Geschreven door Jan-Hendrik Vervelde | February 12, 2016
What are the most difficult soft skills according to government employees who work with customers? What soft skill is trained the most by retail staff?With the results of our online trainings at several Dutch municipalities and companies, we can now answer such questions. These comparisons give interesting insights too!
Handling emotional frustration
The answer to the first question can be found below. These are the average final scores that were obtained by Public Affairs employees in different municipalities in The Netherlands in their online training ‘excellent service’ last year . The training ‘handling emotional frustration’ scored lowest. This includes coping with angry citizens at the desk, for example. The employees did pass the training, but remember that this score was only obtained after they had finished the training. They mastered ‘handling specific audiences’, like people who do not speak Dutch or English, the best.
Questioning techniques and sales
Clearly, retail staff has less difficulty with handling emotional frustration.You can see the results of their training below. The techniques of asking questions and sales are more challenging for them. This makes sense, of course, because they are important skills in a commercial environment. Unsurprisingly, sales is the most practiced skill: a third of the chosen competences contains selling. Handling emotional frustration is trained the least.
The right attitude in a conversation
When we observe another kind of commercial environment, customer contact centres, the importance of sales has shifted slightly. It is still the most trained skill, but ‘attitude in conversation’ takes up a large part of the participant's practice time as well. This is substantiated by the low score on this skill: a 3 on average. Making contact is also below par with a score of 4.5, and sales only just scores an adequate 5.5. Apparently, it is challenging to communicate with an active and friendly attitude on the phone, so training this is necessary.
Curious to see how your employees score on these important communicative and commercial skills? Get in touch!
