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heres a lot of talk lately about the differences between generations and how difficult it is to
work with a multi-generational workforce.

You may be familiar with the gaps in skills, communication preferences and mindsets, but do
you know how to work with these differences to bridge the gaps?
There are two values that every generation shares, and tapping into these on a personal level will
allow employees from different generations to see more of how they are alike than how they are
different.

Working with multiple generations doesnt have to be a burden. Our new guide will help you and
your employees understand how to work together and create a culture that values what every
generation has to offer.

In this eBook, you'll learn:

What has shaped each generation

The top two values that every generation shares
Solutions for challenges with culture, communication, expectations and stereotypes

Employee engagement can be difficult to define and even harder to measure.

Simply defined, employee engagement (or the lack thereof) is equal to employee morale. An
engaged workforce possesses the necessary skills, knowledge and expertise to do their job.

Actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity
each year.

So, how do you make sure to motivate and engage the employees that you work so hard to
develop?

In this eBook, you'll learn:

 The three levels of employee engagement
What employees are looking for in an organization
How to measure employee engagement
How managers and supervisors can improve engagement
Actionable tips your organization can begin using right away

You may have heard the terms burst and boost training going around the learning and
development industry and dismissed them as the buzz words of the month.

Well, dismiss no longer.

Burst and boost training addresses the challenges of current employee training programs and is a
must-have when training the modern learner.

In this infographic, we'll address the following training challenges:

How to keep learners engaged

How to increase learning retention of key concepts
How to effectively measure training ROI

Why do organizations struggle with measuring the impact of their soft skills training?

We know that improved communications skills make our colleagues better sales professionals,
HR professionals, customer service professionals, etc. But getting to actual proof of this
knowledge isnt always easy.
What Youll Learn:

Common soft skills training and development challenges

How content should be delivered to achieve maximum benefit
How to build a framework for measurement of business benefits of soft skills

If you want your business to succeed, you need

to be able to set clear goals and objectives.

Expecting employees to do well without specific, clearly communicated goals is like expecting
them to play golf at night; no one can do it because the player cant see the holes.

If an employee doesnt know the performance goals toward which he or she should be working,
it is predictable that the employees performance will miss the desired target.

In this competency guide, you'll learn:

How to get started with goal setting

Key strategies to set goals and achieve them
Supporting behavior statements and development activities
 Does a skills gap really exist in the American
economy? Are there truly open jobs for which there are no qualified applicants or people
to fill them?

Many pundits, politicians and news outlets have confused this complex issue with sound bites
masquerading as news, or with dogma masquerading as policy answers.

Sadly, none of this really helps organizations solve the day-to-day issues posed by the problems
caused when its hard to fill job openings.

In this eBook, we will ignore the political and social static that dominates a lot of the
conversation about the skills gap.

What we'll do instead is focus on the data about where organizations are struggling to find talent,
and offer some practical advice, best practices, and tips to help find or nurture talent to fill
current and future skill gaps.

In this eBook, you'll learn:

Why human capital is a competitive advantage

Four strategic shifts you can make to impact your organizations approach to human
capital management and development
How to develop your employees skills in three critical areas: leadership,
technical/professional, and IT/desktop computing
Gain Leadership Buy-In For Your
Employee Training Program

Having leadership support helps drive the importance of a program, assist with accountability
and establish appropriate expectations.

Having leadership support is critical to the success of your employee training program.

Having leadership buy-in helps drive the importance of a program, assist with accountability and
establish appropriate expectations.

However, for most organizations, this is no easy task. It requires being able to identify
organizational needs and align them with business objectives.

In this infographic, you'll learn:

How to develop formalized goals and metrics for your training program
How to align employee training to organizational initiatives
10 steps to gain and maintain leadership buy-in
Career ambition is an essential competency for employees looking to make their way up the
ladder and employers looking for potential new hires with drive.

This competency is both an asset and a driver of everything an employee does.

It often works in harmony with other competencies such as employee engagement, driving for
results and time management. Often, those possessing career ambition are driven by many other
factors as well

In this competency guide, you'll learn:

The characteristics of a career-driven employee

How to identify and develop this important competency in yourself and others
Supporting behavior statements and development activities

Motivation is a choice. A person makes a decision consciously or subconsciously to put

the effort into accomplishing something.

Motivation and drive come from many places. In fact, both internal and external factors can
cause people to want to achieve goals and do their best.

Its common, and accepted, to speak of motivating people, but the truth is, no individual can
actually motivate another. Thats because motivation comes from within.

In this competency guide, you'll learn:

The two types of motivators: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic

Three strategies to drive results and motivate employees
Supporting behavior statements and development activities
What is the one universal motivational need that everyone has, and that life today makes hard to
fulfill?

Why is it that someone seems unmotivated at work, yet will spend hours of heads-down time in
total concentration mastering a video game? How can you fulfill that need, and make work more
motivating like a video game?

The answer requires you to take a very different look at what motivates peoplesomething
called effectance.

In this webinar, you will learn:

The universal need for effectance.

The three types of effectance motivation: people, objects, self.
The 5 effectance motivation profiles description, characteristics, strengths, and
concerns for each.
The 6 hallmarks of a motivating experience (a video game at work).
How to reframe work to meet peoples effectance needs.

Using Effectance to Better Motivate Yourself and Others: How to make work more lik

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Did you know? 75% of long-term job success depends on a persons ability to develop soft
skills.

Soft skills can be hard to master, but they carry a big impact when it comes to your career. They
can be learned and improved upon, just like technical skills.

To learn soft skills, an employee must watch, observe, and then model the behaviors of others.
Video content facilitates observation in ways no other type of learning method can!

