If you work in a customer service role, you’ve no doubt had your share of unhappy or angry customers.

No matter how good you are at your job and regardless of your industry, mistakes can and do happen – products can be faulty, orders can be lost and miscommunications with clients can occur. Some people will also simply be dissatisfied with your product or service.

Dealing with dissatisfied customers is never easy, particularly if they become angry or abusive, and technology has brought new challenges for customer service. Through social media channels, customers have a direct and instant platform and audience for their feedback, including any negative experiences and complaints. All over the world, we’re sharing and ingesting unfiltered opinions on brands, companies and organizations, to a very vast and engaged audience.

With potential customers having ready access to this information, and often basing choices on their fellow customers’ reviews, it’s become even more important for companies and customer service reps to handle unhappy customers in a successful way.

The benefits to customers are clear – by handling complaints and resolutions well, companies (from small business owners to large scale organizations) are offering better service, better outcomes and better solutions.

But did you know that these benefits can also extend to companies and employees? Handling unhappy or angry customers in a proactive and successful way is:

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

Successfully handling customer complaints is hugely important for your business, with the way you respond to negative feedback making a big difference to customers’ perceptions of your brand.

The best way to respond to complaints is to see them as an opportunity to turn the situation around. With every bad review, angry caller or negative comment on social media, you now have a direct shot at making that customer happy – with how you’ve handled the situation and what you’re offering them as a solution.

When handled well, unhappy or angry customers can be turned around, becoming even more loyal to your company than before.

The Domino’s Effect – Turning the Situation Around

Sound strange? Let’s look at Domino’s, the pizza company, and how they successfully handled negative feedback from their customers.

When faced with unhappy customers and poor reviews, the company responded by changing their pizza recipe, inviting customers to try the new product and leave their honest feedback in social media channels.

“You can either use negative comments to get you down, or you can use them to excite you and energize your process of making a better pizza. We did the latter.”

Customers had a great response to Domino’s handling of the situation. They appreciated that the company showed proactive, transparent responses to criticism and worked to address the situation and find new solutions.

This shows us how important and powerful the successful handling of customer complaints really is.

It’s Important for Staff to Feel Properly Equipped

As well as being important for both your customer base and company, it’s also really vital that you know how to deal with angry or upset customers for your own wellbeing.

Most retail, call centre and customer representative staff will have received training for their roles, however many workers can still feel unequipped to handle really difficult customers or situations. Dealing with people who are upset, or worse, angry and aggressive, has the potential to completely ruin anyone’s day and takes a lot of energy from an individual. If these situations are occurring frequently, employees will very quickly start to resent their job and the people they deal with. You want to avoid that, for all staff.

If you’re someone who struggles dealing with unhappy or angry customers, it could be worthwhile to invest a little extra time into your customer service training. You can learn new ways to communicate with dissatisfied customers, reaching positive solutions for both parties.

Start Your Customer Service Training Online

Online courses such as Dealing with Angry Customers offer very specific suggestions on how you can achieve that, minimizing the negative impact these types of interactions have on both you and your customers.

This course is great in that it recognizes the fact that things can go wrong for various reasons and aims to prepare you for when they do.

It’s focused on telephone customer service, so is particularly suited for call centre operators or customer service reps who are on the phone a lot, however the techniques can also be easily applied for face-to-face service. Throughout the course, you’ll learn 5 communication skills and 16 techniques that you can use to handle specific situations when customers get angry.

Another helpful online course available through the Go1 course marketplace, Angry Customers focuses on building positive relationships with your customers. You’ll learn problem resolution techniques and tips for keeping cool and defusing anger. 

Both courses will better equip you for the next time you’re faced with an unhappy or angry customer at work. By investing some extra time and energy into your professional development, you’ll feel stronger and more confident in your role and happier in the workplace, which as you can see, brings benefits for all.

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How to handle unhappy and angry customers

Do you ever hear friends or family complaining about feeling ‘stuck’ at work? Maybe you’ve also felt that way sometimes, becoming restless or bored with your job, or dreading the arrival of each Monday morning.

Many people can become unhappy in their jobs after some time, especially if they no longer find their work exciting or challenging. Continuing to be challenged in your role or occupation is an important part of feeling satisfied, rewarded and energized by your work.

One of the best ways to achieve this is to make sure you keep learning, developing and growing within your role, organization and industry. Professional Development Programs (PDPs) are a simple and effective way to address this need, in the form of personalized action plans that get you from where you are right now to where you want to be in the future.

