How To Reduce Change Anxiety Among Your Sales Workforces?

Sales is a dynamic field, always keeping a workforce on its toes!

Even the most stalwart workers need to be constantly developing. Competing in a market and flourishing in it are two very different things.

An effective sales training program should aim to develop confidence in a team, so that problems gradually disappear with practice. For your organization to flourish, you need to pay careful attention to staff development, especially in virtual sales training.

Previously, performance was evaluated purely on sales numbers, but there is much more to it nowadays. Employees must be equipped to build customer satisfaction, trust, and positive experience throughout the sales cycle.

 

Enabling sales workforces

 

Adopting a two-way approach while developing training plans, assessing both current capabilities and assessing future demand, can give you an edge.

Change is the only constant in this era of virtual selling. The past years have caused much anxiety about how the world and its industries will change. Thankfully, most emerging trends are already becoming clear, for rest of them we should accelerate our team.

Your clients, who have been through challenging times with your business, can provide invaluable insights and predictions about transitions, desired behaviors, and expectations.

 

Characteristics of profitable sales training methodologies

 

The sales training bar is set much higher than 20 years ago. Training options can be accessed online through Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, etc. Forbes identifies four shifts that could drive sales in 2020 and beyond: Most importantly, most of the action will be happening virtually. Introducing changes overnight will not only make a team anxious but also undermine the success of the training. So, how do you plan to prepare your people?

The science of learning and an agile learning solution focusing on audience behavior, organizational requirements, and desired impact can greatly benefit the modern sales set up during the time of uncertainty. To encourage your employees to be open to new concepts, experiments, risk-taking, ideas, quickly act, and continuously learn you may introduce a learning framework that works for your culture.

 

Tool-based intervention

 

Our daily interactions have swiftly moved from 75% physical to 75% virtual. These changes mean that speech recognition, facial recognition, real-time language translation, 3D virtual experiences, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and other technologies are becoming ever common in people’s daily experience. Is your team equipped to handle these changes and quickly adapt?

You need targeted training for these new tools and technologies if you want to take your team swiftly from beginner to advanced level. Microlearning pertains to building a highly efficient agile learning culture, so to avoid overwhelming them, you might consider introducing the knowledge in short bursts.

 

Targeted skills training

 

How employees interact with customers, deliver on their ambiguous expectations, and can have empathy to handle customer behavior can be integrated into the learning methodology.

The high performing teams will require the new age skills. Taking them from rudimentary selling approach to holistic ‘buyer first’ approach will give the competitive edge.

Every organization is unique: Try to optimize your training for your own purposes to really make the team passionate about it.

 

Building confidence/awareness

 

Among virtual interactions through Zoom meetings, virtual training, online negotiations, and other forms of virtual communication, team members are often craving deeper human interaction. Training them in affective behaviors around themes of social justice, shared well-being, purpose-oriented buying, etc., will make it easier for them to absorb changes more smoothly.

The priorities of both organizations and customers are shifting: Increasingly important are speed to value, flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness to market needs. Making these evolving expectations clear to your sales team will help them to understand the need for more demanding, focused, strategic, and mindful approaches.

 

As the world continues to redefine itself, sales professionals with greater experience and knowledge, and more agile capabilities, will have an edge.

There are multiple paths you can take to train your sales team. Reach out to G-Cube for help in combatting the challenges. We can help you to deliver a distinct learning experience leveraging advanced technologies.

Why consider industry specific LMS for your new implementation?

 

Industry specific LMS for your new Implementation

 

It is no rocket science and in fact, normal human tendency to accept changes which benefit us. Marketers identify the needs of the market and work towards filing the gap. Organizations work in the similar fashion; they identify the needs or gaps of their employees and search for best solutions to address them. This change is what we adapt to.

 

At G-Cube, we believe in Solving Business Problems with the Science of Learning. In this piece, we will try to look at two variants of LMS. Whole one has generic features and the other is the customized version for specific industry families. With our experience of 21 years, we have seen that an industry specific LMS generates better results than a standard LMS because the features are made to align with the processes, terminology, and regulations of the industry.

