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The customer situation: “From service to customer advice”.

With the increasing complexity of IT systems, the job of IT service technicians in contact with customers is changing fundamentally. In service, social and communication skills, in addition to technical know-how, are becoming more and more important for the company’s business success. 

One of OTP’s customers, an IT firm, planned to promote its highly qualified service specialists by professionalizing their customer service skills.

Background: Because this company’s service technicians work with complex e-commerce systems, the “just be friendly all the time” approach to service is not sufficient. Customers increasingly need proactive advice on how to get the most out of the systems. In challenging situations – malfunctions, time delays, system failures, customer anger – the service technicians should also be able to communicate in a professional manner so as not to create problems for further the cooperation with the customers.

The IT company wanted the IT technicians to have command of the communication tools needed to actively shape a positive customer relationship in the scope of their service activity. This includes a customer-focused and benefit-oriented argumentation, taking a de-escalating approach in crisis situations, and binding the customer to the service provider through a professional approach in discussions and presentations. 

The OTP program: starting with an individual assessment of the situation

The “Consulting Competence” training program, developed by OTP, comprises various modules that extend over six months. The first step is an individual competence-oriented assessment of the participants. Then, the various aspects of consulting competence are trained and practically applied based on theoretical background information and exercises.

The assessment is the basis and the key for the learning process in the training program. The behavioral styles of the participants are analyzed, and a forecast is made of how their behavioral characteristics will affect the desired consulting activity in IT service. This gives a picture in which competencies the participants have their strengths and in which they would need special support from the training program (e.g., through exercises in the seminar, through personal feedback, and through coaching). 

Tool for the assessment of the current situation: OPQ32

The assessment tool used by OTP is the digital test OPQ32 (“Occupational Personality Questionaire”). This test evaluates 32 personality traits in three personality dimensions that provide information about individual work behavior. The high accuracy of this assessment tool is internationally recognized.

The test consists of 107 questions measuring 32 specific personality traits. There are no right or wrong answers. Traits that are desirable for some tasks and positions may be detrimental for others.

The OPQ32 gives companies insight into how aspects of employees’ individual behavior affect their performance on the job. In the context of human resource development, the test can be used for a wide variety of objectives, whether it is to align the internal career promotion (as in the present case), for internal career management, for evaluating the talent pool, or for evaluating applicants as part of an assessment.

Personality dimensions of the OPQ32

The analysis of the OPQ 32 is focused on the following three dimensions:

Outcome of OPQ32 use: Individualized learning. 

The assessment at the start of the training program was first analyzed with all participants in one-hour individual meetings. In this analysis, the participants were encouraged to focus on their strengths and weaknesses. They determined individually in which areas they personally saw a particular need for learning. For her part, the training leader and coach was able to use this exchange to determine for each participant the specific learning objectives that needed to be worked on in the training and the individual coaching.

In particular, the OPQ32 analysis made it possible to track and reflect the continuous progress and results of each participant over the course of the training and coaching – e.g., professionalization of presentation skills. Using specific checklists for the different areas of competence – presentation, rhetoric, consultative selling, conflict management, leading discussions, understanding of business roles – the personal learning progress was determined in a before-and-after analysis and future learning areas were identified. In addition, it was also possible to determine the specific strengths of each participant in respect to his or her approach to the customer.

Last but not least, the test results of the OPQ32 also gave the supervisors the opportunity to evaluate on site with the customer the work of their collaborators in the ongoing appraisal meetings and to define goals for employee development.

Overall, working with the OPQ32 test tool proved to be extremely fruitful for the IT company, its employees and managers. For its part and on the basis of many years of work with personality assessment, OTP was able to open up another interesting use of this job-related personality test as part of the training program.