The 3As of Training

Today’s HRD practitioners are spoilt for choices over the many service training programmes available and the proliferation of new ones in the marketplace. The 3As of service training model (see figure below) will help them in making the right training investment in this bewildering marketplace.

In the traditional “ASK” training model, staff training basically covers attitude, skills and knowledge. This is seen as inadequate especially in service training, which emphasises on managing customers’ psychological and emotional needs and expectations. 

Aptitude training, which comprises skills and knowledge, can be used to address the competencies needed to manage the physical and functional expectations of the customer. Aptitude training is best done through structured on-the-job training (OJT). 

Attitude training is about the “mind”. The psychological expectations of the customer are influenced by his past experiences and beliefs as well as marketing communications and word-of-mouth. The right service attitude demonstrated by the service provider to manage the customer’s psychological expectations is best addressed through “Attitude” training. 

Affective training, which involves emotion intelligence, can be used to address the competencies needed to manage the emotional expectations of the customer.

To ride ahead of competition, organisations need a holistic approach to develop its people and transfer their knowledge and skills quickly to the entire workforce. A holistic approach requires an integration of learning that is aligned to the organisation’s vision, mission, service values and service strategy & objectives. 

The Guest Philosophy of Customer Experience

During times of poor demands, companies tend to cut costs in labour, staff training, capital investment, and marketing.  Such measures may work in the business ecosystem but not in the present customer ecosystem. In the customer ecosystem, such measures are viewed to be short-sighted and have little impact on business sustainability. Instead, organisations should take the opportunity to invest in engaging their customers by treating them as guests. This is one of the key success factors of great service organisations like Ritz Carlton and Walt Disney. To treat the customers as guests involves learning and practising the "Guest” philosophy, a set of principles for delivering the extraordinary guest experience.

Generosity in Hospitality

According to Answers.com, a guest is someone who is a recipient of hospitality at the home or table of another, and the word “hospitality” is the act of generously providing care and kindness to whoever is in need. As a host, one should not simply concern about just meeting or exceeding the guest’s physical and functional needs; but also about satisfying his psychological and emotional needs.  

Unique Individual

Every guest is an individual with his unique physical, functional, psychological, and emotional needs. Service has to be personalised. For example, at a Singapore bank, the customer’s birthday is noted and celebrated. This makes them feel special, and not just a digit in the stream of customers that come and go.

Everyone is Welcome

All customers are your guests. Everyone should feel welcome and be treated with dignity and respect. There should be no discrimination, prejudice or bias against your guest in terms of age, race, gender, religion or culture. Your guest is a human being and any mistreatment can be felt and the pain in his heart will not go away easily. The damage will be greater if the guest complains to his friends, relatives, colleagues and business partners.

Service to others

The hallmark of treating your customers as guests is to be of service to them. The host can feel an emotional sense of satisfaction when he sees and senses that his guest leaves the premises happier than when he first arrived. In the service industry, those who truly excel are those who have a passion and a genuine desire to serve others.

Total Guest Experience

The contact that you have with your guest is not simply a short engagement but a total guest experience involving five stages: pre-arrival, arrival, consumption, departure, and post departure. These stages are termed as the “guest experience cycle”. It is the summation of all physical and non-physical contacts a guest has with the organisation and its staff. People remember experiences and not what you provide.

The Radical Approach to Innovation

Innovation has been recognised as the hallmark of successful organisations in the dynamic and uncertain globalised world. Today, organisations adopting best practices in quality, cost efficiency and knowledge management are no longer sufficient for sustaining competitive advantage as their strategies and business models tend to converge over time. Hence, organisations become less differentiated and less competitive.

To succeed in the dynamic and uncertain globalised world, organisations need to continuously reinvent themselves by creating new values for their customers and stakeholders and changing the basis for competitive advantage through innovation. Innovation is no longer an exception but a necessity to sustain an organisation’s long term competitive advantage. To innovate successfully, organisations need to adopt an integrated holistic innovation framework. The “RAdICAL” approach is an integrated holistic innovation framework that addresses the following six key elements of innovation:

Renewal refers to the organisation’s capacity and capability to change the industry basis for competitive advantage through organisation renewal.

Advocates refer to the innovation-centric people that the organisation employs, trains and develops; and the innovation-centric partners and customers that the organisation collaborates with to reinvent itself.

Intellectual property management refers to the process of identifying, documenting, protecting and commercialising of trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, registered designs, etc. to further the organisation’s business and innovation strategy.

Customer value refers to the explicit and implicit benefits derived from buying or using a particular product or service. It is a relative measure against the next best alternatives or tradeoffs. Customer satisfaction is achieved when the value of the purchased product or service is higher than the value of the next best alternatives or tradeoffs. Hence, innovation is about creating new or superior customer value that leads to higher customer satisfaction which in turn leads to higher sales and profitability. 