 

 

Every business is different from the other and thus they differ in their respective problems, needs and functionality. Therefore, a standard LMS can overcome certain training and learning requirement of the business but may not solve the specific needs of the industry or the business function.

 

We know that BFSI and Automotive as an industry are heavy on training the extended workforce, but the training requirement and process is very different for both. For example, the training requirement of the finance industry is more compliance oriented while the automotive industry does its training based on skill gaps. In this case, even the standard LMS, with extended enterprise features will not be suitable for both the industries with same effectiveness, creating a need for specific LMS for the said industries.

 

Similarly, Pharma and Aviation are two industries with strict training compliance requirement but their processes are different, regulatory bodies are different, certification requirements are different. Even an LMS which has a compliance training module attached to it will not cater to the Pharma industry as it requires compliance to the 21 CFR Part 11 guidelines by USFDA.

 

From our extensive work across industries and functions, our experience suggests that the future for generic LMS is bleak. With the massive growth in eLearning adoption, soon the organizations will demand an LMS specific to their industry so they can rapidly build skill at a scale!

 

There are many standard learning platforms in the market with which can help you quickly start your training but are they ready to solve those problems which your industry is facing?

 

Let’s see what factors trumps industry specific LMS over the standard LMS.

• It follows the organizational structure of the specific industry.
• It uses industry specific terminology.
• It abides to the training compliance rules and regulations of the industry.
• It can map the various types of organizational or department specific training flows.
• It has a skill library according to the industry.

 

The feature, content and focus of training vary from business to business. Industry specific LMS is a great solution for creating an eLearning strategy which best fits business needs and objectives. If you wish to optimize the effectiveness of your organization’s training initiatives, you may talk to our learning consultant for a deep dive. Write to us.

Post-Pandemic, Business Continuance in Airline Sector means Upskilling with Corporate eLearning Solutions

 

I run the risk of stating the obvious when I say, along with tourism, aviation industry is one of the most severely impacted industries in 2020. The global bodies of the industry IATA, ACI and ICAO, all agree that it is not going to go back to 2019 level, any time before 2024 and holds true for both business travel and leisurely trips.

A global survey conducted by Gartner, Inc. found that 88% of business organization all over the world mandated or encouraged all their employees to work from home as the virus started to spread at exponential rates. Furthermore, about 97% of the organizations immediately canceled all work-related travel. Tourism, though opening up in pockets, is yet to revive full scale. The fear of contagion on a flight is higher among masses as there is hardly another industry which offers services that involves intermingling with so much and so many strangers.

With the pandemic passing over, there is a new situation where airlines have restructured themselves to operate under heavier umbrella of regulations and survive the bad time with as less employees as possible. This changed environment obviously needs the associates and employees to develop new skills, inculcate new habits and be ready for multi-tasking. So, organizations will have to not only transfer new knowledge but also help their employees to change themselves and respond to the new situation with the same ease and effectiveness. And obviously this will not be possible without an equally effective corporate eLearning solution. In the current situation there are three things that can help the aviation industry meet the business challenges.

Prepare Employees for Multi-Tasking

Job role specific trainings are already there but when your cabin crew has to manage certain duties of the ground staff, then they will need extensive training and concurrent training compliance management or the same. Managing training for the airline employees who do not usually work from a ‘office’ as such and are at times traveling across the globe is a complicated task in general. A learning management system can integrate with the roster management system and pull data on an individual’s schedules and job role. Based on the same, training can be assigned through automated workflows making the process system based leaving the administrators free for more important tasks.

Expedite Digital Proficiency among Crew

Industry experts all over the world have suggested and the aviation industry has also accepted that heavy digitalization is key to safe and efficient business for the airlines. The operating model has been largely modified. Today we have touchless check-ins, RFID bag-tags, contactless and paper-less immigration, and boarding processes. This has rendered the need for large passenger concourses and check-in areas redundant and released more monetizable commercial spaces.

