Staff of the newly formed Workforce Opportunities Residency Cayman (WORC) Department received customer care training in January as part of the department’s effort to establish a customer centric culture.

“Early in the conceptual stages of WORC, we surveyed staff, seeking their vision of what the new WORC culture should look like. Overwhelmingly, the response was that WORC should be a customer service centric organization,” says WORC Director, Sharon Roulstone.

“We are building our processes with our customers, internally and externally, at the heart of the services we will deliver at WORC. Our Customer Care staff training is a first step, a small cultural change we can achieve now ahead of the bigger customer care changes to come as WORC continues to emerge,” she adds.

The training was first piloted in late 2018 with a group of about 20 staff from various levels of management and was so well received that in early January it was rolled out to 72 other staff members.

The training was conducted twice weekly by the department’s Customer Care Management Team. It was developed internally from existing customer service training materials, including the Customer Service principles of the Deputy Governor’s 5 Year Strategic Plan for a World Class Civil Service, fundamentals from the Department of Tourism’s PRIDE programme, as well as international best practices.

“Customer care is the ‘lifeblood’ of every service organisation and with WORC being a customer centric department, it was imperative that our staff be trained in customer care to prepare us for a new culture,” comments Head of Customer Care and training facilitator, Renda Cornwall. 

Some of the topics covered during the sessions were: customer care principles, customer interactions and WORC’s Customer Service Charter, which outlines the standards by which we will deliver customer care to our customers.

Participants took part in role play activities where they broke into small groups to review case studies and reenacted them in front of their peers for feedback and evaluations giving participants the tools and confidence needed to address any future customer service situations.  Participants also completed a personal self-assessment to help evaluate their current customer care skills.

 “The training was a great reminder of the responsibility we have to deliver quality service to our customers, and it provided useful strategies for us as staff members to deliver on that commitment,” comments Senior Processing Officer, and participant, Krista Wood.

WORC will provide continued training over the next few months, focused on topics such as compliance, business etiquette and communications.