BCG Bulletin

THE TRAINING EXPERTS

Community Relations Issue

www.bryanttraining.com

December 2006

In this issue:

• News
• Fostering Community Relation Practices
• When Conflict Makes You Think of Quitting
• Are Your Customers Satisfied?
• Smart Quote
• New Classes from BCG

News - BCG Receives High Rating from Customers

Bryant Consulting Group recently received high customer service rating from its clients. OpenRatings sent in-depth questionnaires to BCG's clients to determine their satisfaction with BCG's products, customer service, pricing, and delivery. BCG received a 94 out of 100 for our past performance! Clients from a variety of industries rated us highly in reliability, cost, quality and many other factors. To see our certificate and read our rating report, go here.

June 2007 Professional Development Course Schedule

Fostering Successful Community Relation Practices
By: Drew Hamlin, M.Ed., PMP
Bryant Consulting Group, LLC

Your company may be a permanent fixture in your community, seeking to maintain or reestablish its reputation.  It may be a new company in the community, seeking to make a lasting, positive impression.  Regardless of where your organization lies along this continuum, how effectively it associates and communicates within its professional and social community can play a major factor in its success.  There are two major aspects when considering how a company interacts within the community it is located: its professional community and its social community.

The Professional Community
A company must consider the relationship it has within its professional community.  What is the company’s professional community?  Let’s say it is an IT consulting services provider located in New York City.  Its professional community not only consists of the IT consulting services providers within the New York Metropolitan area, but also IT consulting organizations throughout the nation and world.  The relationship with a company that is located in London is not as close as one that is located in Manhattan, but all of the IT consulting services providers are still part of the same professional community.

In relation to the professional community, a company is aiming to foster successful professional community relation practices.  This could entail sharing resources or partnering with other companies to crate joint proposals for projects they wouldn’t be able to manage or participate in independently.  The organization can also create a positive impression by attending professional conferences and events that serve as an engine to foster how it is seen by competitors and other organizations.  Establishing the company in as many positive relationships as possible will minimize the conflict it has in its professional community, as well as foster business and growth.

Your Social Community
Secondly, a company must also consider and foster successful social community relation practices.  The social community in which a company resides is based on where the company is located (geographically) and how it interacts with non-professional community entities.  This includes the residential, commercial, and industrial areas near the company’s site and the relationship the company has with neighboring organizations and institutions.

There are several ways to foster successful social community relations.  Many organizations create community service activities that have employees working with social improvement causes in their locale.  At the same time, a company must understand the enterprise environmental factors that affect it: How does the company impact the community in which it is located?  Finally, the company can partner with community organizations (such as the local Commerce department or local government agencies) to facilitate programs that utilize its services and positively impact the community.

In Summary
To foster positive and successful community relations, a company must practice positive communication and interaction with its professional and social communities.  Doing so will create and promote the company’s reputation and impact in those communities, increase growth and success, and minimize conflict with competitors and neighbors.

Are Your Customers Satisfied?
by Kent Jacobson a.k.a. Mr. Success

Do you monitor how satisfied your customers are with the service or product provided to them? If you do, great, if not, you definitely need to start. The reason to maintain customer loyalty is obvious; look at all the competition that is in the market place. Customer loyalty to you and your product or service is a key component to maintaining a successful business.

Where to begin? Begin by improving your and your company's listening skills at all levels. Every contact made by you or your personnel via the Internet, phone or in person is a potential "Customer Moment" and can provide early indications of potential problems. I mean everybody, from the dock to boardroom, train yourself and personnel to listen. Listen to what may be considered a trivial or off-the-cuff comment, document it and discuss internally. These comments may actually become a real customer issue, and if dealt with sooner rather than later will build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Next, develop a feedback system that supports the collection of customer information and can even provide a response mechanism when required. To implement this system, you will need to assign a person or small team to decide what is best for your business and customer base. You might even engage some of your faithful customers in this project.

Active listening to your customers is not easy at first, but you will recognize the power and monetary benefit of avoiding customer complaints and heading off problems before they escalate. Just remember the last time you were the recipient of poor customer service! Do not fail to act on what information you gained through your customer's voice. If additional training is required, seek out subject matter professionals and organizations to assist you.

The investment will be worth it; just ask your customers what they think!

