Essential Skills in Customer Service

By Laura Ruddock

Charlene Gulak, a rural coordinator for WEMSC, has developed a highly original teaching unit on oral communications in the workplace that manages to combine Essential Skills training with the ABCs of customer service.

Developed in the spring of 2004, in association with Dauphin Economic Development, Gulak had been asked to deliver a session on oral communications to several tourism service groups working to improve their communication skills. It was here that her program outline was born. Since then the original outline has been edited, modified and delivered countless times. “We’ve tried to customize it to meet various needs,” says Gulak.

For the past two years Gulak has focused her energy, and her outline, on improving the oral communications skills of employees in small communities throughout Manitoba. With a degree in rural community development from Brandon University, Gulak notes that workplaces in rural communities rarely have the same access to the types of training available in larger centres. “Through our program it makes the whole concept of Essential Skills training affordable for businesses that wouldn’t have otherwise thought it possible and, ultimately, it empowers them.”

Gulak’s oral communications program focuses on several elements including: efficient use of workplace documents, problem solving, effective listening, assertive speaking, effective communication, non-verbal communication, and basic customer service principles. She tells students to tailor their communication to fit the audience they’re trying to reach. According to the outline, the three “C’s” of effective communication are: be clear, concise and correct.

When speaking assertively, she encourages learners to observe attitude, expression and body language. Gulak recommends focusing on positive language, speaking in a positive tone and using reinforcing language.

Because body language plays a key role in oral communications, Gulak puts students into groups of three to role-play workplace scenarios. In this way, learners observe how non-verbal cues influence the listener’s perception and overall communication pattern.

“Many of these sessions are short-term sessions: one day or a few hours of immediate information,” explains Gulak. “It meets small business needs from our perspective, because people don’t have time for a lot of training.”

For more information on Workplace Education Manitoba please visit http://www.wem.mb.ca/