However, this also means high level of digital proficiency among the ground staff. Though using a smartphone is normal for most, learning to use technology for a job they have been doing manually, all of a sudden, is not easy. A scenario-based learning program deployed through a compatible learning platform will help them learn faster, retain the information longer and also use the knowledge effectively.

Reducing Training Non-Compliance

Aviation is largely a regulated sector and post-Covid the rules have increased manifold. Other than regulations issued by global health organizations like WHO, ICAO has its own separate guidelines for airport, aircraft, crew and even cargo. Add to this the government issued mandates in each different country.

Thus, managing the training compliance requirement of current times, needs intelligent & automated solution. A Learning Management System with an authorization feature can help manage the complete process of compliance. Starting from identifying the required compliance or certification for a job role through machine learning technology, the system shall track the progress, status and notify as and when required. This reduces the scope of manual error while managing this complicated process on excel sheets or via emails.

Though the pandemic is the biggest disaster for the Aviation industry, but they have proved their resilience time and again before during 9/11 and other global tragedies. However, revival of the aviation industry is also a must for the global economy to revive. If you are looking to find out more about the benefits of eLearning solutions and technology for the industry, you may visit our repository. To talk to a learning consultant at G-Cube, please write to us and surely we shall use our 21 years of experience to build the best solutions for you. 

Teach Your Retail Employees to Draw Customers Back with Enterprise Learning Management System

While technology dependency has been growing in all industries for years now, the face of retail industry changed after Amazon started its multilevel eCommerce business surpassing Walmart. By 2015, consumers had become so internet friendly that brick and mortar stores were facing a crisis quite unknown to their business till date. However, they were still popular because it is intrinsic to human nature to trust their tactile experience more than just audio-visual while making a purchase. Also, buying from a store was always faster than ordering online. But the pandemic changed it all. 85% Americans have said that Covid-19 impacted their shopping habits in some way, including reduced overall spending, increased online shopping, and increased use of delivery services, reported by Statista.

 

But things are taking a brighter turn. While a recent McKinsey reports, 60-70% adults are now omnichannel consumer with both sales in brick and mortar stores and eCommerce growing, an eMarketer survey projects that 81% customers are willing to go back to the store.

 

Growth Market specialist, Bharat Jain at G-Cube suggests, ‘The trends are positive and retail owners should jump to the occasion. Training plays a very important role in this phase of adaptation which will enable the employees to keep up and draw the customers back to the stores.’

 

 

Promoting Your Employees as Brand Ambassadors

 

While the willingness to return to stores is increasing, the affinity towards online shopping is not reducing. Retailers have to step up to encourage the willing customer to take an action and that is possible only by giving them a great experience. As your in-store employees are in charge of the customer experience, this is where your employees can become the true ‘brand ambassadors’.

 

 

Train to be an Expert than a Sales Support

 

A very important part of the online shopping experience is the abundance of information about the product, usage and also comparison charts which is completely unavailable at the stores. Retailers have to fill up this gap by training their employees to become product experts. Providing a continuous learning environment with small nuggets of information based on the category of product they are handling through an automated workflow on the mobile LMS shall help the employees retain knowledge better. The information is also available to them at the point-of-sale where they can not only provide demo of a particular item but compare the features while giving sales advice to the customer.

 

 

In-person Search Optimization

 

While looking for an item on the shopping app, a customer gets choice of both browsing and searching. So basically, they have the option to look through a lot of items and also search for anything specific they want. In a store this search engine is your employee who is helping the customer find the right product. At times, they cannot find the right items while searching manually and this leads to higher waiting time and dissatisfied customer. Integrating your retail management system with your LMS can bring all the information regarding the shelf, storage, and product details in one place which the employees can access with simple keyword search which is far more efficient. This reduces customer’s wait time replicating the online shopping experience helping your retail employees give a great experience to the buyer.