As a Manager or Team Leader, you can use Professional Development Programs to help your team members refresh or develop their skills in many different areas.

These can be role-specific skills, for example graphic design, or skills that are focused more on personal development, such as becoming more resilient to change, responding well to feedback or dealing with challenging situations or people.

Managers can work with staff to create a PDP, identifying their individual goals, strategies and desired outcomes for learning and development.

PDPs have become an essential tool for successful companies and organizations, as they have significant benefits for both employees and their managers. Let’s look at some of these benefits.

Taking the time to work with your team members on their professional and personal development will help them feel engaged, supported and more in charge of their career path and future. 

By providing sufficient learning and development opportunities to your employees, you’re helping them to learn new skills, experience professional and personal growth, and be better placed for career advancement. You may be surprised to hear that lack of opportunity for advancement and growth is the leading source of stress in the workplace, ranked even higher than low salaries – this certainly highlights the importance of these factors for your staff’s satisfaction.

Employees who receive ongoing training at work report being happier in their roles than those who are either untrained and in over their heads, or unchallenged and feeling stagnant. In fact, over half of today’s workforce considers professional development to be a contributing factor in their job satisfaction, with 58% of Millennials expecting employers to provide them with relevant learning and development opportunities. For the younger generation, it seems that the ability to participate in ongoing training at work has become more of a ‘must have’, rather than a ‘nice to have.’

Outside of the office or away from the job site, learning also helps to keep our minds sharp and active, providing further benefits for an individual’s personal life and wellbeing.

Putting the proper energy into staff development certainly makes for a better workplace culture, which in turn has a positive impact on performance and results. It can also be a great opportunity for Managers to reclaim more of a mentoring role, passing on skills and knowledge to their teams, and in turn, the organization.

Furthermore, with technology developing at such a rapid pace, it’s never been such an important time for companies to invest in structured learning and development for their employees. With PDPs, employees can continually refresh and upgrade their skill sets to keep pace with advancements in ICT, meaning their business won’t get left behind.

Learn More About Personal Development Through Online Training

Online training courses have become a very successful and popular way for staff to receive ongoing learning and development in the workplace.

Your team members can simply enroll and complete training modules online, using a Learning Management System. With the Go1 LMS platform, you can engage staff in self-directed development, through customized training modules they can access anywhere, anytime. 

With more and more staff working out of the office or remotely, online learning is a very effective and flexible approach to learning and development. You’ll also be giving team members the opportunity to take responsibility for their own learning and allow them to complete their training at their own pace.

For Managers interested in finding out more about this topic, there’s even an online course about the importance of PDPs – enroll in Exploring Professional Development to start your own online learning. Throughout the course you’ll look at how discussing future opportunities with staff can increase engagement and ultimately their performance, with professional development offering greater opportunities for growth within the organization.

Hopefully, by investing more attention in your team’s learning and development they’ll soon be on the path to greater work satisfaction, with those Monday morning blues a thing of the past!

The importance of professional development programs

Part 3 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

Sticking with what you know is always a safe way to get an idea up and running, but stepping out of your comfort zone and daring to change can be the push you need to reach your full potential.

Embracing change can be hard and take a lot of courage, but sometimes to achieve greatness you need to take a step in a direction that you might not be confident it and try something new. Changing the way that you think could be the difference between mediocrity and success.

In the final part of this Master Class series, Joy talks about how embracing change has led her to be in the position that she is in today, and helped her to create a number of amazing organizations.

You can enroll in Joy’s ‘Why Not Dare?’ course by clicking here 

Dare to change and reach your full potential!

You can also check out the other parts of this Master Class here:

Introducing The ‘Why Not Dare?’ Master Class 

‘Dare to Ask’: Part 1 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

‘Dare to Listen’: Part 2 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

‘Dare to Change’: Part 3 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

What does it mean when people talk about mastering a skill? 

Most of us have heard about the 10,000 Hour Rule popularized by writer Malcolm Gladwell, which states that to become world-class in any field it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. But is this the only path to mastery? Does it all come down to endless repetition?

What makes the difference between proficiency and mastery?

One expert doesn’t think so. In his book, Mastery, author Robert Greene claims that there is a specific journey that most of us take to becoming true masters in any field. According to Greene, this is as true for painters and sculptors as it is for salespeople and entrepreneurs.

