Blog Archives
-
The True Source of Customer Satisfaction — A Lesson From the Past
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday May 16, 2012In 1941, Frederick Roethlisberger wrote a famous article about satisfaction that still holds powerful lessons for every person who is involved in service delivery. Roethlisberger wrote of what became known as theHawthorneexperiments, a series of studies that sought to answer the question: How can employers make employees more productive? At first, researchers fiddled with lighting, temperature, variations in work breaks, and the like. The researchers found that none of these things predicted increased productivity. Slowly but surely, what came to light is that people were more productive when they were more satisfied, but still, what caused satisfaction? The answer soon emerged. People’s satisfaction increased when they... -
Netiquette - Effective Email Practices
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday May 9, 2012Companies expect team members to adhere to the highest possible standards of ethics when conducting business with customers, team members, stockholders and the communities they serve while complying with all applicable laws, rules and regulations that govern our industry. When team members send electronic messages from within the company, they are representing their organization. Before sending any message, it is important to carefully consider whether it is an appropriate representation or whether it might be potentially harmful to the organization, the customers or the team members. Email is the fastest growing channel of customer contact due to its low cost and ease of access. “Netiquette” is the word that defines the... -
Exploration- How Teams Communicate With One Another
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday May 2, 2012In a previous article, we introduced the three key elements of communication that affect team performance according to a recent study measuring the effectiveness of teams. The key elements identified are: Energy – how members contribute to a team as a whole Engagement – how team members communicate with one another Exploration – how teams communicate with one another This week we are looking at the role exploration plays in the communication of effective teams. Exploration involves communication that team members engage in outside their own team. It is essentially the energy between a team and the other teams with which it interacts. The Harvard Business Review study found that higher... -
Engagement - How Team Members Communicate With Each Other
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 25, 2012In a previous article, we introduced the three key elements of communication that affect team performance according to a recent study measuring the effectiveness of teams. The key elements identified are: Energy – how members contribute to a team as a whole Engagement – how team members communicate with one another Exploration – how teams communicate with one another This week we are looking at the part engagement plays in the communication of effective teams. Engagement of a team reflects the distribution of energy among team members. If all team members have relatively equal and reasonable high energy with all other members, engagement of the team is extremely strong. However, some teams have... -
Energy — How Members Contribute to a Team as a Whole
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 18, 2012In last week’s article we introduced the three key elements of communication that affect team performance according to a recent study measuring the effectiveness of teams. The key elements identified are: Energy – how members contribute to a team as a whole Engagement – how team members communicate with one another Exploration – how teams communicate with one another This week we are looking at the part energy plays in the communication of effective teams. Energy is the measure of the number and the nature of exchanges between team members. These exchanges could take several different forms: Face to face comments Acknowledgement by head nod or other body gesture Phone Video conference... -
Building Great Teams
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 11, 2012When we sense a high performing team, that perception is not coming from out of the blue. This sense is a result of our innate ability to process the interactions we observe. These interactions are the communication clues that team members are constantly sending and receiving. Communication clues include things such as tone of voice, gestures, talking, listening, interruptions, head nods, levels of extroversion, how much people talk and empathy to name a few. According to a recent article in Harvard Business Review entitled “The New Science of Building Great Teams”, great team work is observable, measurable and learnable. Research by MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory identified three aspects of communication that affect team... -
Leadership Role in Service
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 4, 2012The average person is said to influence over 10,000 other people in their lifetime. Influence is found at every level of an organization----CEO and executive management team, division and group-level managers and employees. We are all capable of influencing others; but do our actions reflect leadership? Think of someone that was a great leader. Some of the skills that enabled them to be an effective leader might include: being motivational, confident, comfortable with ambiguity, flexible, tolerant, respectful of others, good speaker, exceptional communicator and so on. Most of the skills would be “People” skills as opposed to “Technical” skills. Technical knowledge relevant to the job as well as knowing how to get the job... -
Soft Skills Vs. Core Skills
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday March 28, 2012A common name for training in customer service, leadership, teamwork and other human interaction skills has traditionally been “SOFT SKILLS”. Soft skills training, as many know, is actually “CORE SKILLS” training----a necessity. Athletes know the “CORE” is the “center of their universe” when preparing their bodies for competition or improvement. Unless there is a strong “CORE”, none of the other parts will work to their potential. The same is true in business. Most of the challenges we deal with everyday are “people” related. Unless our teams (whether they be leadership or front-line) have the “CORE SKILLS” needed to deal with those people-related issues, they will not reach their utmost potential... -
Creating An Experience
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday March 21, 2012Organizations that are on the cutting edge of service delivery in today’s market understand that we are in an “experience economy”. Customers’ expectations are higher than they have ever been. Back in the early days of commerce, businesses dealt with buying and selling raw materials (like eggs, flour and milk). Then as industries matured, raw materials were combined to present goods to consumers (like eggs, milk and flour being combined to form a cake mix). Consumers starting getting busier and busier, so round about the 1960’s, they were demanding services as the norm instead of good (like an already baked and decorated cake from a bakery). But we are no longer in a “raw materials economy”, a “goods economy... -
A Case for Change – The Team Process
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday March 14, 2012“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to Change.” ---Charles Darwin Today organizations and teams are changing like never before. The economy, globalization, mergers, acquisitions and many other factors present challenges that force people to be both flexible and nimble if they want to succeed and remain with the team/organization. However, embracing change is the best way to...
Sign Up
for FREE newsletters
Events
-
- 05/21/13 - 05/23/13
- EBACE2013
-
Conference/Expo, Geneva,
-
- 06/03/13 - 06/03/13
- Ultrasonic Testing Level 1 Course
-
Training, Lewistown, PA
-
- 06/03/13 - 06/06/13
- ACI-NA Marketing & Communications and JumpStart & Air Service Development Program
-
Conference/Expo, Atlanta, GA
-
- 06/04/13 - 06/05/13
- 2013 Small Airports Conference in conjunction with the JumpStart & Air Service Development Program
-
Conference/Expo, Atlanta, GA
-
- 06/05/13 - 06/06/13
- ITQI: Improving Training Provision Conference
-
Conference/Expo, London,
