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Background
A positive customer experience is crucial to the success of businesses today, simply because a happy customer can in turn help boost revenue for your business. Afterall, the best type of marketing money cannot buy is a customer who advocates for your brand, product or service — one who is loyal to your company and promotes your business through word-of-mouth marketing to their family, peers, and acquaintances.
At a Glance
Established in 1982, Shalom International Movers Pte Ltd International Movers (Shalom) provides one-stop logistics service needs and seeks to be a World-Class International mover that provides Trustworthy, Reliable, Efficient and Excellent Service (TREES) by pursuing continuous improvement to its services.
As a leading enterprise example committed to developing its workforce, Shalom has been working on various workplace learning projects with notable partners such as IAL-NACE@IAL, the Institute for Technical Education (ITE), Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF), Enterprise Singapore (ESG), and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) since 2017.
Given that the projects were previously focused on developing the skillsets of frontline staff, Shalom sought to provide upskilling opportunities to administrative staff working at the backend as well. Learn more about their transformation journey below.
Why today’s businesses are ramping up on customer service
Source: Blog Article by Hubspot, titled “Why Customer Service is Important: 16 Data-Backed Facts to Know".
Transforming the workforce through workplace learning
In today’s world, workforce development takes on a heightened significance more than before. Companies that provide training opportunities and invest in developing their workforce will undoubtedly have a more productive and skilled workforce that drives better business performance. Moreover, by developing their talents, businesses will also be more capable of attracting and retaining talent in today's candidate-short climate, given that today’s talents seek development opportunities to grow into value-add and meaningful jobs.
Evidently, this is reflected in a study by Randstad, where only 43% of respondents in Singapore said that they are likely they are to stay with their current employer – 17% lower than the global average. This figure reflects the mismatch between Singaporeans’ desires to progress in their careers and the sense of empowerment that they have in their current jobs.
The silver lining? This presents employers an enormous opportunity to enhance employee satisfaction and engagement to their jobs and the organisation through the provision of upskilling opportunities and job redesigning initiatives.
To stay ahead of the changing business environment and the needs of our customers, we recognise the importance of staff development for our growth and success. Through the LEA project with IAL, we were able to redesign the job roles for our Customer Service and Business Development staff and create a holistic and meaningful career pathway for them."
Mr. Gideon Lam, Chief Executive Officer
Identifying existing performance gaps
To effectively reduce the mismatch between employees’ desires to progress in their careers and the sense of empowerment that they have in their current jobs, Shalom embarked on a workplace transformation journey with NACE@IAL with the aim of redesigning the job roles of employees within the Customer Service and Business Development functions. The job redesign initiative serves to equip them with customer service capabilities and enable them to assume higher responsibilities of running the customer service functions in a business unit, and at the same time, allow them to look forward to obtaining new skills and capabilities to keep up with the everchanging business landscape.
For Shalom, the facilitation of tough conversations on expanded job roles was paramount to kickstarting the workplace learning project. Employees were asked to identify the competencies they were lacking, and to redesign and map their current job role to the expanded job role
To effectively bridge performance gaps, working sessions were conducted to incorporate job tasks and responsibilities relating to Customer Service to Logistics job roles in the Skills Framework. To create awareness and ensure buy-in for the redesigned job role, the project team at Shalom had to examine relevant technical skills and competencies to better prepare employees for the newly redesign job roles.
Facilitating workplace learning practices among employees
In Shalom’s endeavour to further hone the capabilities and skills of employees to be capable of providing improved customer service in the acquiring and retaining customers effectively, the following interventions were put in place:
- Co-designing of job descriptions for Customer Service and Business Development roles.
- Co-creation of learning resources, such as an on-the-job training (OJT) blueprint for employees within the Customer Service function, and a roadmap for employees within the Learning and Development function.
Scaling up on the workplace learning imperative
At the end of the Learning Enterprise Alliance (LEA) project with NACE@IAL, Shalom was able to achieve the following outcomes:
The journey to developing a skilled workforce certainly did not come without obstacles for the project team. As an SME, Shalom had to mobilise its employees in response to changing business conditions, especially given the competitive business landscape and the heightened significance of providing value-added services to customers. This itself made sustained discussion on the project scope a challenge.
Another key challenge was getting employees out of their comfort zones, given that their current job roles focused mainly on delivering basic customer service (i.e., handling customer enquiries and booking of sales via email or phone). However, the expanded job role requires them to perform other high value-added tasks, namely customer acquisition and retention, and forecasting customer trends and opportunities. This further reduced the confidence levels of employees in taking on the redesigned job role.
Putting aside the challenges faced, the support and encouragement from the senior management, and the participation from the project team members were of utmost importance during this journey. Without their commitment and support, it would have been difficult to mobilise the relevant resources to execute the plan for the workplace learning project.
The support from IAL’s certified Workplace Learning consultant was equally crucial, especially when it comes facilitating effective and meaningful conversations and communication between employees and the management. The identification of the expanded job tasks and learning opportunities opened up a much-needed discussion on how the management could support employees in the transition, and to enhance job security for the employees.
Sustenance of workplace learning within the organisation
Following the completion of the project, the team at Shalom understands that the transition from an executive to manager is a big leap for employees. To sustain workplace learning practices, dedicated training and development support is required for critical areas such as forecasting, customer acquisition and retention.
Putting aside the challenges faced, the support of the management, and the participation from the project team members (i.e., members of the Operations team and supervisors) who set aside their time and gave their utmost effort in undertaking the WLF programme were of utmost importance during this journey. Without their commitment and support, it would have been difficult to refine on the OJT programme in alignment with the relevant Skills Framework and technical skills and competencies (TSCs).
As the implementation of workplace learning practices is still fairly new to the organisation, coaching and mentoring by the senior management is critical for the transformation to persist and come to fruition, and is an aspect that Shalom looks forward to inculcate within the organisation.
Ready to embark on a workplace transformation project with us?