The British people have such low expectations from the people that they hand over their money to that there are thousands of businesses that get away with terrible service and still turn a massive profit. It wouldn’t happen in America because the people are more likely to vote with their feet. However it has to be said that the companies that do value the levels of customer service that they offer and make strides to offer a good level of customer service are invariably rewarded with an increased number of customers that are loyal.

Service with a smile does not cost more and the benefits are incredible so if you want to improve the level of service you offer and subsequently increase the number of customers that use your business then get your staff trained in customer service.

It is a common misconception that people believe that people are either good at working with customers or they are not. Although on the face of it some people are naturally better at conversing with customers it is definitely a skill that can be improved with training and everyone is capable if improving their customer service skills. Customer services training takes a practical approach and will improve anyone’s level of customer skills regardless of how quiet they are. All of the skills that you need to converse well with clients can be taught and as a result customer services training can be an extremely beneficial type of training to send your staff on.

Meeting the needs of your clients is the single most important aspect of business and those businesses that manage to do this effectively invariably have more customers, retain their customers and ultimately make more money. Training is at the core of making this a success and training providers are well versed in teaching your staff how to meet the needs of the customer. Most of these training providers will deliver training that is specific to the needs of the organisation. This means that instead of delivering a stale course that deals with customer service in a generic manner they offer training that is directly focussed to the needs of your team. This can be an incredibly effective method of training as it will directly address your needs and the results of this can be impressive.

Another common misconception is that the training will be boring. The reality is that customer service training is a very upbeat and realistic training schedule that aims to cut out the management speak and teach real, tangible skills. The atmosphere at these events is usually really good with trainers making the training as enjoyable as possible. The atmosphere encourages active styles of learning so that your staff are not going to be sat behind a desk all day.

Simply put, presentation skill is the process of efficiently, effectively, and elegantly communicating and transmitting your message to your audience.

Your message may be simple or complex.

Presentation skills can vary depending on why you’re speaking in the first place and what you’re trying to accomplish: you may be attempting to persuade and influence your audience, or you may be trying to inspire and enlighten, or you may be required to impart new skills and abilities, or you may just be there to report facts and data.

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, you can use various presentation aids such as a flip chart, PowerPoint presentations with a projector or a whiteboard or flip chart.

In some cases nothing at all is just fine, again depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

The tone of your presentation may be more or less formal depending on the context. If you know everyone in the audience such as a work meeting of coworkers, that’s different than if you’re making a presentation to a group of people you’ve never met before.

Of course the beginner public speaker may need to deal with stage fright. See my other training articles if you have fear of public speaking.

Presentation skills boil down to using various techniques that are very easy to learn. With a little practice, anyone can become a polished presenter.

The best way to develop terrific presentation skills quickly is simply to take a very good presentation skills training (see my training articles on how to evaluate public speaking training).

Here are some tips to help you with your presentation:

* If you use PowerPoint, have a one-page bullet-point outline of your entire presentation handy in case the computer crashes, the projector doesn’t work, or for any reason you can’t use your PowerPoint presentation.

* Use the “Rule of 3″: distill your presentation down to 3 key points you want to cover. Tell them what you’ll tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them: design your presentation in 3 parts: first an overview of your key points, then the details of your presentation, then a summary (basically a recap and repeat of the overview in the beginning).

* “Use the 5 Minute Rule” to conquer stage fright: most of my students report that any lingering fear of public speaking goes away within the first 5 minutes once they get rolling with their presentation.

* If you use PowerPoint, never read your slides out loud: the audience can already read them. Just put up bullet points that remind you of what you want to talk about.

* Openings and closings are most important: psychologists call it “primacy / recency” but really the last thing you say is the last thing they’ll really hear and remember, so hammer your main points at the end and then say “thank you” and you’re done.

Best of luck in all your public speaking! For more public speaking training articles visit http://www.bestpublicspeakingtraining.com/

This problem is heightened by their difficulties with speech and language. As with autism, the asperger child / adolescent also seems to lack the ability to mind read, or have the ability of being able to tell or guess at what another person might be thinking.

Normally developing children and adolescents will observe others and guess, through a combination of tone and body language, what the other person may be thinking or feeling.

However, with aspergers this naturally developed skill is missing and so the ability to predict what another is feeling or thinking is not there…

This lack of being able to mind read can lead to social mistakes.

….And of cause social mistakes may lead to the asperger adolescent causing hurt feelings, asking inappropriate questions, acting oddly or generally opening themselves up to hostility, teasing, bullying and social isolation.

Quite often parents and educators of children and adolescents with asperger and autism feel unable to communicate properly with their asperger / autistic teen… and will struggle to understand their needs and act appropriately.

Sometimes the asperger teen may appear not to hear what has been said to them, they will often fail to respond to their name and can sometimes be indifferent to any attempts of communication with them.