Approaches refer to the ways organisations manage their innovation efforts. Different approaches should be developed to manage incremental and radical innovation.

Leadership refers to top management commitment and leadership in leading the organisation in its innovation journey. Top management should create an innovation-centric culture that has no tolerance for NUTS (No U-Turn Syndrome). Mr. Sim Wong Hoo, the chairman of Creative Technology in his book "Chaotic Thoughts from the Old Millennium" coined the term NUTS to describe a rule-clad and creativity-stifling environment. He argued that in Singapore, the "no U-turn without sign" culture has promoted a way of life that is based on following rules. 

Innovation is not an end in itself. It is a journey with no finishing line. To succeed and compete in today’s world, organisations must make innovation a systemic capability rather than an exceptional and singular effort.

The Heart of Customer Experience is Happiness

In the happiness-centric economy, businesses are aggressively seeking differentiated customer experience as a way to build customer loyalty and competitive advantage over their competitors. The types of customer experience staged by organisations can be categorised into: transactional, relational, experiential and transformational. However, at the core of the customer experience is the emotional dimension and it is about the “HEART” which stands for Happiness, Emotions, Awareness, Relation and Trust. as illustrated in the diagram below.

Happiness. Customer experience is about delivering happiness. A study done by Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University shows that experiential purchases bring more happiness than things as experiences satisfy higher order needs in social connectedness and vitality – a feeling of being alive. Unlike material objects, people don’t get bored of happy memories. Leading experience-centric organisations have adopted “happiness” in their commercials and products. For example, Coca Cola launched the “open happiness” global campaign in 2009 and has appointed happiness ambassadors to seek out what makes people happy in 206 countries. 

Emotions. Customer experience is about emotions since happiness is one of the six basic human emotions besides anger, disgust, fear, sadness and surprise. An emotion is a sensation of varied intensity manifested in our body triggered by both internal and external events which drives us to act in certain ways.  Emotions play an important role in our life experiences. In the paper “Customer Experience: The Next Competitive Battleground” by Beyond Philosophy, 69 per cent of all consumers surveyed said that emotions account for over half of their customer experience. A brain-imaging study led by Benedetto De Martino of University College London supports the notion that emotion rules over logic in decision making. Organisations, therefore, have to satisfy their customers’ emotional needs, if they want to win their hearts.

Awareness. Awareness of our own emotions as well as the emotions of our customers is important in building and maintaining healthy customer relationships. Awareness is the ability to identify and recognise emotions through both verbal and non-verbal cues displayed by us and our customers. It heightens the sensitivity of emotional issues and gives us the ability to respond positively to the actions and behaviours of our customers with the purpose of delivering happiness in customer experience. Emotions are often triggered through our five senses (touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste), past experiences and memories. 

Relation. Relation is about the act of relating the feelings of our customers back to them. It involves the ability to observe and listen to our own and our customers’ emotions. Observation is about being non-judgmental. Listening empathically to customers helps us to understand how to serve our customers better, it also helps us to build and sustain positive relationship with them. The essence of empathic listening is to listen from the heart, which opens the doorway to understanding, caring and empathy. It requires listeners to refrain from judging the speaker and place themselves in the other’s position in attempting to see things from his point of view. It involves:

•          Paying full attention to the speaker’s total communication including body language

•          Being empathic to the speaker’s feelings and thoughts and suspending one’s own thoughts and feelings

•          Acknowledging and responding to the speaker with the purpose of trying to understand his point of view.

Trust. Part of the empathy process in relation is to establish trust and rapport with our customers. Jennifer Dunn and Maurice Schweitzer from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study on the influence of emotion on trust and they found that incidental emotions significantly influence trust in unrelated settings. Emotions with positive valence such as happiness and gratitude increase trust, and emotions with negative valence such as anger decreases trust. Stephen M.R. Covey in his book, “The Speed of Trust” says that high trust increases speed and lower the cost of doing business. In personal life, high trust brings about greater enjoyment and better quality of life. To establish and build trust in all relationships, he advocates the following 13 behaviours:

1.    Talk straight

2.    Demonstrate respect

3.    Create transparency

4.    Right wrongs

5.    Show loyalty

6.    Deliver results

7.    Get better

8.    Confront reality

9.    Clarify expectations

10. Practice accountability

11. Listen first

12. Keep commitments

13. Extend trust

22nd AUN Actual Quality Assessment at De La Salle University

The 22nd AUN Actual Quality Assessment for programme level at De La Salle University was held from 11 - 13 November 2013 at Manila, Philippines. The assessment of the Bachelor of Arts in International Studies programme was led by Mr. Johnson Ong Chee Bin with Prof. Dr. Hanna H. Bachtiar-Iskandar from Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia. The other programmes being assessed were Mathematics, Statistics and Civil Engineering.

