Introduction
The strategic role of the technical support center is vital in the increment of revenue and cost-saving for high competition in today’s market. Market research shows that companies with poorly managed support centers do lose customers to the competition. Any technology company keen on growth must have a good support center. With the current market analysis, staff working in the support center needs to be effectively trained, to realize an efficient workforce (Biddle, 2006).
Background
Through market analysis, businesses make use of a support center to connect with their customers. This is a dynamic office that needs constant reinvention and evaluation to ensure efficiency. The employees need to develop skills to understand and respond to the needs and concerns of the customer (Biddle, 2006).
You asked that I could present you with some ways by which one can do training evaluation. For effective results, such a program is dependent both on the facilitator as well as the participants. Strict adherence to evaluation and validation methods before, during, and after training is critical for success.
Summary
Training evaluation is important. There are four levels to measure the effectiveness of the training offered. The four levels are namely; reactions, learning, transfer, and finally results. Validation is a long-term follow-up used to measure individual strengths and weaknesses by the facilitator (Biddle, 2006).
Reactions
This is the startup level whereby the trainee’s response to the program is measured. The support center training should start at this level. The trainers must get to understand the perception the program receives from the learners. This will be of help in planning, training and also offer a way in which the program can be improved on. The level of the grasp of the new training material as well as the significance of the program on the participants gets to be discovered at this stage (Biddle, 2006). In case the program is received badly, and nothing happens for it to be tailored to relevance, it will most likely not succeed. Ways of carrying out this evaluation include; interviews, observing the engagement level of the participants, or by use of interactive assessment.
Learning
This is a test that is carried before and after training. The intention is to gauge the amount of material the occupants have been able to learn. This can be taken at the individual level or by the whole participants as a group. Here, the evaluator is gauging the understanding of the trained material. The results can be obtained as an example, through doing some assessment tests before and after the training. Furthermore, the use of the workers above the participant and his peers can be used to fill a questionnaire about the change or lack of it on the participant ever since the program started (Stufflebeam, & Shinkfield, 2007).
Transfer
Here, one does seek whether the benefits of the program have been absorbed into the system or not. The time in which this exercise is carried is from three to six months after training. You will seek to find if there are any new skills the trainees have absorbed into their professional skills. This is the true mark of the success or not, of the training program. If, for example, the training is based on how the employee responds to a customer over the phone, the assessment will be the same. You will seek to find out if the employees are treating customers according to the training. If there was a question, did the trained employee use the standard laid down procedure to answer the question? Ways of doing this are like carrying out surveys, phone tests, or impromptu drills (Stufflebeam, & Shinkfield, 2007).
Results
This is the final evaluation level mostly done on the overall performance of the system. Here, one finds out the impact of the program by observing the general areas an impact will affect. That is the market perception of the company’s customer care, increase or reduction in the number of complaints about customer service, department efficiency among others. An example can be a decrease in the people who come physically to the company’s customer care offices due to effective solutions they get over a phone call (Stufflebeam, & Shinkfield, 2007). How to measure this can be looking at the number of customers the company has been able to keep as well as the increased levels of new customers.
Validation
This is important as it is a type of training that checks competency and helps the facilitator gauge if the participants learned what was intended. This helps single out each person, gauge their weak points and come up with necessary support. It is in this stage that the training material can be remodeled to enhance its effectiveness. By using this process you will be looking at the trained workers’ skills, attitude, and competence over a period of time. Since attitudes build over time this procedure should be engaged in between long periods of time. Some examples of validation methods are like an exam one does when the program is over, an interview done at the end, or engaging the participants in a mock teaching play. This is where they act as the teachers and share their knowledge in certain skills they learn. The facilitator ought to be careful to give each participant a chance as validation is more about gauging the participant’s strengths and weaknesses (Stufflebeam, & Shinkfield, 2007).
I will be glad to be of any help to you in the future, as you implement the training program. The choice of material to teach, and follow up will play an important role in developing an overall effective training program.
References
Biddle, D. (2006). Adverse impact and test validation: A practitioner’s guide to valid and defensible employment testing. Aldershot: Gower.
Stufflebeam, D. L., & Shinkfield, A. J. (2007). Evaluation theory, models, and applications. San Francisco, Calif: Joss-Bass.