We’ve helped someone somewhere do what you want to do. We are constantly innovating and we record our current thinking in the downloads page. So what we did two years ago has always significantly moved on so please ask us for our most up to date thinking rather than relying on documents that may still be circulating from a number of years ago.
Below we have outlined some of the most popular ideas for you.
Culture change
Organisations can be vast and built up on traditions developed and adjusted over many years. The key to any culture change programme is to bring out the emotions. Culture change is all about feelings and unless we engage on that deep level, change will never come. People will play the part but traditions will prevail once the pressure is released. In order to do this, people need to feel safe to express these emotions and a systematic approach for rapidly adjusting emotional response towards change is essential as a catalyst for change.
Leaps & Bounds unique formula navigates these complexities with ease and simplicity.
Following the managers’ programme and the subsequent 1-1 coaching sessions with the managers, I can say there has been a marked improvement in the manager’s ability to manage. They are moving from being great technicians to becoming great managers. In addition, we are also starting to receive positive comments from our customers on how the service has improved. Leaps and Bounds have been a real catalyst for supporting the cultural change that has been needed in this business. On a personal note I have to say as a Director I have leaned a lot from the managers’ programme but I continue to receive great value from the 1-1 coaching sessions and am always taking away practical ideas that helps me deal with my managers.”
Paul Eros, Customer Services Director, Roche Pharmaceuticals
Leaps & Bounds were selected because they are different from most traditional training companies. The feedback from everyone involved was yes they were different and that was what made the difference in implementing a change of culture.” The benefits were:
- A new side by side monitoring process where instant feedback is given
- Up to a 60% increase in direct debit conversions
- A significant reduction in calls escalating to managers
- Happier customers who now thank our customers at the end of the call
- Increased interaction between team leaders and their teams
Jon Abrahams, Head of Contact Centres, Royal Mail
To find out more call us on 0844 504 0141 or click here
Employee engagement
People who are engaged love the work they do. They know that what they do matters and as such are prepared to do more, have less time off and work more inventively than those who aren’t. Commercially, a business with engaged employees are significantly more profitable. Engagement is essential when there is a change in focus or strategy, a new initiative or system or simply new pressures being placed on the organisation. Gaining engagement is much more than training people.
By using the LEAP framework, Leaps & Bounds can help you quickly tap into the latent energy in your staff so that you can gain that competitive edge where necessary.
Leaps and Bounds were contracted to provide EDF Energy with a training package designed to raise awareness of the new company-wide Zero Harm safety standards. This applied to 1,000 managers within the company’s Customers Branch. The scope of the delivery included the training design, a pilot session and a train-the-trainer session. EDF Energy trainers were provided with the skills to take on the training style set out by Leaps & Bounds. Throughout the training all of the key stakeholders were involved from within Customers Branch, with input from the training department, unions, management representation and representatives from the field services area. The overall effect on Customers Branch has been extremely positive. I would like to say a personal thanks for your help and guidance and it has been an enjoyable experience.”
Mick Holden, Project Manager, EDF
We attended a Leaps & Bounds training event a while ago where, at the start, I saw very clearly how unhappy this team were. They were suffering from heavy work loads, a lack of staff, a lack of knowledge, a lack of respect for themselves and each other to name but a few of the issues. Today I presented in front of an organised, motivated, mutually respectful and happy group of people who were comfortable in voicing their thoughts and challenging each other. I can’t believe the change! The Leaps & Bounds event was the catalyst for this change.I would recommend that you ask to see their vision statements as I think their words prove what a long, long way they have come.”
Customer Relationship Manager. UCB Homeloans
To find out more call us on 0844 504 0141 or click here
Customer service, sales or collection skills
Most people know what they have to do to provide great service, get the sale or collect debt. But for some reason they don’t always do it. The key to success here is not just about skill development but just as important, is getting their focus right and ensuring that systems, MI and scripted approaches don’t restrict their ability to perform.
