Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Project chug-chug



Well it is with great relief that I write this post knowing that I've just collated all the information from our journal searches. The literature review so far, although brief is informative, which considering the lack of literature available is quite exciting. It has been rewarding sitting at the computer this morning just writing and summarising. The literature also validates all of our own opinions about providing training to direct support workers. we need to make sure they have the underpinning values and attitudes, then the skills and knowledge, then mindfulness training, and time to apply to the individual using person centred planning and then onsite support, mentoring and supervision.  So it seems that there is no point doing any training if you are not doing all of this. Wow, this makes training an expensive exercise - not what the execs want to hear! 

Oooh, I like this article about mindfulness. 

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Thoughts from July workshop - Customer Service



It's funny I hear the words customer service and start feeling very guilty. I think as therapists we often feel guilty if we haven't been able to find the time to provide the service that we think someone needs. We are often stretched very thin and respond to the most urgent cries for help, leaving the quieter families waiting for us to call them. 

Todays workshop gave me 3 great tools to help in my role to provide good customer service. 
1. Empathy Mapping
2. Journey Mapping 
3. The FISH philosophy


Empathy Mapping. I think this is something that I do quite intuitively. Although actually writing it down helps. Maslow's Hierarchy of needs has been adapted to think about customer service. WIth basic needs as the bottom of the pyramid before the expectations, desires, and unanticipated needs. 

http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/27/maslows-hierarchy-of-customer-service/

Here is an empathy map:

http://uxempathy.com/2012/10/digital-empathy-map/

Our group actually found using this quite tricky. It is really hard to see all of these things from someone else's persepective. It would be great to ask one of our clients to fill this in for us. 

A Journey Map follows on from an empathy map, in that it is done from the customers perspective and maps out every touchpoint that the customer has with your service. 

http://www.amplify-interactive.com/blog/events/love-at-first-website-2011/

I found this website with more details. 

We worked in teams to create journey maps and this was a really valuable experience and will help us develop some more streamlined processes and procedures to be followed. 

We also talked about tracking the clients satisfaction using a customer heartbeat diagram. 

 This website has lots of good info about customer satisfaction. 

And lastly this is how we finished off the day. 
http://www.charthouse.com/content.aspx?name=home2

I am looking forward to trying to apply some of these tools to work.