 

 

Keep Your Employees Motivated

 

According to National Retail Federation, the attrition rate in retail in USA is just above 60%, which is very high considering the overall average of 19%. Therefore, keeping your employees motivated to put in the extra effort is essential. An enterprise LMS provides you the opportunity to gamify the learning strategy for your retail employees. With easy integration with multiple business systems, you can give redeemable points to the employees based on their real-time KPI data, create leaderboards, and track the star performers. Getting recognized for one’s effort always makes them put in some extra.

To ensure the above you will have to invest significantly in developing and delivering training programs that can inculcate these habits and behaviours. However, that is not the final step, as the learning content has to be distributed along with follow-up trainings. Assessments and post-training support has to be delivered as well. To manage such a mammoth operation a learning management system which is equally effective on all the devices and is configurable to adapt to your organization’s culture is necessary.

 

 

G-Cube Learning Management Suite is being used by top retail industry players with positive results. To know more about the implementation strategies, write to us at info@gc-solutions.net and talk to a learning consultant.

Share on facebook Share on linkedin Share on twitter Banking Sector – Training Opportunities & Strategies. Will LXP or LMS be proved more powerful?

 

The banking sector has only one thing as constant and that’s called “Change”. This industry has been going through major transformations over the last couple of years due to economic reforms, changing demographics and technological advancements.

 

The customer base for this industry is highly tech-savvy, short on time and always looking for competent and personalized services. To meet the requirements, there is need to establish a productive workplace that is free of human errors, security threats and bring premium banking & financial products or services, thus it is imperative for banking sector to implement an LMS platform to build upon essential competencies to achieve desired goals for the end-users. You need to build upon a strong & highly skilled team to remain innovative and quickly adjust to the outside changes.

 

Thus, this gives rise to the training needs in this industry which are to be commenced and completed as soon as possible for better outputs.

 

Training Opportunities, the banks need to address

 

• Regulation changes & Compliance Constraints
• Ensuring Standardization
• Workforce at multiple locations
• Supplementing Existing Courses

 

Employee engagement is must in learning and development (L&D) programs for any organization. Survey data from Find Course, released in 2018, shows that around 42% of companies indicated that employees who are highly engaged in L&D programs are also highly engaged with their organizations overall. A 2017 Gallup study, meanwhile, said that top-performing companies in employee engagement almost double their chances of success, as compared with companies with low employee engagement.

 

In a way neither the LMS nor the LXP is necessarily be called as the best choice for a particular bank, however, lets understand what makes each solution distinct to make accurate comparisons and choosing right training platforms.

 

LMS Approach

 

The traditional LMS help the banks from administration to delivery, reporting and evaluation of training & learning initiatives. In this model, administrators will assign the trainings to their employees, and they will be notified to access the materials and complete the training.

 

LMS will then collate data which may include key details such as assessment scores, training completion status. Proving compliance can be achieved easily, thanks to the easy-to-access and robust reporting features of an LMS. Also, this is particularly important for a heavily regulated sector, where compliance is a crucial aspect of a bank’s survival.

 

 LXP Approach

 

An LXP is new platform that brings different functionalities on a single platform. It helps banks ensure continuous learning through quick and convenient creation & deployment of training modules. LXP promotes more of learning engagement, employees are empowered to choose as what they want to learn. Also, this robust platform comes with functions that encourage collaboration and content sharing.

 

With more of the employee engagement, benefit that brings to banks revolves in three key aspects: Talent management, Productivity and Customer Service. At the end of the day, banking is all about being responsive to their customers. This follows that when employees are invested in the success of the bank, you can expect them to serve the customers at their best.

 

Skill Based

 

Uses a skill-based model, mapped job roles including skills assessment

Flexible to be used for Corporate Trainings

 

Used Based

 

Recommend content, based on user’s content consumption patterns

Great for creating huge libraries for B2C model

 

Machine Learning Driven

 

Indexing of content enables easy search and usability

Recommendations improve as the learner spends more time on the platform

 

As per the “Centre for Learning and Workplace Survey”, a staggering 87% of employees want a shared format for learning, while around 79% prefer web resources. The banks are going through technological revolution, witnessing fast-paced changes in products, services, customer education needs and regulatory frameworks. Thus, banks need to make a decision as whether LMS or LXP will be more handy to meet all business requirements.

