VCL Learning
Reskilling customer-interfacing employees in a Low-Touch economy
Reskilling / Upskilling
Reskilling customer-interfacing employees in a Low-Touch economy
Rising up to the challenges in a new Low-Touch economy
Many businesses have been disrupted by the changing nature of our economy, from cyclical economy before the pandemic into a new Low-Touch economy. Employees (especially customer-interfacing ones) are facing evolving and rising challenges on how they can sustain and deliver customer value in the new era – the era of the Low-Touch economy.
In this context, reskilling and upskilling the workforce are both essential for today’s evolving business ecosystem.
Employees become more productive when enabled with new skillsets, tools and support systems to face the rising challenges. They raise the bar and ultimately contribute to the transformation of the way organisations create, deliver and sustain customer value in the new Low-Touch economy.
Why?
Reskilling/Upskilling customer interfaces in a Low-Touch economy:
In a new disrupted customer cycle, customer interface team members and employees are facing a rising challenge: How to deliver customer value in a Low-Touch economy.
What is “Low-Touch economy*” all about?
The Low-Touch economy is the new state of our society and economy, permanently altered by COVID-19. It is characterised by Low-Touch interactions, health and safety measures, new human behaviours, and the rise of the need for permanent industry shifts. The Low-Touch economy is here to stay. As much as many of us feel challenged, it offers a tremendous number of opportunities for disruptors.
* A term that has been used by business news like Bloomberg, Financial times, etc.
What?
This change from a high-touch economy to a Low-Touch economy made customer interfacing members (salespeople, service people and retailers, etc.) feel the heat in this new reality, serving customers digitally and virtually.
The question that many people ask is “How are we going to sustain the customer relationship in this new normal, Low-Touch economy?”
Prior to the onset of the global pandemic, customer-interfacing members enjoyed the merits of face-to-face interaction with customers:
Being able to kinaesthetically connect, interact and engage with customers
Being able to see the unvoiced messages from a customer’s body language
Understand customer problems and dig deeper into them
Building a sound personal relationship and nurturing it
Tailoring the solutions to customer needs
This requires a fundamental change in the way the capacity of customer interfacing people is shaped, reskilling and upskilling.
High-Touch &
Low-Touch
Reskilling
Reskilling is the process of matching the skills of an associate to new required functions. Reskilling involves training individuals to pivot into an adjacent or completely different job, either because their role is obsolete, or they are using outdated tech.
Upskilling
Upskilling is the process of training an employee to perform new tasks in the new function. It involves improving skills or adding new skills on top of an existing role. This is a perfect solution for talented employees or teams looking to become more specialised, refined or advanced in a particular field.
The Framework for Commercial Reskilling
The Tools – Digitimacy Tools
* Blue Ocean Strategy, How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
Matching the benefits of companies’ solutions with the customer digital behaviours
Upskilling the Digital Nations / The IBM way
Learn the Skills of the Future with our partner IBM Digital Nations programme
- Gather and turn big data into insights, a deep understanding of the customer journey and their unmet needs in the digital world
- Enhance the ability to gather and synthesize these insights so the organisation is ready to respond appropriately for an ever-emerging digital customer (unexplored demands)
- Overcome organisational and technical roadblocks due to lack of data on customer needs and the inability to gather and integrate disparate data sets from organisational silos
- Execute the plan – getting the omnichannel strategy right with an IT infrastructure that is fit for purpose
- Explore emerging technologies, build innovative solutions, learn new skills and upskill people for the new roles and demands of the job
- Empower minds for what is beyond tomorrow
- Join the fast-growing community of IBM Digital – Nation programme users
Do you Want to Upskill the Digital Accumen for your Workforce?
Reskilling / Upskilling Marketing employees
How organisations pivot their marketing efforts to match those needs can make or break their business. Instead of continuing with “business as usual” – which customers may perceive as insensitive – or overcorrecting and flooding them with exhausting information, customer behaviour and expectations will continue to change drastically, fuelled by a myriad of new technologies and an overall mindset shift. To drive top-line growth, modern marketing needs to become truly customer-intimate in a Low-Touch environment in a practical and meaningful way, offering solutions to:
Do you Want to Reskill / Upskill your Marketing Employees?
The Methodology
Upskilling Digital Skills for Customer Interfacing Teams & Employees
IDENTIFY GAPS IN DIGITAL SKILLS
The new digital skills needed for the teams will be identified to enable them to perform the new tasks in the new function. the training needs assessment tool will define the gap in the required digital skills.
UPSKILL / RESKILL
The learning experience will be provided through IBM’s cloud-based learning and innovation platform, providing digital competency and nurturing innovation. the platform utilises the IBM artificial intelligence engine, IBM Watson, to help the user create her/his skills profile, match it to the current job needs, and suggests personalised learning paths.
MEASURE EFFECTIVENESS
Pre and post assessments will be conducted with each participant to measure the added value of the learning experience to enhance the set of skills
