Situation/Problem
Our client is the pioneer of total communications solutions in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, with the widest choice of state-of-the-art services with the broadest network coverage offering a full spectrum of telecom solutions since 1970, they approached VCL-part of TTM Associates Group with the need to fulfill the business needs of catering for the future of work and upskilling the employees across the organization towards the essential capabilities that would help the organization thrive and prosper. Like all businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic caused an abrupt change in the way people work, but It has also shifted the trajectory of the telecommunications industry, with the ever-growing number of requests, the inability to visit physical stores, and the work from home reality, made it difficult for telecom service providers to deliver quick and empathetic assistance, additionally the acceleration of digitization and the emergence of new technologies, brought in new threats to the security of networks and applications, especially while teams are working remotely and customers are asking for assistance from home.
The low touch economy exacerbated existing challenges in the ICT sector such as fierce competition, customer churn, employee retention, cybersecurity, the need to accelerate digital transformation, and customer-centricity through remote assistance.
Client Needs
It is well known that the pandemic of COVID-19 caused a major disruption, especially in the telecom sector, the business has been transformed into a digital and innovative proposition that aims to establish a competitive and robust operating model to tackle the challenges that the telco industry is facing in the current era. Accordingly, our client reached out for our support to co-create a “capabilities academy” as a combination of skills, knowledge, and experiences employees need to succeed to fulfill the business needs of catering for the future of work and re/upskilling the employees across the organization towards the essential capabilities that would help the organization thrive and prosper and at the same time reduce the challenges the client was facing such as new competitors with aggressive pricing strategies, High level of customer churn, reskilling customer interfacing people remotely to deal with digital interventions, national regulations and economic issues, a need for upskilling the employees to become more innovative and agile in learning new emergent technologies crucial for sustaining the future.
VCL Solution
TTM/VCL understands that with this new reality, the situation requires all organizations to think and work differently to deliver on customer preferences which have forever been changed, hence, we have put together a solution to upskill the employees across all channels such as sales, ICT, Marketing, call center and retail to be aligned with this digital transformation to keep the businesses moving forward during and post the COVID-19 outbreak.
Inspired by our client’s vision and mission to be the leaders in ICT with a great focus on investing in people capital through a capabilities building academy, the approach was to cluster all the Business School requirements into a learning path to develop the competencies of all the customer interfacing people across all channels and harmonize their behaviors as per the below illustration approached in 3 phases:
Outcome
The Pandemic has accelerated industry growth and the services many telecom companies offer, The TTM associates’ Whole Brain Transformation methodology relies on the Action Learning methodology and experiential tools equipped all participants with needed reskilling & upskilling to help them transform their behaviors in day to day actions, accordingly VCL created a framework for the competencies needed combining all required technical, behavioral and personal development skills in multiple tracks which were delivered as virtual instructor-led workshops in addition to a combination of micro and macro learning activities, as per the below 3 tracks:
And to measure the training impact, the VCL unit implemented the mechanism of the Kirkpatrick model in all 4 levels to effectively measure the return on learning and investment coupling both L&D and business metrics, VCL implemented on the job training throughout each track which enabled participants to apply what they have learned to real-world situations of their organization, and to make sure the participants gained the best out of the sessions, gamification, social learning, and IBM platform to learn emergent technologies were a great choice to anchor the key learning and enrich the group awareness on the topics needed.
- The Diversity of the business school topics, methodologies, and tailoring per channel was a great strategy that helped in engaging participants during the sessions & throughout the learning journey, 8 VCL experts in the field of ICT facilitated 16 interactive sessions and were delivered over the period of 4 months for 85 participants and across 5 departments, but VCL went beyond traditional metrics to measure and maximize the impact of training programs by adopting and applying Action learning projects which is a type of development activity that promotes the learning process for individuals and groups through the implementation of learning as projects, As a result, 10 innovative projects were initiated during the journey across all functions and through group coaching and feedback were presented to internal stakeholders to bring those ideas into life, through continuous mentoring by L&D and Channel heads to follow up on the execution part of the projects
- Number of new Concepts & ideas generated as a prototype for new solutions in the ICT sector
- Setting proper strategy on Time to Market (speed) to enhance revenues generation
- Aligned the Brand Value & persona/promise across all employees & channels
- Improve the Customer Voice feedback across all channels
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More than 8 new Concepts & ideas were generated as a prototype for new solutions in the ICT sector
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VCL helped in Setting proper strategy on speed to Market to enhance revenues generation
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Alignment of the Brand Value & persona/promise across all employees & channels
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Substantial Improvement in the Customer Voice feedback across all channels