Greene claims that the first step in your journey is about discovery— exploring your natural talents and finding out what your strengths and weaknesses are. For some people this process begins by rebelling against a particular individual or social institution (picture the young man who chooses to go to art school because his father wants him to be a lawyer).

During this stage it’s critical that you are aware of your primary talents. Mozart, for example, knew as a child that his natural abilities were of the musical variety. Once the skill itself is chosen then the second step on your journey begins.

Now that you know what it is you wish to master, you must begin discovering how you learn. Not everyone acquires and applies knowledge the same way: some people spend years in passive observation, while others take a more active and hands-on approach to learning right from the beginning.  Either way, during this stage it’s very critical to identify the patterns of thinking and inefficient processes that hold you back.

In order to be better than 99% of the population at any one thing, you must know how to keep going when others give up. For some people, an apprenticeship will provide the guidance needed to move effectively through the second stage of mastery.  Sometimes you will make accelerated breakthroughs in your skills, while other times you will need to embrace the tedium that comes from practicing your craft.

As you move forward with your journey, you may need to alter your perspective. You may need to step outside of yourself and watch your learning process from the perspective of an outside observer. At this point you will take a critical eye to the details of your learning process and eliminate the things that are holding you back—while at the same time adding to the ones that are helping you improve..

After you have begun your apprenticeship and you’ve started to discover how you learn, it’s time to go deeper into the processes themselves. If you have chosen a mentor you will begin molding their ideas into your own and there will be a healthy back and forth exchange that will help you gauge your progress as you develop. This is what great coaches do for their athletes, providing them with continuous feedback in their technique and conditioning to help them stay on the path to success.

The fourth stage of mastery is all about social intelligence. Now that you’ve acquired the specific processes necessary for developing your skills, you’ll need to learn how to navigate your social environment effectively. Great artists, for example, must learn how to market themselves to gallery owners and interact with the public in a way that helps them build a following. Entrepreneurs must learn how to court investors and managers must learn how to get the best out of their people.

During this stage it’s absolutely critical that you avoid the Seven Deadly Sins of social intelligence: envy, conformism, rigidity, self-obsessiveness, laziness, flightiness, and passive aggression. You must also learn how to read people effectively so that you can identify who will help and who will hinder you on your journey. Finally, you must understand how to develop the appropriate persona that will draw people to you.

The final stage of mastery is about activating and accelerating your creative learning process. You must avoid becoming complacent with your skills and knowledge and continue to give your mind the fuel it needs to make new associations between different ideas. By this time you will have internalized, shaped, and modified the rules to fit your unique personality and strengths.

At this point you will be adept with the creative process and understand how to focus on both the strategies and tactics required to make you the best of the best. Picture any athlete, filmmaker, artist or businessperson at the height of their career and you’ll understand what the results of this level of mastery can be. Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, Michael Jordan leading the Chicago Bulls, Charles Darwin developing his revolutionary theories—these are all examples of what true mastery can accomplish.

Many people give up at one of these stages, which is why true mastery is such a rare thing. Some people are content with a certain level of proficiency while others lack the focus or commitment required to move on to the next stage. If you want to become a true master of anything then you’ll need to be able to keep moving forward when the vast majority of people give up. It isn’t easy, but the end result is more than worth it.

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

Mastering a skill is not about memorizing facts or learning formulas. It's about understanding why things work and then applying them. Learn more here!

What does it mean to master a skill?

Does your organization have a strong policy in place around bullying and harassment?

Bullying and harassment in the workplace is a serious issue for many Australian workers, and one that can have very negative impacts for organizations. To prevent these impacts from occurring, and protect both employees and employers, certain laws have been put in place on a state and national level.

Managers can play a significant role in preventing and addressing workplace harassment. As a HR Manager, it’s important that you’re up-to-date with these bullying and harassment laws. It’s also essential that you have a very good understanding of your company’s stance on these issues and develop solid anti-bullying policies to reflect this.

Today we’ll look at the impacts of harassment for both employees and organizations, and how a good anti-bullying policy can help prevent them.

We all want to work for a company that has a good organizational culture – in a work environment that’s open and positive, with employees who are happy, motivated, focused and productive.

If a team member is suffering bullying or harassment, they’re likely to become the opposite of these things, soon displaying unhappy, unmotivated, distracted and unproductive behaviour. 

As well as showing poor results and performance indicators at work, the effects of bullying or harassment can often also impact on an individual’s personal life and sense of self, manifesting in loss of sleep, physical ailments and serious psychological and emotional distress.