By stripping away the complexity and focusing staff on using their natural talents to help customers, Leaps & Bounds brought significant improvements in performance in these critical job roles (even when scripts are essential)
Working with Leaps and Bounds has been a great experience; at the beginning of the project they helped us to gather our ideas and thoughts into a set of objectives and goals, they listened, researched and understood the needs and constraints of our business. Using their World Class model they designed a set of customer service modules for us to trial – seven in all, we worked closely with them reviewing and revising these modules to ensure that they fitted into our culture. We are in the middle of that trial now and the team have remained close to us, visiting the restaurants in the trial to review the results themselves. We have found Leaps & Bounds to be creative, practical and customer focused.”
Karen Russell, Operations HR & Training Director, KFC UK
Initially the project anticipated sales of 1 per agent per week. Following the 1 day workshop you designed, sales are already in excess of 5 per agent per week! This truly has exceeded all our expectations and proves beyond doubt the training has been a huge success – and the managers’ tool kit is still to come!”
Sally Kemp Head of L&D, E.on
The impact of the first stage of training was immediate, raising collections by 20%. By week 12 this had jumped to 90%. Since then there has been a week on week improvement resulting in 100% increase in collections.”
Ryan Sadler, Group L & D Manager, Scottish and Southern Energy
To find out more call us on 0844 504 0141 or click here
L&D Strategy and Development
L & D delivers not by doing more but by working smarter and in a more connected way with the business. As training budgets decrease it is even more essential that internal L&D teams ensure that every minute and pound spent on training makes a difference.
The LEAP framework helps your L&D team to make significant and inventive improvements to not only what they offer but how they offer it to ensure that learning really does make the difference that is needed.
Working with Leaps & Bounds was a refreshing change. If you want something bespoke and very different from what you have experienced before you will be delighted with what they have to offer. I had to quickly provide new knowledge and skills to an existing team of Trainers and create one training culture and style across multiple sites. Leaps & Bounds spent time with myself and my teams to understand the starting point. Their proposals were flexible and provided me with a number of choices. The ultimate aim remained the same ” To create a capable and professional team of training consultants enabling self sufficiency through transference of skills and knowledge.”
All the projects and learning challenges were based around our business and training within it, we were therefore overcoming challenges and delivering results whilst learning with support from the Leaps & Bounds team. True to their word Leaps & Bounds left a fantastic training team using the new skills and knowledge the team rapidly became credible in the eyes of the business and we were able to deliver a great consultancy and training service to enable the business to achieve it’s goals. An inspirational training business to work with. I have worked with them at various companies and will definitely recommend and use again in the future.”
Sally Kemp, Head of L & D, E.on
Our Trainers have a new job title. They think differently, they design differently and they deliver differently in every aspect of their role. Their thought process is ongoing on how they can be more innovative and creative in terms of embedding the best training outcomes. One of company’s aims is to put the customer at the very heart of our day-day-day business, and with effective learning skills, we do this by putting the trainee first and thinking how would their training appeal to them to help them deliver better customer conversations.
Through Leaps and Bounds, they were able to transfer their skills into more than induction, now every training module, has a theme, an episode, appropriate music and a mix of resources to make the training mirror real life. The Facilitators have to come life in many dynamic ways, and now live and breathe effective learning, as a way of their life ……..thanks to Leaps & Bounds.”
Nancy Spreckley, Direct Banking Training Manager, National Australia Bank
To find out more call us on 0844 504 0141 or click here
Corporate Induction
Corporate Inductions can be a download of information that simply gets forgotten. But what should it be?
It can be a warm welcome and a clear navigation around the key elements of the business, its stakeholders and systems so that any new member of staff can feel excited and confident in all the actions they take and ensures that they know how to make a significant contribution quickly.
Leaps & Bounds worked with me to design a framework and approach for our all employee company induction programme. Unlike other consultancies I have worked with L&B took quite a different approach. Rather than look at the objective and propose a solution they spent time with me to explore exactly what I was trying to achieve and why specific elements were important to me.
What I valued most about the partnership was that they acted as a coach and mentor, the project manager helped me to explore my vision of success and ideas, gave opinions and ideas to support mine and really helped me to discover my own solution. They then supplemented this by providing some tactical tools and practical solutions to deliver my vision. Together we created a programme called ‘Fast Start to O2′ which is used across all our business areas. In a recent survey conducted by the Great Place to work institute and answered by our people 88% of people stated that people are made to feel welcome when they join the organisation.”
