Animal Welfare Professionals

Hello!

I am gearing up to do some intensive customer service training with our staff here at the shelter, as we expand our services further for our community.

I was looking into "Animal Friendly-Customer Smart" the workbook by Jan Elster. Does anyone here have any experience with this program? If so, how did you like or not like it?

If you have not heard of the above, or used other materials- please share!!!! 

Thank you,

Amy

We're looking to bring in a speaker on this subject, so I'd love to hear ideas.  

What I have used is this webinar - it's pretty great!

I'm not familiar with Jan Elster's workbook so I can't comment on it but here are some additional resources for customer service:  https://www.maddiesfund.org/topic-customer-service.htm 

Sue Cosby's presentation is one of my favorites on customer service:  https://www.maddiesfund.org/crazy-awesome-customer-service-for-animal-people.htm?p=topic36 

We purchased the workbooks and have done chapter by chapter at our full staff meetings, as there is time.  It's pretty good, and having the focus of animal sheltering reality really resonated well with some of our staff who typically shrug off trainings that"have no idea what I do".

It's not animal-specific but our company recently implemented a program called "High Performance Culture" (from Senn Delaney) that helps people understand their own communication and behavioral styles. I'm sure it is prohibitively expensive to have the consulting firm implement it directly and I don't necessarily recommend full implementation for the needs you describe. But, I think it's valid to take a step back and understand ourselves which helps improve our ability to communicate with others & minimize conflict - which is always a good thing especially in an environment that is often emotional and subject to compassion fatigue. If you're interested, I can probably send you a copy of the book. The class itself has a facilitator but you will get plenty out of the book by itself. Let me know & good luck! <3