When bullying becomes a problem in the workplace, it doesn’t just affect the person or people being harassed and targeted. It can very quickly become a problem for the whole organization.

The effects of suffering inappropriate or unreasonable behaviour can result in high levels of absenteeism, sick leave and staff turnover for companies. You can also expect to see low morale, poor performance rates, reduced productivity and a negative work culture.  

This leads to poor reputation and brand name for companies, loss of profits, and the financial stresses of hiring and training new staff. 

What Does an Anti-Bullying and Harassment Policy Do?

A good anti-bullying policy can mitigate the risk of these events occurring, and works to protect both employees and the employer.

Employers are responsible for preventing bullying and harassment in the workplace, and a strong policy in this area will ensure your organization is compliant and reflecting its legal obligations. By developing a good bullying and harassment policy, you’re also showing your commitment to providing a safe and productive environment for your employees, while promoting a positive work culture for all.

For employees, a HR policy around bullying and harassment allows individuals to accurately recognize and define unacceptable behaviour in the workplace, as well as directing them to the appropriate resources and contacts for assistance.

 When you develop a bullying and harassment policy, it will apply to all individuals within your organization – from your CEO to contracted cleaners – making your workplace a more equal and fair environment.

Learn More About Preventing Bullying in the Workplace

As a HR Manager, you’ll no doubt want to make sure each person in your HR team is aware of the definitions and implications of bullying and harassment, so they can provide accurate guidance and advice to organizational staff. It’s also very important that you feel confident yourself, in developing and implementing policies and distributing the right information on this topic.

There are many great courses available online, created specifically for HR Managers and teams, that you can access to learn more about addressing bullying in the workplace. For HR Managers, Bullying: The Manager’s Role explores the role of managers in preventing bullying and abusive conduct in the workplace.

Similarly, Workplace Harassment for Managers explores the negative impact harassment can have on an organization's work environment and looks at the role of Managers in preventing and responding to all forms of workplace harassment. Both courses aim to assist you in preventing and effectively responding to incidents of workplace bullying and harassment.

You can also use online training courses to make sure employees in other teams are well-informed of the organization’s stance and policies on bullying, and know exactly where to go for information and who to contact in the event of bullying or harassment. Staff can simply enroll and complete training modules online, using the Go1 platform. With a Learning Management System like Go1, you can also upload and store all of your organization’s compliance training materials in one easy place, making it easier to access HR documents and policies quickly and conveniently.

We hope this has given you a greater understanding of the importance of strong anti-bullying policies for companies, as well as some insight into the potential of online training for HR needs.

Why you need a good bullying and harassment policy

The August release of Go1 is here, and we have some great improvements to making your learning experience even better! In this release you'll find some updates to the Administer dashboard so you can manage your learners easier, new features and updates to user profiles; including Gradebook, and a great new feature to allow you to create new portals with the click of a button.

Find out more about all of the updates below:

This is the latest version of the Go1 admin dashboard, a faster more streamlined interface to manage Go1. We will be rolling out more functionality here in the coming weeks and months. The old admin interface can still be accessed from the link at the top of this page.

Improved profile updates with notifications

When an account profile has been updated, after clicking submit you will now be notified whether your information has been submitted or not. If you have not completed all of the required sections of your profile, you will be unable to submit your updated information.

Create a new portal from your 'My Portals' menu

You can now create a new portal directly from the dropdown menu in the top right hand corner of you screen by hovering over the 'My Portals' option and clicking 'Create New Portal' at the bottom of the list of your portals. A confirmation box will then appear to confirm this choice, and then your new portal will be created.

Another new feature that has been aded to the user profiles in this release is the 'Gradebook'. Within the Gradebook you can view all of the courses that you are enrolled in as well as their status, start and end dates, and you can expand courses to see further details on which assessments you have completed or are awaiting completion.

We love our android users and want them to have an amazing experience. We have updated our display settings for all android devices to improve display and create a better user experience.

Automatic time conversion for user’s timezone

After launching the Course Marketplace in June, the Go1 team have been working to add more and more courses to our library so that you can access the courses that you want, quicker and easier. We opened the marketplace with 25,000 courses covering a wide range of subjects from professional development, to compliance and soft skills.

As if that wasn't enough for you to learn, we have added a stack of new courses to the library once again and now have a total of over 100,000 courses for you to choose from!

The courses that we have in our marketplace aren't just any courses either. All of the content that we provide comes from some of the best learning content providers from across the world, and covers a huge range of topics and industries.