In this eBook, you'll learn:

What soft skills are and how they can impact your career
How and why microlearning facilitates learning soft skills
How to incorporate soft skills training into your employee development program
Building workplace relationships is a key component of a successful career.

Building relationships is about your ability to identify and initiate working relationships, and to
develop and maintain them in a way that is of mutual benefit to both yourself and the other party.

According to Gallup, people who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be
engaged in their jobs.

And it doesnt have to be a best friend: Gallup found that people who simply had a good friend
in the workplace are more likely to be satisfied.

In this competency guide, you'll learn:

How to start a workplace relationship

Tips for building and maintaining relationships at work
Supporting behavior statements and development activities
Developing effective coaching skills is critical to organizational success.

Whether youre developing your employees or working to improve your own skills and
capabilities, effective coaching skills impact business results.

According to a study by Bersin by Deloitte, organizations with senior leaders who coach can
effectively and frequently improve business results by 21% compared to those who never coach.

Get started with developing the coaching skills of your managers today!

In this eBook, you'll learn:

Why coaching skills are so important

Emerging principles in employee coaching for managers
The objective of coaching in our organizations
Traditional coaching models and how we can improve them
A coaching toolkit for your managers
Emotional intelligence, or EQ, serves as the building block for professional success.

"Not education. Not experience. Not knowledge or intellectual horsepower. None of these serve
as an adequate predictor as to why one person succeeds and another doesn't." - Travis Bradberry,
Emotional Intelligence 2.0.

Emotional intelligence is not a building block thats isolated to a few professions or job roles.
Its just about as universal as any success principle can be.

However, EQ is often misunderstood as something that people either have or don't have.

In this eBook, you'll learn:

Why emotional intelligence is a core business skill

How to develop emotional intelligence in yourself and others
How to create a development plan for leaders, managers and key employees to help
improve EQ across your organization

https://www.bizlibrary.com/resources/competency-guides/

Building Blocks of a Successful Customer Service Environment

Posted by ICSAadmin - July 14, 2017 - Message from the President - No Comments

Building Blocks of a Successful Customer Service Environment

Enabling a positive customer experience is a key driver for customer service providers delivering
a consistent level of quality service to cross industry clients. Whether youre a small clothing
retailer or a large financial institution, ensuring your customers have an initial and continuous
positive experience is essential to maintaining high customer satisfaction levels, while creating a
customer environment where positive feedback results in more usage of the service. More often
than not, call center agents are the initial point of contact for customers, and their agent-customer
interactions will determine the first impression that will lay the foundation for customer
perceptions going forward. And while unique scenarios may arise within the parameters of
customer service support, what remains constant are some basic customer service tenants also
known as the five building blocks of a customer service work environment that should be
implemented and managed effectively.

Empowerment and Respect We all know the golden rule treat others as you would like to be
treated. When it comes to call centers, your customer service is a direct reflection of how well
your agents are treated. To ensure employee satisfaction, and improve customer service results,
you need to invest time in training, simplifying systems and creating a healthy work
environment. Lets take a look at these tenants a little further:
o Training should be continual and all-encompassing to include soft skills as well as
product knowledge, showing investment in your agents career path.
o Systems should be simplified as much as possible by identifying and implementing an
all-in-one tool. This reduces the number of steps to resolve customer issues, thereby
increasing agent productivity and efficiency and, ultimately, their satisfaction.
o Creating and maintaining a healthy work environment is as simple as making sure your
agents are comfortable, from their chairs to the lighting in the call center.

The three attributes listed above not only increase agent satisfaction, but offer a level of
employee engagement that develops customer service professionals that will buy into the brand
promise and do their best work.

Sound Hiring Practices = Positive Culture In any business its important to hire the right
people for the job. But thats not always as easy as it sounds. In fact, Gallup found that on
average, companies fail to choose the right candidates 82 percent of the time. Call center agents
are on the front lines of customer service. Knowing this helps determine the right skill set
needed; yet, getting senior leadership involved in the hiring process can make all the difference
in the outcome. Seasoned executives have years of experience that allows them to spot great
talent. And by involving them in the hiring process, you not only hire great people, but you also
show prospective employees the investment the company makes in selecting talent.

Courtesy and Professionalism For many, customer service professionals tone of voice directly
affects how they feel about the interaction and, thus, the company. When faced with a problem,
customers want someone who is friendly, personable and helpful. Its not about what your
customer service professionals do, its how they do it. Whether or not a call center agent is able
to resolve a specific request, how they handle the situation is important. Agents need to be
mindful of word choice, intonation and overall manner. In addition to saying the right things in
the right tone, agents should be conscious of saying the wrong things as well.
 Humility and Sincerity Just as tone of voice affects a customers experience, so does the
overall sincerity of the agent. There may be situations in which call center agents will need to
apologize when dealing with an unhappy customer, and theres nothing wrong with that. The
representative should not be afraid nor ever refuse to say Im sorry. An apology can go a
long way in a potentially volatile customer service interaction, as long as its authentic.

Empathy/Compassion It may seem obvious, but call center agents need to listen to
customers. Its crucial for customers to feel as though theyre being heard, and for customer
service professionals to understand what their needs are. Understanding who your customers
are, from their role at a company to their comfort level with certain technologies, is essential to
helping resolve their concern in the most effective way. With a positive interaction comes a
positive perception of the company overall.

Because of the role that call center agents play in the customer experience, they often have a
huge impact on how a customer views a company. While there are always going to be variables
in customer service and customer experience that will pose challenges to the management team,
there are constants in the work environment that remain true when providing customer support.
Implementing and managing the above-mentioned building blocks of the customer support work
environment will ensure your agents consistently deliver an exceptional, quality customer
experience to current and future clients.