Developing communication with your asperger adolescent is paramount, and may be a slow process. As with any adolescent the asperger youth will undoubtedly be experiencing changes in their body and their mood swings may become more apparent.

The normal teenage hormonal changes will still happen to your asperger adolescent, being on the spectrum and experiencing these changes can be an explosive cocktail!

As boys grow into men and girls grow in to young ladies, this can be a very daunting time for a parent or educator.

…As well as dealing with the changes in their bodies, mood swing and growing sexuality, there is also the onset of more grown up behavior…like swearing, dating, kissing and starting to get the desire us adults get when we meet someone we fancy!

A good stating point for any asperger / autistic adolescent, parent, or educator is something called social skills stories….These are an excellent tool for Social skills training for asperger adolescents

You can introduce social skills stories at any time…A good well written social skills story will have high pictorial content as well as text.

These short pieces of text, normally one page long will have pictorial cues as to what is happening.

They can be like throwing your asperger adolescent a life line.

 Appropriately written by experts, these social skills stories will explain in easy to understand language and pictures, what, why, where and when.

For example…A social kiss, what this is, why someone may want to kiss you, when it is appropriate to kiss someone, and the differences between kissing and a social kiss…undoubtedly, helping to stop unwanted over enthusiasm with kissing, or awkward situations!

Avoid uncomfortable situations, embarrassing situations and those situations you are dreading or make you cringe….Help explain the need for deodorant and being clean. What puberty means and how it will affect them.

…These social skills stories are normally printable so they can be used time and time again, in-fact they can be used for every situation you need help with.

These social skills stories are a fantastic communication device for a parent-giving you the tools you need to help you conquer Social skills training for asperger adolescents.

If a Customer Service agent is professional, friendly, and can solve a customers needs, that customer will have a positive impression of the company. This pleasant experience can lead to repeat business and even referrals increasing profitability.

On the other hand, if a Customer Service Agent is unprofessional, uniformed, and unable to solve a customers needs, the customer will hang up the phone in frustration resulting in a negative impression. Consequently, the customer will indeed talk about your company, but with a very pessimistic tone which can discourage customers away from you and to your competitor decreasing productivity!

As a leader, it is your responsibility to train the staff with proper telephone skills and company and product knowledge as well as the requisite customer service skills necessary to excel customer expectations. With this education, you are arming the Customer Service Agent with the power to better assist customers and increase productivity creating many positive first impressions along the way!

The Customer Service Representative

As the leader of customer service agents, you will engage with a wide variety of personnel, different backgrounds, different ages, and different skill sets including:

• The young employee who is starting his first job.

• The single mother who needs a second job for additional income.

•  The recent college graduate who has not yet found his dream job, but needs a job to pay the bills.

• The middle-age mother who has gone back to work now that her children are grown just to give herself something to do.

• The business professional that has just been laid off from his real job due to downsizing.

These are just a few examples. Every Customer service agent has a different story and a different reason for working.

Your staff may or may not be excited to work at the company. For example, a recent high school graduate may be quite excited about his first job. Whereas, a single mother would much rather be at home with her children. It is your job as the leader to motivate everyone even the most disgruntled Customer Service Agent!

Every Customer Service Agent within your staff will have different skill sets. For example, the business professional may be quite computer-savvy, whereas the middle-age mother who has gone back to work may have very little knowledge of computers. It is your job as the leader to train everyone even the Customer Service Agent who thinks he knows it all!

A major component of your responsibility as a leader is motivating and training the Customer Service Agents so they are comfortable with the technological and people skills that are needed for the job. You also need to know what motivates each employee to keep them excited about being at work.

Call Center Challenges

As a call center leader, you face many challenges a day. Here is just a sample:

• A competitive workforce for qualified Customer Service Agents

• Lack of time to properly train Customer Service Agents

• High turnover rate among Customer Service Agents

 • Technological challenges for Customer Service Agents

• Unmotivated Customer Service Agents

• Different skill levels of Customer Service Agents

Throughout our training courses, you will learn how to deal with such situations, whilst your agents learn the critical success factors necessary to deliver excellent customer care.

Presentations are an effective way to communicate to large numbers of people at the same time. However, it is not just about communicating information, but more importantly, to have advanced presentation skills you should be able to create interest and excitement in your subject and trust and enthusiasm in you.

Let’s have a look at some of the essentials

Preparation

Practise

Practise on a colleague or friend. Think about who your audience is and what you want them to get out of an effective presentation. Think about content and style. If you video yourself get someone else to evaluate your performance; you will find it very difficult to be objective about yourself. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

Reconnoitre

Go into the presentation room before the event; practise any moves you may have to make, e.g. getting up from your chair to the podium. Errors in the first 20 seconds can be very disorientating.

Avoid ‘Blue peter syndrome’

Try not to over prepare. Don’t rehearse the whole thing right through too often. Your time is better spent going over your opening beginning and your finish. Pick a few choice bits to learn by heart.

