6 Reasons to Invest in a Good Soft Skills Training Program for Your Employees

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While soft skills are integral to the smooth functioning of any organization, many companies realize the importance of soft skills training for their employees when behavioral challenges threaten to disrupt the organization’s workflow.

A key marker of an urgent need for soft skills training in your workplace is an increased number of complaints from customers regarding poor problem resolution, unsympathetic or inattentive behavior or lack of helpfulness on the part of customer-facing employees.

As your employees are not given soft skills training in school or university, it becomes important to hone their interpersonal skills required to do their job well and help your organization achieve success in a competitive environment.

What exactly are soft skills?

Soft skills are personal characteristics that include a broad range of attributes such as people, social and interpersonal skills. While technical skills (hard skills) are essential to perform specialist tasks, soft skills help employees make the best use of their professional knowledge by combining it with exceptional character traits for personal and organizational success.

Must-have soft skills for a customer-facing team include a patient ear, teamwork, self-motivation, flexibility, problem-solving attitude, emotional intelligence, empathy, respect, effective communication, positivity, strong work ethic, enthusiasm, ability to work under pressure, conflict resolution, leadership, independence, observation, organization and time management.

In fact, managers should endeavor to achieve a standard culture of communication and teamwork across departments through well-designed soft skills training for all employees. If you’re not sure that your customer-facing reps need soft skills improvement training, a good place to start is to look for the following issues.

• If you’re struggling to retain clients after the first service, poor customer service may be partially to blame.
• If you have a high employee turnover rate and your HR department can’t pinpoint a specific reason for high attrition, poor interpersonal relationships may be causing employees to leave.
• Denise Mayer from ServiceSkills says that instead of saying no to a customer, try offering an alternative to their request. If you’re getting more customer complaints than the acceptable average and many of them point to gaps in employee behavior, you’re likely looking at a soft skills gap.
• Lack of leadership and ownership also indicate that your executives could use soft skills refresher.

Benefits of Soft Skills Training for Your Business

A productive work environment needs an open exchange of ideas, mutual respect, efficient conflict resolution, and a spirit of teamwork that fosters healthy relationships at work. This builds an atmosphere that empowers and encourages people to contribute their best efforts toward a common organizational goal.

Here are some points that will help you understand the vital role that soft skills have in modern-day organizations and why it’s important to upgrade these skills within your teams from time to time.

1. Improved communication with customers. A customer support employee trained in soft skills knows the right way to communicate with customers, how to handle irate customers, and develop healthy relationships with their colleagues.
2. Leadership qualities. With proper training that strengthens their existing personal attributes and teaches them new skills, your employees with being able to identify problems, independently troubleshoot tricky situations and offer alternatives to resolve complicated matters. Over time, this will boost their confidence in their abilities and develop a culture of ownership within the organization.
3. Creativity and innovation.  With improved interpersonal skills, your personnel will be able to develop innovative solutions to customers’ problems. Soft skills improve people’s critical thinking abilities and empower them to step out of their comfort zone.
4. Improved ROI and more clients. When employees are equipped to listen with patience, express their ideas clearly and handle difficult situations with customers and within the organization, they learn to collaborate and work as a team. This means that your business can scale and take on larger projects and improve your ROI.
5. Competitive advantage. Happier clients will bring you more clients. When a technically sound employee is well-trained to resolve customer queries, offer valuable support and provide recommendations for better user experience, he or she will be able to delight your customers and achieve greater customer satisfaction. Clients will prefer a business with well-informed and empathetic employees.
6. Enhanced employee morale. Investing in your employees’ development shows them that they’re a valued part of your business—this encourages loyalty and improves job satisfaction. Regular training to improve their skills, whether personal or professional, not only keeps employees up-to-date and competent, it keeps them excited about their job.