 

Benefits to be achieved using these Learning strategies

 

• Lower the turnover of both skilled and early-career employees
• Reduce the high training costs of new employees
• Identify employees with specific skills and compliance gaps
• Decrease the time spent on on-the-job training
• Reduce the pressure to control and lower expenses due to the market volatility
• Meet high costs of compliance in a very regulated environment

 

G-Cube LMS is designed and ready to deliver all the business needs of the banking sector. The fully features LMS caters to all learning requirements of the employees and thus ensuring good customer service for the end-users.

Share on facebook Share on linkedin Share on twitter Customer Service – Solutions to Stay Upbeat

Customer expectations are reaching new heights, and poor customer service can cost a fortune.

The way in which a customer is treated, communicated with, and valued can make a significant difference. It is a crucial element that can distinguish one brand from another.

 

 

What does the future of customer service look like?

 

Traditionally, people did business or bought products based on brand, image, and price, but now it is very much about the experience. Any transaction, whether it is with people, products or in business, is judged on the value associated with the experience.

 

Customer Experience

Understanding the customer is a major factor. A recent survey by PWC suggests that, in the last six months, consumer behavior has evolved significantly.

 

The feel-good factor is important, and strategies should include all modes of communication, such as chat-bot, messages, email, and notifications. Customers happily pay more for a product if they feel they have had a pleasant experience.

 

Customer support should not be an afterthought. A highly impactful customer base can be developed by providing great products accompanied by great customer service.

 

 

Technology as an Enabler

Companies collect the most relevant data when they can utilize and decode customer information to improve their goods or services.

 

Technology alone cannot necessarily solve the problem, but it can provide these essential elements: Speed. Convenience. Consistency. Friendliness.

 

Emotionally Connected and Safe Experiences

Seventy-one percent of Americans would rather interact with a human than a chatbot or some other automated process – PwC.

 

This new standard of expectation has also seen a shift in values. Customers want a safe experience in their transactions and interactions, and this can be seen as an opportunity to develop stronger and more meaningful relationships.

 

 

How can you make this work?

 

Simply by enabling your staff.

 

But how do we get it right?

 

Despite recent global upheavals, some things remain constant in customer service and experience—’building trust’ and ‘human connection’.

 

The first step would be to treat our internal stakeholders as our prime customer. Thus, business strategies and priorities focusing on customer service representatives, especially the frontline staff, will contribute significantly.

With an ability to communicate kindly and clearly, they can have a considerable impact on the business with cross-selling and up-selling.

 

 

Solutions to stay upbeat

 

Knowledge

Customers would not be happy with a service if they felt that the representative lacked knowledge. A knowledgeable employee should sound confident, be able to resolve issues and combat difficult customer interactions.

 

To empower your prominent stakeholders:

1. Provide them with handy guides, such as a quick-fix negotiation guide or a conversation guide in the appropriate format, as well as learning nuggets, including just-in-time modules, reference guides, etc.
2. Provide them a centralized knowledge base with learning resources acting as a kiosk constantly available from any device.
3. Teach them with an engaging learning strategy to make training enjoyable and engaging, including tools such as animations and interactions, explainer videos, demonstration videos, and other interactive videos.
4. Have knowledge-sharing sessions with top performers to improve competence.

 

Skills

Organizations need to nurture their employees’ digital, cognitive, social and emotional, and adaptability and resilience skill sets. Many customers have struggled during the pandemic, and a little empathy can help them feel good.

 

The ever-evolving skill-based training and the current challenges require companies to proactively create strategies that enable development in four areas:

1. Basic digital skills to understand the organization’s ecosystem, critical technology, and processes.
2. Life skills such as adaptability and resilience to drive this experiential shift.
3. Situational empathy skills to combat disruptions caused by the pandemic.
4. Cognitive skills to further enhance and prepare for a self-reliant environment.

