Blog: “Make customer service your best buy in 2015”
New to the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) website in 2015, we'll feature a blog post every Friday through the year.
This month's theme is training- to kick us off here's Dawn Hughes, from our Inclusive Fitness Initiative programme, to tell us about our new staff training course.
Dawn Hughes blog:
With the January Sales in full force you’ve probably experienced some great customer service recently, where knowledgeable and well trained staff have helped you.
Chances are you’ve experienced terrible customer service too, such as when simple requests take forever to deal with and complaints go unheard. If you’re anything like me you have ended up frustrated and vowing never to use that company again!
Research suggests that disabled people frequently receive poor customer service, which I find very concerning.
As many as 83% of disabled people have taken their business elsewhere when faced with an inaccessible and unwelcoming service. That is a huge number of dissatisfied people.
But most customer service staff and organisations don’t intentionally set out to give bad service. Poor experiences are often the result of a lack of awareness, understanding or incorrect, out-of-date information.
'Fear factor'
Working on a daily basis with the health and fitness sector, through the Inclusive Fitness Initiative, it’s not unusual for me to hear leisure centre staff and disabled people talking about a ‘fear factor’.
It’s definitely a two way thing. Staff want to welcome disabled people into their centres and give them helpful advice. There are often a great range of activities available, from gym workouts and classes to swimming lessons and badminton sessions.
Many are worried they’ll say the wrong thing or use the wrong words and unintentionally cause offense. Others don’t know how or when it’s appropriate to offer help or don’t know what their facility actually offers for disabled customers.
From the other perspective, disabled people also tell us at EFDS about their fears surrounding whether sport and activity providers will be able to meet certain needs, as well as whether they’ll be able to successfully access venues and take part in sessions.
'Wasted opportunity'
To me, all this seems like such a wasted opportunity. Everybody really wants the same thing – to enjoy their experience.
To help bridge this gap and improve the knowledge and confidence of those working in the leisure sector, EFDS has developed a new training course - Delivering an Excellent Service for Disabled Customers.
It’s an online course, written specifically for individuals with public-facing roles in leisure centres; receptionists, membership advisors, catering assistants and so on.
We wanted to create an introductory course that could be completed at your own pace and which expects no prior knowledge or experience of disability.
Importantly, the course focuses less on the access barriers disabled people face and more on the help and assistance we can all provide to make our venues and activities more inclusive.
The course is packed full of useful advice, including video clips of disabled people talking directly about their experiences and top tips on terminology, effective communication and creating welcoming and accessible environments.
So after you’re all “shopped out” from the sales this January, why not take the time to find out more? Check out our website or contact us via email or over the telephone.
Happy New Year to you all!
Dawn Hughes- IFI Equipment Manager
