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The “soft skills”Customer Service leads off new “HEART” training program |
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Something was different. Laurien Hamilton, director of patient services at Adventist Health’s Walla Walla General Hospital, could tell after she’d talked to the third customer service representative. “As a director, I’m not in a position where I contact CareOregon a lot,” she says. “But this was a difficult case and I needed to make several calls. “I spoke to several representatives [in CareOregon’s Customer Service Department] and they were so wonderful, so pleasant, so helpful. Each of them asked me if there was anything else they could do for me. It was a great experience.” Every call center has a couple of stars who stand out as shining examples of customer service, Laurien says. “But after I got two or three with these great customer service skills I thought, ‘They have got to have a program.’”
What CareOregon has is HEART.HEART is an acronym for:
The Customer Service Department completed the training program last fall. HEART focuses on the “soft” skills of customer service, says Rebecca Fortuine, training and quality specialist. Soft skills are about relating, building relationships, empathy and communication. Patti Guynes, customer service supervisor, says the department wanted some training before implementing a customer service call monitoring and quality improvement initiative. “We needed a program that was blended training: some self-study, some classroom,” Rebecca says. “It’s difficult, especially in the Customer Service Department, to get everybody off the phone and into the classroom at the same time. And I was looking for something that was fun.” The HEART program from Impact Learning Systems seemed to fill the bill. The company has produced some books that are standard in the industry, including Managing and Motivating Contact Center Employees, The Big Book of Customer Service Training Games and The Big Book of Sales Games. With themes like that, fun had to be a part of it, she says. There is about an hour of online work before each of seven modules. It was apparent by the third module that there would be a payoff.
“I could tell then that people were taking it very much to heart and were making changes,” Rebecca says. “The people using it were noticing a difference on the phone.” One of those noticing a difference was Charlene Fox. “It’s easy to get into a pattern of doing things by rote,” Charlene says. And it wasn’t easy to break the habits and start new ones. “But it started coming naturally, and the tone of the whole call began to change,” she says. Even calls that started with difficulty or about issues that could not be resolved the way the caller would have liked ended pleasantly. Patti says she started getting feedback very early in the training, too. “Immediately I had phone calls from other providers who clearly said, ‘Gosh, whatever you’re doing is really working,’” Patti says. Karen Matilla, customer service manager, shared the results with the CareOregon Service Quality Committee, which she chairs. That led to the program’s adoption throughout the company. “We want customers to have consistent service no matter who they talk to,” Patti says. Provider Services, Communications, Quality Improvement and Pharmacy departments have also completed the training. |
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