AUN-QA Assessors Training Workshop (1st Public Run)

The first public run of AUN-QA Assessors Training Workshop was held from 7 to 13 November in Manila, The Philippines. The workshop was uniquely designed to give a "hyper-real" experience by incorporating both "simulated assessment environment" in the classroom and "live assessment" observation at De La Salle University.

The workshop aims to equip participants with the essential competencies to carry out an AUN-QA programme assessment. It covers the following learning outcomes:

• Apply the PDCA approach in quality assessment;

• Prepare a quality assessment

• Conduct a desktop assessment for a programme;

• Conduct a site assessment including stakeholders’ interviews, site tour and documentation review; and

• Write assessment feedback, presentation and report

The workshop was jointly organised by ASEAN University Network (AUN) and De La Salle University. It was attended by 24 participants from Universities in Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines.

The 6As of Establishing a Quality Assurance (QA) Office

An university should consider the 6As factors when setting up a QA office to ensure the sustainability of its quality assurance system.

Alignment

In establishing a QA office, it is critical that the mission of the QA office should be aligned to the university’s vision, mission, strategies, and objectives. As the mission specifies what purpose the QA office is to achieve and what value it is to produce, a lack of alignment between the QA office mission and the broader organisation goals will create misfit and confusion. Alignment creates opportunity for the QA office to demonstrate its capabilities and activities that are critical to the success of the organisation, thereby, forging buy-in and visibility.

Approach

The approach to quality assurance practices within a university may be centralised, decentralised, or a combination of both, depending on the organisational structure, culture, strategy, and resources. The approach sets the functional activities of the QA office and its involvement in academic quality and non-academic quality. 

Adaptation

An organisation has a choice of developing its own QA model or framework; or adapting an established and recognised QA framework. The levels of quality assurance framework that an organisation can adopt and adapt to are as follows:

• International (e.g. ISO 9001)
• Regional (e.g. AUN-QA models)
• National (e.g. National Quality Model)
• Institutional (e.g. system model, PDCA model, etc.)
• A combination of the above.

The factors that determine the level and type of quality assurance framework rest on the organisation strategy as well as international, regional, and national accreditation policies and climate. For example, a university with a mandatory national accreditation regulation will have to adopt its national QA framework. A university that exports its education programmes overseas will have to adhere to accreditation policies beyond its national boundary. Developing a QA model by the university on its own should be the last resort as it is costly and time consuming. Harmonising the developed QA framework with other recognised and established framework and getting it accepted by the university community and regulators may be a challenge.

Application

Application of an adapted QA framework depends on the stage of development and maturity of a university, its faculties, and programmes. Generally, QA framework can be applied at the following various levels:

• University Level
• Faculty Level
• Programme Level
• Geographical Level
• Agency Level (franchise)

It is often difficult to have a blanket application of the QA framework to all parts of the university in one “big bang” due to the changing educational landscape and rapid advancement in science and technology. A progressive application approach is a more realistic choice in most cases.

Accountability

Accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, decisions, and policies, covering the administration, governance, and implementation of QA practices as defined within the scope of the role of the QA office, academic departments, and non-academic departments. It mainly covers the following factors: 

• Ownership and governance
• Key performance indicators
• Accreditation/certification
• Transparency of decisions and policies
• Information availability and sharing

Advocacy
Advocacy involves the pursuit of QA and educational excellence and the active support of its cause by the QA office and its advocates. The QA office should lead the university in its pursuit of QA and educational excellence and collaborating with local, regional, and international QA bodies, to harmonise and advance QA practices. Advocacy activities include:

• Leadership
• Promote best QA practices
• Stakeholder engagement
• Capability development
• Continuous development and improvement
• External collaboration

The IDEAL Way to Internal Quality Assurance (IQA)

The approach to IQA can be crystallized in five phases namely: Initiation, Development, Execution, Assessment, and Leverage or in short, IDEAL. 

Initiation Phase

The first phase sets the strategic directions of the IQA initiative. Often this phase involves the setting of quality committee(s) and QA office, as well as the  appointment of key quality officers in the organisation to implement the plans and activities.

Development Phase

The development phase involves the development or search for QA model(s) that can fit into the vision, mission, culture, and varied development of the organisation. In the development of the QA model, alignment to national, regional and international quality assurance framework should be considered. The elements of the IQA include strategy, people, system and culture.

Execution Phase

This phase involves the execution of the IQA plans developed in previous phase. The execution of the plan can be implemented progressively and incrementally starting from a pilot run or in one "big bang". The approach to implement the plans depends on the readiness of the organisation and its stakeholders, resources, and risks.

Assessment Phase

This phase involves evaluating the effectiveness of the IQA implemented and identifying areas for improvement. It builds on the earlier achievements and enhances the IQA plans and activities of the organisation. 

Leverage Phase

This phase involves sustaining and extending QA activities to other parts of the organisation as well as outside the organisation. Collaboration with other organisations and QA bodies to search for best practices, cooperation and recognition.