TABLE OF CONTENTS What's in This Chapter?
Facilitation tips
Discussion of adult learning theory
Pointers on being prepared for your trainings
Planning suggestions
Everyone thinks she or he is an expert in customer service. Because this programme aims at helping participants learn how to make the customer feel right, respected, and appreciated, it is important to make your customers, the participants, feel that their contributions are respected and valued. This involves focusing on what each participant contributes to the discussion, and anticipating how you can work with comments that are right, wrong, semi-right and semi-wrong, and how you can make all contributions count.
The more participation you elicit during the training session, the better your results will be. The more active participation you create (and facilitating is a creative activity), the more people will buy into the programme, and the more they will learn. Most important, the more people participate, the more likely it is that they actually will use the skills you are teaching.
Learning activities include short presentations of conceptual material. However, the programme emphasizes active involvement through individual work, work in pairs and small groups, and whole group involvement. Participatory exercises give the people who like to talk in groups opportunities to present their ideas, and enable those who do not like to express their opinions in large groups do individual work or converse with a partner. Your facilitation of these activities is the key to the success of the programme.
Because training is...
