5 ways to keep your Educational Support Staff firing on all cylinders
Just like all businesses, Schools have customers. You most likely refer to your customers as students, parents, family, guardians or the School community.
Just like all businesses, Schools have rules. The rules are there for good reasons, but rules can drive some customers away.
Customers loathe rules that are complicated, too hard to follow, take up their time, change often or require them to pay for what they think should be free. Most customers don’t know (or care to know) the big picture of why the rules exist.
Most customers want what they want, when they want it and your staff are who they have to interact with access those wants.
For the ESS to not only survive but thrive in their roles, they need excellent soft skills (people skills). Without excellent soft skills they will find it difficult to work together in harmony and interact with every customer professionally – the good, the complicated and the down right difficult.
To help your ESS stay positive and professional when interacting with each other and your customers, consider the following 5 actions;
1. Remind them of their Power. In a face to face situation, 93% of what our attitude is and how we feel, is communicated to others via our body language and tone of voice. Remind your Frontline to use their power – smile, use eye contact and stand tall.
2. Encourage Phone Excellence. 85% of how we feel and what our attitude is, is communicated via our tone of voice over the phone. How the Frontline answer the phone can literally set the tone of the conversation. Speak clearly, slowly and with a smile on your dial.
3. Practice what you Preach. Always be mindful of your own Body Language and Tone of Voice when you are interacting with your team or your customers. If you don’t bother, you’re staff will wonder why they should.
4. Record Compliments and Complaints. An exercise book or Excel Spredsheet will do. Recording the good stuff in one area and things for improvement in another area. Ask staff to record what they hear and see ie: date and short details. Review the records regularly to make imporvement plans and acknowledge excellence. If you don’t review it – it won’t be used.
5. Recognition and Reward. Just like students, ESS love to hear when they do good work BUT, not all staff like a public ‘song and dance’ about their success. Take the time to find out how your ESS would like to be acknowledged. Never take excellent service for granted – it’s takes effort to provide consistently excellent service and effort should be recognised.
If you would like to spend less time handling complaints and addressing negative attitudes or bad behaviors and more time getting your own work done and listening to compliments about your team, then contact us or order your copy of “The A – Z of Service Excellence”. It is packed with practical tips and actions that will take your team from good to great.