Head of Strategic Partnerships for Go1, Melvyn Lubega says "Go1’s marketplace offers over 100,000 titles from the over 300 authors. It covers topics from compliance through to professional and personal development, and boasts content in over 20 languages."

“We are very excited to be teaming up with leading training organizations globally. Through these partnerships, Go1 will be able to offer an even greater selection of leading e-learning resources to its customers.”

In addition to these partnerships, we are also an aggregator of training content with access to courses from the biggest online learning providers such as those shown below, plus many more! You can use our reviews and ratings to compare courses from a range of providers to make sure you are always finding the best course on the topic you wish to learn.

Start learning today with the Go1 Course Marketplace

Go1 now has more than 100,000 courses available online!

GO1's Head of Strategic Partnerships, Melvyn Lubega, recently took some time to have a chat with the people at DestinyMan about how the company has expanded so rapidly across the world, as well as discussing some of the challenges that are associated with having a global team.

“When we first launched the company, I headed up sales,” says Lubega. “This meant building and growing the team, while developing our sales process to be both predictable and scalable. As we grew, this meant managing people across an increasing number of geographies and time zones, which means a lot of late nights and early mornings.”

Melvyn also talks about how his time at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation set him up for success and led him to gaining acceptance to the prestigious University of Oxford, which in turn led to joining the GO1 team.

“Through the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, I discovered that the difference between someone who is an entrepreneur and someone who is not is how they view the world,” he says.

Melvyn also has some great tips for aspiring businesspeople, which you can read along with the full article over at DestinyMan.com

Melvyn Lubega talks running a global company with Destiny Man

Part 2 of a Master Class with Joy Buolamwini

Having the ability to focus and push forward is critical to success, but it’s just as important to remember to listen to those around you who are challenging your ideas, or questioning your approach, as this may be the push that you need to take your concepts to the next level!

Creating an organization is about bringing people together to work on achieving a goal, and opening yourself up to listening to those around you. This allows your team to pursue opportunities together and create a more rounded experience for everyone involved.

In this part of our Master Class, Joy discusses how being dared to listen led to her success in creating a positive eco system that allowed her community to thrive.

Dare to listen and find out how others can help you succeed!

Introducing The 'Why Not Dare?' Master Class 

As technology has advanced over the past decade, recording your own videos has become easier than ever! We all have a device that can record high definition video sitting in our pockets, yet most of us don't know how to use these devices to their full potential. Video is now the go to communication tool across the world, and with a few tricks and some basic equipment, you can learn how to shoot professional quality video.

Screen recordings are fantastic, but when you can put the face of your instructor into the video, engagement levels are going to rise. Speaking in front of a camera can be tough to begin with, but like anything; the more you do it, the better you get, and it's a great skill to have.

With the use of a green screen you can transform your home office into a production studio, creating a more engaging and informative environment to present your content, and record videos or interviews that can be included in your course modules. Once you have mastered the basics that we cover in this tutorial, you can then move on to more advanced editing techniques that will allow you to increase your audience engagement.

In this post we are going to tech you how to record your own green screen video and audio, as well as walking you through how to edit everything together.

To set up your own studio similar to the one featured in the video above, you will need the following items that can easily be ordered online through Amazon:

A Green Screen back drop; These can be ordered online or purchased from a photography/video store. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative, you can head to your local craft store and make your own green screen. When doing this just ensure that the material have a matte finish so it's not reflective at all, and will provide an even color when lit up with your lighting equipment.

Two LED light panels; These are used to light your screen as well as lighting your presenter. As per the above video, to light the green screen you should have one light set up down low pointing at the space behind the presenter, if you have enough lights, one on each side is even better! Your second LED panel should be set up next to your recording device as high as your stand will go, and on the opposite side to your back light (if you are only using one)

For this recording we used one Condenser Microphone, or room mic, as well as a Lapel Microphone. Lapel mics are very cheap (Under $20) and are a great investment, because what you're saying is the most important part so people need to hear it!

Any Apple computer with iMovie (this should be standard on all Macs)

Any iPhone, Android or mobile device with video recording functionality

A tripod with adaptor to hold your device

If you have any questions about how to set up your green screen or other equipment, feel free to contact me on Twitter and I'd be happy to hep you get up and running!

How to use your mobile phone to record video with a green screen

Welcome to the Go1 blog. Helping you to achieve your L&D goals through the latest learning and development insights, trends, and technology.

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