Leading a customer service team
Hours- 1 Hour
Experience
I completed this course on 13.04.21
This course was based mainly on working in a call centre but the skills learnt can be transferred to a variety of roles. This course spoke about the importance of three different areas when improving the management of a team, these are: People, Processes and Performance.
This course explained that it is very important to ensure that, as a manager, you make time for regular meetings with your employees, as well as getting out of the office and interacting on the floor. This ensures that there can be effective feedback for not only employees, but management as well.
It also discussed the importance of getting feedback from customers to ensure that the service they are recieving is of good quality, and it also gives you a chance to improve on areas that may not be so good.
Finally the course described how to ensure your employees work to the best standards, and this can be done by many different actions, one being designing incentive plans.
Skills
Customer Service
Management
Customer service skills are one
of the most important attributes to have when working in the service industry, and managing the team that provides this is just as important. I decided to improve my knowledge on this topic to ensure that I am always ready for any situation
and role.
Leadership
Leadership is a process of
social influence, which maximizes
the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal. (Kruse, 2013)
Leadership is a valuble skill to have, especially in the service industry. In this course I learnt different ways of improving leadership, and these
skills can be used in a variety
of areas.
Managing Stress
Hours- 0.5 Hour
Experience
I completed this course on 13.04.21
I often get overwhelmed when there is too much to do and so I decided to complete this course to help when these situations arise. From this course I learnt that it is important to recognise the stress and to take action before it gets too much. Many companies address this issue by providing fitness and wellness-related activities for their employees, and they provide perks that make life a little easier for the people who work for them.
There are many ways to manage your stress. One is to be clear on the triggers that cause your stress, and avoid or control these triggers when possible. Also by proactively managing your day and taking control of the time you have can help with stress.
Skills
Resolute
Graduate Attribute table
(Morrison 2016)
Doing this course meant that I used
my own initiative to solve problems, and wanted to have the opportunity to improve. Being able to resolve problems is a good skill to have as it shows professionalism, and in terms
of service, it makes the
experience for customers better.
Personal Devlopment
I took this managing stress
course in order to improve my capabilities and potential. When I am stressed the quality of my work decreases and so I took this course to ensure I know what to do to reduce stress, which will therefore enable me to produce more, good quality work. I belive that I have developed my knowledge on how to
prepare for stress and how to
manage it.
Pivoting to Virtual Events
Hours- 1 Hour
Experience
I completed this course on 13.04.21
This course discussed a variety of ways to ensure that a virtual event is just as successful as an in person event. One of the main points made was that attendee experience needs to be prioritised, and this can be done by creating a sense of engagement. There cannot be true engagement without interaction, and ways of creating engagement could be by using polling, chats and Q&A's, reducung the overall run time of the event and to incorporate a variety of presentation styles.
I learnt that, when planning an in person event, only around 25% of the budget is usually used on AV and technology, however for a virtual event this number should be flipped, and around 75% of the budget should be used on this.
I decided to take this course after planning and presenting my virtual dance social, as I thought, eventhough it was successful, I knew there were improvements that I could make for next time and I now know a lot of ways to engage the attendees more and how to possibly attract more attendees.
Skills
Virtual Events
Best (2020) says that there are
three main reasons why virtual events
are not going anywhere, these are;
virtual events are budget-friendly, virtual event technology is advancing and attendee experience becomes more important. As virtual events seem as though they are here to stay, I thought it was important to improve my knowledge of them. This course taught me how to ensure a virtual
event is successful and also how to
properly engage attendees.
Event Planning
Event Planning is always a good
skill to keep up to date on,
especially after COVID-19 as the event industry has taken the biggest hit, and learning new ways to plan events is important. I think that this course has helped to improve my Event Planning skills because I was not very confident with virtual events especially, and
now I am more informed on how to
plan them.
Communicating across Cultures
Hours- 0.5 Hour
Experience
I completed this course on 19.04.21
I decided to complete this course because, when planning events especially, it is important to be able to communicate properly with anyone you may need to. When meeting professionally with people from other cultures it is useful to know what to do to make them feel as comfortable as possible.
In this course I learnt that there are two different types of cultures when communicating, low-context and high-context. Low-context is when messages are more explicit and spelled out, whereas in high-context cultures the messages are more implicit and people tend to use metaphors.
The course discussed that each culture has different unwritten communication rules and it is best to be flexible with your communication styles and also observe your new culture and its communication style when trying to communicate properly.
Skills
Communication
Communication is simply defined as
the transfer of information from one
place to another. (entrepreneur handbook,
2020) Communication is one of the most important skills to have as an Event Manager. This is because you must comunicate with not only clients, but your team, suppliers and much more. Doing this course has made me more aware that meeting people from other cultures requires research in order to be polite
and be able to communicate with
them properly.
Global Citizenship
Graduate Attribute table
(Morrison, 2016)
This course helped to ensure I am prepared to establish relationships with people from various cultures and background,s and building on this skill will help me to maintain relationships. It is important to continue to work on this skill due to the fast changes
in the world and all cultures.
Building Customer Loyalty
Hours- 0.5 Hour
Experience
I completed this course on 19.04.21
Customer loyalty is a customer's willingness to repeatedly return to a company to conduct business. This is typically due to the delightful and remarkable experiences they have with that brand. (Bernazzani, n.d)
This course discussed the customer loyalty loop, this being; 1. Before the sale, 2. Moving towards the sale, 3. Experience choreography and 4. Happily ever after. It explained what each step was and tips on how to improve each point in the loop. One of these being, when marketing before the sale, do not create an expectation gap in the marketing, do not over promise and underdeliver.
The course also mentioned that loyalty programmes are a good way of creating customer loyalty. These programmes can come in many forms, including the ladder process, where new customers start at the bottom and customers can make their way up the ladder.
Skills
Customer Retention
Customer retention refers to a
company’s ability to turn customers into
repeat buyers and prevent them from switching
to a competitor. (Olson, 2021)
Knowing how to retain a customers loyalty is a good skill to have because acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer, and increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%. (Landis, 2021)
I decided to do this course to improve my customer retention knowledge and improve my skills as it will be very helpful when planning events,
and it can also be transferred to other
situations.
How to market your event
Hours- 0.5 Hour
Experience
I completed this course on 19.04.21
I decided to do this course because I was not very confident with marketing an event and this course helped to develop my knowledge of how to do this. I learnt that to properly market the event, it is important to first understand the objectives and goals of the event. Then when creating the marketing strategy you must have a marketing budget, know how long you have to market the event and also the key messages needing to be portrayed.
It is helpful to create a brand image and use branding to ensure the marketing is memorable, this can also be used on all marketing such as websites and emails.
Skills
Event Marketing
Being able to market an
event is imperative when planning
events. This is because, without marketing, no one will know about your event and then it will not be a success. I needed to improve my marketing skills and this course helped me to understand a variety
of marketing techniques.