 

Awareness

To be prepared for the dynamic role of customer service, we must equip team members with information and technology, so they are able to assist the customer in their best capacity.

1. Prepare the team for positive customer experiences with virtual reality learning solutions that mirror real-life situations.
2. Provide guided training modules with challenges that allow learners to realize, decide, and get feedback on responses.
3. Prepare for high-quality solution-oriented customer service that acts as an agent for behavioral change.
4. Provide reinforcement sessions to boost positive customer service habits and behaviors.

 

Make sure your employees are aware and understand that they are empowered. Reach out to G-Cube to discover excellent solutions for customer service.

How the Learning Management System Lives on!

 

“LMS is dead”—this statement came out more than a decade ago, in 2009–10. However, not only did the LMS survive; it also thrived by leaps and bounds. In 2017, Josh Bersin had written an article for Forbes stating: “Companies are starting to move away from their Learning Management Systems (LMS), buy all sorts of new tools for digital learning, and rebuild a whole new infrastructure to help employees learn.”

 

Four years after this prediction, FortuneBusinessInsight.com reported:

 

The Global Learning Management System market size was USD 10.84 billion in 2020. The global impact of Covid-19 has been unprecedented and staggering, with LMS witnessing a positive demand shock across all regions amid the pandemic. Based on our analysis the global market exhibited a significant growth of 23.8% in 2020 as compared to the year-on-year growth during 2017–2019. The market is projected to grow from 13.38 billion USD to 44.48 billion USD in 2028 at a CAGR of 18.7% in the 2021–28 period. The change in CAGR is attributable to this market’s demand & growth, returning to pre-pandemic levels once the pandemic is over.

 

The statistics confirm that even after the death verdict, the LMS demonstrated resilience against the market opinion and transformed itself in terms of features, functionalities, and technologies. Rapidly, it developed and embraced new technologies like artificial intelligence, big data, and consumer-level user-friendliness to maintain its supremacy. The modern LMS has adapted itself to create personalized learning paths for employees, AI-based suggestions to increase learning uptake, and most importantly, it created a collaborative environment for learning, even in a virtual space.

 

With the growing technology, management processes, and performance expectations, the need for new knowledge, skills, and even human behavior has evolved. Organizations cannot compete in this business by using old styles of work; it dawned this realization upon not only large corporations but also medium and small-sized companies. Most organizations have a growing need to empower their employees, customers, partners, and freelancers with knowledge, and in this age of information boom, they need a better system every second year to keep up.

 

In an article that came out in 2011, Ellen Behrens predicted that instead of the LMS dying out, it will significantly change in the years to come—most likely to continue including successful ways of providing access to learning across the world, smart ways to measure it, and last, implementations of social features that allow both association members and non-members (learners) to interact and connect.

 

There was a time when L&D specialists, analysts, and learners complained about the LMS gradually turning into a tedious and irrelevant application. However, the LMS providers did not fail to take notice of these complaints. According to Mr. Ankush Jagga, Business Head of Products & Growth at G-Cube: “We have served millions of learners in last 20 years and we have been constantly conducting surveys among the learners and the training providers to figure out what is needed and what needs to be eliminated from the LMS. So, at the end of the day, learners get a fantastic experience. Every quarter, we release new version of our LMS on the basis of the surveys and the opinion leader’s thought.”

 

Ten years down the line, Ellen Behrens’ prediction has come true. With digitization, jobs are changing rapidly, and skills required to adapt to this change are less mechanical and more human. Corporate training has thus become less about sporadic skill development or compliance training. The modern organization demands a culture of continuous learning and upskilling for the employees. To address this need, the 21st Century LMS has thus not become a manager for training and content but, rather, a coach to motivate the learners.

 

Just like humankind, software and applications also evolves. They take new shapes to adapt to the environment. Darwin’s theory of the “Survival of the Fittest” applies not only to humans but also to technology. So, the LMS, just like other software—CRM, ERP, HRMS, etc., have actively listened, made changes, and remained relevant and meaningful to the organizations.