Copyright © 2006-2007 Article Source: thePhantomWriters Article Submission Service

When Conflict Makes You Think of Quitting: Knowing your Needs
By: Drew Hamlin, M.Ed., PMP
Bryant Consulting Group

What do you do when the thought, “I am ready to leave this job and move on,” comes into your mind?  Often this feeling is a direct result of a conflict or conflicts you are experiencing in your work environment.  Conflict in the workplace is inevitable.  The source of conflict, however, varies.  There are three major types of conflict in the professional environment.  The first involves an employee and another employee (or group of employees).  This could mean a persistent argument over the resources used for projects.  The second type entails an employee and their supervisor (or group of supervisors).  This could be a dispute over financial compensation or a raise.  Finally, there is an employee’s internal conflict.  This type of conflict could be seen in an employee entertaining leaving their company for another.  The first step in conflict analysis and resolution is to identify that there is a conflict.  Thereafter, as an individual involved in the conflict, you must identify your professional and personal needs.  Are your needs being met?  If not, how can they be met?  Why aren’t they being met?

Professional Needs
When identifying your professional needs and assessing if they are met, there are several fundamental questions to ask:

·         Do you feel professionally fulfilled in your current position?

§         Does the current conflict insult your professional integrity?

§         Does the current conflict infringe upon your professional integrity?  How?  Why?

§         Are you entrusted with the responsibilities you feel you are capable of managing? 

§         Are you doing a job that you feel makes a positive difference?

·         Do you feel professionally challenged?  “Challenged” can mean someone is “challenging” your authority, or it can mean if you feel like you are being driven to achieve.

§         Is the person with whom you are in conflict challenging you?  How?  Why?

§         Are you doing work that matters, or do feel as if you are simply “going through the motions”?

§         Is this an environment in which you want to stay?  Is it worth engaging in conflict?  After all, your true intentions may be that you want to move on.  Your latent desire to leave the job may be the source of the conflict you’re experiencing.

·         Are you respected?

§         Do your colleagues respect you?

§         Do your supervisors respect you?

§         Are you respected by the individual(s) with whom you are in conflict?

·         Is this job what you want to do?

§         Is the desire to change jobs underlying the source of conflict?

§         Does this job, and how it will be for the foreseeable future, fit into what you want to accomplish professionally?

Personal Needs
Upon identifying your professional needs, you may find that there are other fundamental questions you will ask yourself.  At the same time, some of these questions will be more personal in nature, rather than professional.  There are fundamental questions regarding your personal needs that must be answered as you attempt to resolve the conflict:

·         Are your financial needs being met?

§         In conflicts involving salary, you need to determine if the negotiated salary amount will actually meet your personal financial requirements.

·         Is the conflict negatively impacting your personal time?

§         Perhaps you are involved in a conflict that requires you to work longer hours?  Is this negatively impacting your amount of free time to an extent that it also has negative ramifications for your personal life?

·         Are you happy and fulfilled?

§         The source of conflict may lie in the fact that you are not happy.  Why are you not happy with your work?  Could you be the source of conflict?  What can you do to change?

·         Are you growing?

§         Does the conflict affect your ability to grow as an individual?

In Summary
After determining your professional and personal needs, and you still feel like leaving your job is better than resolving conflict, there are still three additional factors that must be asked.  First, ask yourself if you are over-reacting.  Maybe the situation isn’t as bad as it seems.  Why not exhaust all efforts to resolve the conflict before “throwing in the towel”?

To use an old cliché, the grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side of the fence!  Every work environment has conflict to varying degrees.  It’s more important to master strategies to resolve conflict rather than to run from it.

Finally, ask yourself, “What are the push and pull factors?”  What are the factors that are pushing you out of your job?  At the same time, what are the pull factors that are pulling you to a different position?  Now ask yourself, “Are these push and pull factors truly strong enough for me to want to change everything and leave?” 

SmartQuote

A significant set of companies do not see customer care as strategic to their companies and will need to change.

Sanjay Kumar

New Classes from BCG

• California AB 1825 Preventing Sexual Harassment
• Project Management Professional Certification Exam Prep

Thanks for reading!
703.313.8555
email: info@bryanttraining.com
www.bryanttraining.com

©2007 Bryant Consulting Group, LLC                 All Rights Reserved.