{"id":11395,"date":"2017-07-03T11:58:45","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T11:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/?p=11395"},"modified":"2021-03-13T14:20:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-13T14:20:16","slug":"would-you-like-manners-with-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/would-you-like-manners-with-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Would You Like Manners with That?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Canity\u2019 helping overcome bad customer service<\/strong><\/p>\n

A phone call from entrepreneur and customer service guru Kym Illman to his airline carrier recently ended in him providing the unwitting call centre staff member with some on-the-spot training in phone skills.<\/p>\n\"Kym\n

Messages On Hold and Canity Head, Kym Illman<\/em><\/p>\n

As founder and head of voice branding company Messages On Hold<\/a>, it\u2019s something the Adelaide-born former disc jockey is well qualified to provide advice on.<\/p>\n

From a one-man business started in the spare room of his two-bedroom apartment, MOH has grown into a global success story, servicing more than 13,000 sites in 20 countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe voice people hear down the phone is very often their first point of contact with a business and you get only one chance to make sure that impression a great one,\u201d the multi-millionaire and father-of-two says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always had that personality of wanting to please someone. In business I think you have to think \u2018what\u2019s the extra, what can I give people that will really get their attention and make them come back?\u2019 That is surely what customer service is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illman\u2019s 30-year-record in customer service and marketing is the genesis for his latest business offering, Canity<\/a>, an online staff training platform aimed squarely at SMEs. It\u2019s already gaining attention in the lucrative US market.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanity is an online training course with modules made up of short animated video lessons. Once a company subscribes, these videos are delivered straight into the email inboxes of staff,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

At MOH headquarters in East Perth, a team of graphic designers, animators and writers storyboard ideas for the videos before they are approved, drawing on their combined experience in customer service.<\/p>\n

The resulting animations pack a powerful punch in their colorful and easy-to-understand simplicity, which Illman says makes them easy to digest and most importantly, to remember.<\/p>\n

These 1 to 5-minute videos, cover all the fundamentals of customer interaction, from phone skills, effective use of email, through to face-to-face dealing, presentation tips, using social media and much more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deal with everything from different customer personality types; to how to cope with happy, anxious or disappointed customers; from retail and sales skills; to employing empathy \u2013 there\u2019s not much we miss and we are constantly adding to the library.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the completion of each module, staff complete an interactive online quiz and can download further training content. Video lessons can be embedded into existing learning management systems and there\u2019s a \u2018Masters Series\u2019 module for business owners and managers who want to change the way they work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the same way that I have great confidence in my staff, I have absolute confidence this product is a winner,\u201d Illman says. \u201cWhat I like about it is it all happens online allowing the content to be viewed when it\u2019s convenient for the viewer, so we\u2019re not impacting on productivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Canity back end allows managers to see who\u2019s done the training, how they\u2019ve scored and where they\u2019re falling down; the system does all the work for managers, they love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illman argues with more traditional training, \u2018onboarding\u2019 of new employees and retraining of existing ones is often a time consuming and expensive process.<\/p>\n

\u201cOffsite training takes people away from their desks. You lose productivity with days out of the office and at the end of the day how much do employees remember?\u201d he says. \u201cLearning online means staff can be trained without taking too big a bite out of the HR budget and with participants working at their own pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Canity subscription provides access to more than 250 training videos, and covers unlimited access for the number of employees specified. Various pricing options are available.<\/p>\n

Illman says he is constantly amazed that in general, customer service is as bad today as it was 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou walk into a caf\u00e9 and no-one wants to serve you or you ring an airline, a phone company, whoever, and you\u2019re not helped in the way that you want or need to be helped. I remain stunned that so many managers just don\u2019t seem to care,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a company to be truly customer-focused, an employee must understand how important customer service is to the company and the role that he or she plays in that. And that\u2019s in everything from the way someone might speak on the phone to the way they talk to the photocopy repair man,\u201d Illman says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always looking for that \u2018extra\u2019 factor,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat is it that sets us apart. No-one is doing what we are doing at MOH and now Canity, and we are going to continue developing this product and extending its reach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A phone call from entrepreneur and customer service guru Kym Illman to his airline carrier recently ended in him providing the unwitting call centre staff member with some on-the-spot training in phone skills..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":342,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11395"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11548,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11395\/revisions\/11548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}