Nicky Brimmer, HR Projects Manager, O2
Leaps and Bounds worked with us to revitalise our formal induction event, as part of the wider induction process. The induction had evolved over the years and had become a ‘showcase’ for the major parts of the business rather than an effective tool to welcome new employees. This was both difficult to manage (lots of different speakers from around the business – who generally were late or over-ran!) and did not fully cover the key information we wanted employees to understand. This combined with its death by PowerPoint format meant that, although well attended, it was not seen as a value-add to the business.
NHBC is a long standing, trusted, technical organisation and many of our employees (existing and new) reflect that approach and mindset. This meant that most of the training delivered is PowerPoint based, information rich and very ‘traditional’ in its nature. Within the central L&D function we are keen to break the mould and deliver, engaging, fun but informative events and therefore wanted to bring in an expert in accelerated learning to help us revitalise the organisational induction event. We had been liaising with Leaps and Bounds over various projects and therefore knew of their expertise in induction best practice and creating engaging, successful events. They were therefore an obvious choice.
We worked with L&B to scope the outcomes we required, what we would like the induction to be remembered for and the style and level of interaction we were trying to achieve. From a series of brainstorming events we were able to narrow down our options and create a themed event (based on our Customer Journey and an Underground Map analogy) that was both engaging and informative. It certainly ‘broke the mould’ of how inductions were run and very quickly raised interest from mangers who wanted to send their existing staff on the event! Certainly without the work we undertook with Leaps & Bounds, we would not have had the confidence or insight to have made the leap (no pun intended!) from where the induction was to where it is now. I would heartily recommend them to other organisations that are looking to re-energise their training provision.”
Mac McDonald, L&D Projects Manager, NHBC
To find out more call us on 0844 504 0141 or click here
Induction for Contact Centres
This world is changing. More people are now entering Contact Centres with prior experience and knowledge as the industry comes of age. People continue to be transient and smaller numbers are often being brought into centres at a time so it is essential that we seek out more inventive, flexible ways of inducting new staff into the world of Contact Centres.
Leaps & Bounds have developed a real time induction system which allows new starters to start on the ‘phones’ as quickly as they are confident and continue to develop whilst doing their jobs. This eliminates the waste associated with inductions and enables people to make a protected contribution quickly.
The Induction experience has been radically transformed ensuring the customer is at the heart of everything we do and that those who join us love what they do and can connect with the customer. Our philosophy is to enable learners to provide best in class service for the key customer drivers and equip them with the skills to deal with other unfamiliar situations. Our approach is simple, allowing CSR’s to investigate in an active and fun way, providing a stimulating and challenging programme. Results have been fantastic with customer satisfaction, single contact resolution and attrition all improved by over 10%.”
Lisa Blewitt, Head of L & D, Orange
We set about working with Leaps and Bounds to help us to look at how we induct our staff to see if we could more to create “Raving Fans” of our customers. I have worked with Leaps & Bounds for 2 years and they have been instrumental in helping us to re-focus our training methods to include Accelerated Learning. One of the major benefits of working with the team was their openness regarding their training methods, techniques and design. We have, as a result, been extremely successful in producing a far more effective Induction programme to replace the old one, leading to a significant reduction in the lead time for new starters.
We are now able to train new members of staff for the general enquiry call centre in 5 weeks as opposed to the old programme of 12 weeks in addition we have seen an increase in our net promoter score from 5 to 7 for these new starters.
Another key benefit of the partnership was the upskilling of our own training team, enabling us to apply these newly learned techniques to other business areas. It was very clear from the outset that one of Leaps & Bounds values was to create self-sufficiency within an organisation and to work towards non-dependency. The research element of the programme was extremely thorough and helped us to realise that it is not just about redesigning an induction, but looking at the whole picture including management support and behaviours. Working with them from the beginning has proven to be a positive experience and enabled us as a team to consult with our customer to develop material that benefits all levels of our business.
The support throughout has been very good, and even when projects have finished that support has remained in place albeit remote, this has proved very reassuring knowing that any follow on support is only an e-mail or call away. In essence it has been a very rewarding experience for all concerned to have chosen Leaps & Bounds to partner with, and since our initial project, we have embarked on several others with them.
Ryan Sadler, Group L & D Manager, Scottish and Southern Energy
