Rail company flies high with training from an airline
Article Type: Notes and news From: Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 45, Issue 5
Regional airline Flybe’s training academy is delivering a specially designed customer service training course to more than 1,000 employees of First Great Western (FGW) railway company over nine months.
The series of 92, specialist one-day sessions is being staged by Flybe customer-training staff at the airline’s Exeter airport base and five selected FGW locations, including its specialist training unit at London’s Paddington station.
The program, written with the rail company’s engineering and control teams in mind, combines Flybe’s customer-service training program with FGW’s five guiding principles of customer service:
- 1.
be here now;
- 2.
choose your attitude;
- 3.
working together;
- 4.
wear their shoes; and
- 5.
make their day.
Jacqui Hepburn, Director of the Flybe training academy, commented: “Since the Flybe training academy opened its doors two years ago, the wider business community has increasingly sought out our training expertise. We have delivered our successful customer-service program to ever-growing numbers of third-party clients.
“These have included those across the hospitality and general-business sectors who wish to empower their staff with above-average communication skills,not only for their customer-facing staff but also for those in companies who, as part of their job, regularly need to interact with colleagues and outside contractors.
“With this in mind, there is a definite demand and we have ambitions to design similar collaborative courses for other high-volume passenger-transport providers in the future”.
Andrew Perry, Senior Customer-Experience-Assurance Manager from First Great Western, said: “We selected Flybe after spending time with its training department. We put a plan together, outlining the course and objectives.
“Following research at our engineering depots, control centre, stations and trains, Flybe came back with a course that is both exciting and has our values at heart”.
Jacqui Hepburn concluded: “Early feedback from our trainers and from FGW staff has been positive and, with everything firmly on track, we would hope that its success might eventually lead to the training being offered and extended even further across the company”.
