposed, transmitted as waves and reassembled at a distance. The effects of entanglement, interference, difraction, all seem to hold a lot of promise for research both in body and mind.


Waves caused by thought vibrations may be capable of outliving us. Just think! These thoughts may remain in space all around us.

Although some people may have more sensitivity in picking up such signals we may well all receive them. What if there is a sort of human memory bank where all our thoughts are gathered and kept? We know that energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another!

Consider the universe as being one of many  universes which exist in parallel to ours where we live at the same time. Theoretical physics talk of tens of different dimensions and tunnels through black holes that may make time travel possible.

All this makes the claims of conventional religion seem very conservative!