In an ever more competitive world businesses need to step up to the plate when it comes to offering the best products with the best service possible. But we all know form, our own experiences as customers, that customer service and the skills of staff in general leave a lot to be desired.
Be honest; How many times do you go go out and and criticise the service, standards and the product you receive and although you know the standards you want and how to get there, you never actually deliver this within your own units and places of work.
Why is this? Are we lazy, do we lack the skills, or has the standard of employee in general gone down.
Last Saturday my wife met up with some family at a hotel in Malvern in the West Midlands. I don't mind naming and shaming the place, the Abbey Hotel.
They were the restaurant and asked a young waitress what the soup of the day was. Not a clue. They asked for some Pino Grigio, and the reply was "Whats that!!" Now that's about the time I'd have left but it begs the question, what training has this girl had and who's done the training?
This isn't an isolated incident and I bet you could list experiences like this you've had. Let me know some.
So why is training in our industry so lacking. Management training skills are certainly one but cost has to be key. Many see investment in staff who may only be around for a matter of months is seen as a costly waste of money but I see differently.
By developing yourself a structured training program that inducts your staff member into your business is invaluable not only in getting your product and service delivered properly, but maximising the revenue you receive and heightening your customers experience. from a licence perspective, training is also essential in staying withing the law as it is nearly always the staff member that serves the underage, or the drunk.
The title of this blog is E-learning. Where does this fit in?
Some of the larger pub companies have realised that by mixing up face to face training with e-leaning courses, managers are able to train staff to a much higher standard, offer a greater range of training and still save themselves time and money in the process.
The training days I offer to companies now include the need for e-learning and so much so now, my company MJR Morgan Ltd have a department completely dedicated to writing rapid e-learning courses for leisure businesses all over the UK.
E-learning is fast taking over courses such as the Personal Licence which now saves the learner spending an entire day training and instead allows them to complete the course, interactively and only have to attend a local exam centre for 40 minutes. And because the leaning is done at their own pace the user is able to absorb the information better and the course becomes more interesting to do.
I'll cover more in Rapid-E-learning in future posts. If anyone want more information please contact me via the blog or
www.mjrmorgan.co.uk