Technical support

Test the equipment before the presentation; get familiar with it before you start. PowerPoint and OHPs often seem as though they’re out to get you, so make sure you’re in charge not them.

Visual aids

Use visuals to give a big picture quickly, graphics, pictures, cartoons bar charts etc; you can then use words to elaborate. Slides with words on are of limited value. If you seem to have a lot you may find you are showing your audience your speaker notes!

Presentation style

Be yourself

Use any personal gestures or vocal inflections to your advantage. It’s very hard to change the way you express yourself. More effective presentations are ones where you actual put the energy into the presentation (this is a message you will hear again). Similarly, do not try to be anyone else or copy another presenter’s style.

Wave

Be more expressive rather than less. These days ‘good communicators’ are more and more frequently seen on TV and held up as models. You giving a presentation is not TV. This is you communicating live. Gestures help understanding and convey your enthusiasm for the topic.

Dealing with presentation nervousness

Be nervous

A certain amount of nervousness is vital for a good presentation. You need the extra energy to communicate: What you feel when you stand up in front of people is the urge to either run away or fight. If you endeavour to stifle those feelings you will be inhibited, restricted, artificial and wooden. The added adrenaline will keep your faculties sharp and ready to engage with your audience.

Breathe

Extra adrenaline, however, can result in shallow upper chest breathing and tension. Taking a slow, deep breath, breathing fully out and then in again, will relax you. Strangely having something to pick up and put down tends to release your breathing.

Get something else to do

It may seem an odd idea, but our bodies seem to feel better when they have some sort of displacement activity to occupy them. It’s the reason people hold pens and fiddle with things. A limited amount of this sort of activity will not be too obtrusive and can make you feel a lot more secure.

Hold on to something

When you start you are at your most insecure. Avoid all the well-meant advice about what you are and are not allowed to do. Until you feel settled do anything you can find to make yourself feel secure. This includes holding on to a lectern. Even just standing next to something solid will make you feel less wobbly.

Go slow

The breathing tip above will help you to slow down your presentation. Go more slowly than you think necessary to avoid gabbling. Your audience need the time to assimilate and interpret what you are saying. It’s a fact that when adrenaline is flowing your sense of time is distorted and what seems OK to you may look like fast forward to your audience.

Working your audience

Converse

Have a conversation with your audience. They may not actually say anything, but make them feel consulted, questioned, challenged, argued with; then they will stay awake and attentive. Your job as a presenter is to stimulate and communicate with your audience into wanting to get the information you have, not just to present that information at them.

Interact

Engage with your present audience, not the one you have prepared for. Look for reactions to your ideas and respond to their signals. If the light bulbs are not going on find another way to say it. Monitor their reactions; it’s the only way you’ll know how you’re doing and what you should do next. If you don’t interact you might as well send a video recording of your presentation. It’s why you came.

Show conviction

Give an expressive presentation and an enthusiastic presentation and your audience will respond, which is what you want. At the very bottom line disagreement is preferable to being ignored. Use your excitement, pace yourself to give an exciting presentation, use something you know you feel strongly about to build up to an important point or as a springboard to another idea.

Get some perspective

The odds are that someone in the audience will not like you or may disagree with you. There will probably be someone else out there for whom you can do no wrong. As a rule of thumb, the majority of most audiences want to like you and what you have to say – they want you to be good. They didn’t come hoping to be bored or irritated by your presentation.

Structuring effective presentations

Use metaphors

Metaphors and analogies are vital to communication. ‘It’s like climbing a greasy pole’, for example, conveys far more than just literal meaning. It conveys image and feeling and enables others to empathise through similar experiences of their own. And remember the light bulbs – if they’re not lighting up try a different metaphor.

Examples

Giving an example always helps your listeners to see more clearly what you mean. It’s quicker and more colourful.

The point

Stick to the point using three or four basic ideas. For any detail that you cannot communicate in 20 minutes, try another medium such as handouts or brochures.

Finale

End as if you have done well. Do this even if you feel like you’ve done badly. First, you’re probably the worst judge of how you’ve done, and second, if you finish well you’ll certainly fool some of the people into thinking it was all pretty good. And anyway a good finish will get you some applause – and you deserve it!

Developing as a presenter

Trust yourself

If you do not think you are up to a particular presentation either get help (do training courses and rehearsals), or get someone else to do it (there’s no shame in recognising your limits). However, most people have better presentation skills that they think they do. Recognise what you have. If you doubt your ability to think on your feet, for example, then defer questions till after the presentation. Similarly, do not use a joke as an ice breaker if you are not good at telling them.

Success is the best presentation training

Don’t over reach yourself. Several short presentations that you feel went well will do you far more good than one big one that makes you sick with nerves and leaves you feeling inadequate.

Feedback

Encourage those around you to tell you the things you did well. Very few of us make progress by being told what was wrong with our presentation. When we’re up in front of an audience we all have very fragile egos.

Follow these essential tips and your presentation skills development will blossom.