A well-known name in the professional and industrial cleaning trade, SYR Clean is a £17.3m-turnover company that produces and supplies manual cleaning systems worldwide.
Based in Lye in the West Midlands, SYR has a proud history that spans more than 60 years and, with research and development at its core, is regarded as a pioneer in the sector.
Alongside innovation, the brand is underpinned by the company’s outstanding levels of service, something that’s highly valued by their blue chip customers, most of whom have been with SYR for many years.
A dedicated customer service team provides a friendly and professional service while their unique ‘Taskforce’ offers on-site advice, training and support free of charge, ensuring that customers get the best possible service.
Project Overview
Inspire Training Midlands has worked with SYR since 2004, designing and delivering a variety of bespoke and off-the-shelf training courses in IT, customer service, leadership skills, assertiveness, recruitment and interviewing techniques.
Keen to improve the quality of its service, the company recently booked a telephone skills course for its team of eight customer service representatives – a mix of men and women of varying ages, experience and time with the organisation.
The course included fully preparing for calls, agreeing ways of presenting themselves and any relevant information, dealing with challenging customers professionally, working well as a team, and knowing where to refer queries.
Solutions
Working with the senior management team, we assessed their specific requirements and put together a bespoke training plan for two half-day courses to be held on-site.
We listened to samples of call recordings and fed back our comments, making suggestions as to how they could prepare staff to get the most out of the training.
After being given access to their own call recordings, the customer service team were asked to listen to the calls and make notes of what they thought went well and how they could improve.
During the training sessions, we discussed the call recordings and their observations, highlighting good practice and any areas of concern. Voice patterns from the recording system were also examined to demonstrate differences in their voice modulation and explain how even minor adjustments could have a significant impact.
The course went on to cover professional telephone techniques with delegates taking part in a number of individual and group activities to hone their skills and receive peer and trainer feedback.
Outcome
The response to the course was extremely positive, with participants commenting about how they were going to actively improve their telephone interactions in line with the company’s newly-clarified requirements.
The team reported that they felt more confident about dealing with difficult customers and found that listening to their own calls gave them a great deal of insight.
This is something the Customer Service Manager is now putting into place with plans to review call recordings on a regular basis as part of their quality control and training process.
A noticeable change in working behaviour has taken place since the training, so the company is extremely pleased with the outcome.
What the Client Said
"Since 2004, SYR have used Janet Baker for staff training. Initially, she ran a programme to upskill our staff with their computer skills, delivering a series of Microsoft Office training sessions to groups of staff over a seven month period.
Janet always has attention to detail and, since then, as well as standard training that includes management skills, team building and time management, she has most recently created a bespoke customer service telephone training scheme for our customer service team that was highly successful. Not only did the staff enjoy the experience but Janet made the training interesting and engaging, as well as informative, all this from a small brief and listening to a sample of general calls.
We have reviewed the calls since the training and seen a marked improvement.
I would recommend Janet to any business that is looking to develop their staff and improve their training standards.
We wish Janet every success in the re-branding of her company and look forward to continuing working with her."
Gareth David
Managing Director
SYR Ltd (Scot Young Research)
Case Studies