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Soft skills are not at the top of most company agendas when it comes to training technical support teams, but service and software company SAS maintains that its alternative approach has enabled it to build up an enviable rapport with its customers.

Nine years ago, Jackie Pope, the company's UK customer support manager, took over the management of SAS' 20-strong technical support team. The team looks after technical support for more than 1,000 SAS customer sites in the UK and Ireland, working for household names such as British Airways, Safeway, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Norwich Union and the NHS.

With more than 40,000 customer sites, including 90% of the Fortune 500, and 10,000 staff worldwide, SAS is the world's largest, privately held software company.

Pope inherited an extremely technically competent team, but realised there was one glaring flaw - a lack of communications skills. 'It was obvious that not all of them understood the impact of their behaviour and how it influenced that of customers,' she explains. 'Technically they were excellent, but they didn't always know the best way to handle customers.'

Pope had herself, in a previous life, been a SAS customer when she worked for ICI, so she had some first-hand knowledge of the importance of customer communications.

She rapidly realised that improvements in soft skills were necessary to bring about a change in her team, but knew the company didn't have the resources internally to provide such training. 'I am very much a people person and I realised soft skills were lacking in understanding customers, and particularly in handling difficult situations,' she says.

So Pope brought in Brenda Spiller, managing director of Shine Consultancy & Training, a specialist in soft-skills training programmes. Although she knew Shine was a relatively small training organisation, she believed its 'intuitive' approach could make a big difference.

Together, Pope and Spiller developed a strategy designed to help with technical problem-solving, reducing customer complaints and improving response times. At the same time, Pope wanted to motivate her team and keep stress levels down. The courses also had to reflect SAS' declared selling point of creating a unique partnership with customers, built on understanding, and responding quickly to, their changing needs.

With the team's technical expertise taken as given, Spiller believed it was necessary to train them in what she calls 'more commonsense, day-to-day social skills, customer service and sales awareness'. However, it was important that the training was developed in relation to the job in hand, while taking into account the SAS culture.

Both Pope and Spiller realised the soft-skills training had to be proactive, concentrating on enhancing questioning and listening skills and eliminating the overuse of technological jargon where non-IT people were concerned.

Spiller tailored the training to Pope's specifications, and thus the so-called 'Customer Service Excellence for Telephone Support' course was born. Or 'Brenda-ising' as it is affectionately known in the company.

Over the years, the programme has become a key part of the SAS customer support induction training. Pope's department now has a very high retention rate - she has only recruited one new staff member in the past 18 months.

Training for new recruits consists of six to eight weeks of technique and sales awareness training before they go live on the telephone. Their progress is then monitored by a team leader.

The entire team, however, goes through an annual refresher course with Spiller, dubbed 'remind, rebuild and maintain the skills'. It normally lasts for two days, and Pope believes it is core to customer service excellence.

The team is split in two and training is staggered so that it does not affect customer support in any way.

'It is part of the company ethos to develop staff, and this is a commitment to their personal development,' explains Pope. 'Part of this is finding a new way of telling them the same thing to refresh their skills.' Last year, for example, the team was asked to focus on customer management.

'It was centred on an area of their jobs, but at the same time it was building confidence and motivation,' she says.

Pope is adamant that soft-skills training needs to be continually reinforced to reap the benefits. 'It is all about understanding the customers' perceptions, which means skills levels have to be continually maintained,' she explains.

In addition, Shine provides a sales-awareness training programme for the IT support team. The course is designed to help the team members better understand the role of their sales colleagues and identify how they can help them, such as passing on sales leads, for example.

Because the programme is about sales awareness it means that it can be used across the company for staff in any discipline. Spiller maintains that this crossover does not ordinarily occur if you treat training as a project. 'This is because treating training as a project implies that it is a one-off course designed specifically for certain functions in the company, while leaving out others. For example, as a trainer I am often asked to train a 'customer service department', which implies that the rest of the organisation apparently does not serve customers,' she explains.

All training is classroom-based and takes place on-site at the company headquarters in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. 'Our training is very much about real-life experience in a support centre, and we can't get that off-site,' explains Pope. 'I really think the classroom approach is still the only one for soft-skills training.'

As an ongoing part of the training, staff listen to the support team making live calls. Trainers help staff to envisage 'putting themselves in the customer's shoes and help them hear, feel and sense what makes a difference,' Pope says. 'By noticing their own change in behaviour they can also perceive it in that of the customer, making for a very positive SAS image.'

The IT support team's customer service satisfaction levels are monitored bi-weekly by an independent SAS team. 'Both technical service and soft skills come under the microscope in these surveys and the results have been excellent,' claims Pope. 'SAS is very customer-focused and is continually researching into the services it provides.'

Pope believes soft-skills training also helps the wider personal development of SAS staff. Bruce Bovill, UK academic alliance manager for the company, is a good example. He claims he would not have lasted three months at SAS were it not for the soft-skills training he has experienced with the company.

Now a veteran of 12 years with the firm, Bovill puts himself down as a typically techie, but says he quickly realised that SAS was no longer being driven by technology, but instead was sales-and marketing-led.

The training made him realise he had to change his outlook to survive.

'Shine's training helped me listen to others, build confidence and learn the art of influence', he says. Bovill also believes the communications training was indispensable when he had to care for his wife Jan, who suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's.

Pope is not afraid of experimenting to get the best out of her staff.

She herself initially undertook Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) training with Spiller. NLP studies the structures of how humans think and experience the world. 'It is a form of life coaching, helping you understand how things fit together and the way people communicate,' explains Pope, who believes the training has helped her both professionally and in her own personal development.

Having been a guinea pig for the training herself, Pope decided to extend NLP training to her team. 'I use it with my team because it helps get the best out of them. It helps me find out what makes them tick, what motivates them; it helps me set objectives,' she says. 'It helps them understand that human beings are actually very complicated.'

Spiller says she is increasingly using NLP in her training. 'It helps people understand how the customer's mind works and how they can create a positive customer experience,' she explains. Shine has developed an NLP inspired course called 'The Language of Management' for the HR department at SAS to enhance communications skills there. 'It has increased my confidence,' says HR manager Mandy Devonald-Butt, who plans to incorporate the theory into her interviewing techniques.

Pope's approach to training IT support staff has certainly made its mark across SAS. But she believes that this is more down to company culture than her own hand. 'SAS is very forward-looking, it likes to embrace new ideas,' she says. She is the first to admit that soft skills are notoriously difficult to measure, but believes the company has seen the benefits.

'We've had no complaints and very positive customer feedback - and if my customers are happy, then I'm happy - and SAS is happy,' she says.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Organisation: SAS

Objective: Soft skills training for its technical groups

Number of trainees: 20

Types of training: Classroom

Timescale: Ongoing

PROFILE

Jackie Pope, UK customer support manager, SAS

How long have you been in your job?

Nine years; 15 years with SAS

What's the scope of your job?

I'm responsible for managing a department that looks after IT support to our external customers.

What did you do before you joined SAS?

I worked at ICI as a data analyst using SAS software, so before I worked for SAS I was one of its customers.

What training/qualifications do you have?

I've basically done all my training on the job.

What did you want to be at school?

I definitely wanted to do something with computers.

How did you get into IT training?

Through my job at ICI, where I was using SAS software.

In your opinion, what has been the greatest achievement in your current job?

Giving a high quality of service to our customers. It is very rare that we get complaints - and if customers are happy, I am happy.

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