Module III
1. Structuring and delivering a presentation
Keys to Writing a Winning Presentation
Ø Create an Outline. You may not think you need to outline your topic, but be assured it will save you time in the long run. Outlining your entire presentation before you set out to write it lets you organize the flow of information and ensure that you have included all of the relevant topics. One great trick for outlining is to write each key topic on a Post-it note and map it out on a large white board. The sticky notes can be moved and reordered until you find a logical progression.
Ø Determine the Proper Number of Slides. If you are using PowerPoint, the rule of thumb is that each slide should require 2-3 minutes of discussion. If you are speaking for an hour, 60+ slides will be too many. You know your topic best, but 25-30 slides would probably be appropriate for a one-hour presentation.
Ø Limit the Amount of Text. Slides that are too wordy will cause your audience to lose interest faster than the freeway fills up at rush hour. Try to keep to no more than five bullet points and whenever possible, show instead of tell. This means that you should illustrate your topic with charts, graphs, graphics or other visual representation instead of words to keep your content engaging.
Ø Minimize the Bells and Whistles. A lot of activity or noise on your slides is bound to distract your audience. Resist the temptation to pepper your slides with flashy activity or music unless it truly enhances your message.
Ø Proofread and Spell Check- Twice! Nothing kills a presentation faster than grammatical mistakes. You could be the most engaging speaker in the world, but spelling errors and misplaced punctuation can cause your audience to lose focus and question your credibility. I once watched an executive give a presentation with an emphasis on aspirin. He spelled aspirin incorrectly on a series of slides and half the room was talking about it by the time it was over, completely missing a very creative and interesting discussion. If you don’t trust your own proofreading ability, have a colleague review your presentation for you.
Keys to Presentation Delivery
Ø Practice, Practice, Practice. Even if you don’t have an audience to test your materials on, lock yourself in an empty conference room and start talking to the chairs. It may seem awkward at first, but it’s the best way to calm your nerves and to be as prepared as you can. When show time arrives and stage fright kicks in, if you’ve practiced to the point of practically memorizing the whole speech, you will go into auto-pilot and deliver a flawless performance- even if your brain checks out.
Ø Pace Yourself. Nervous presenters often talk too fast and rush through the materials. When you practice your speech, time it and give yourself some room for questions or interruptions. To help with pacing, consciously pause between sentences and slides. Two seconds may feel like an eternity to you, but it allows your audience time to absorb what you’ve just said. Even taking a deep breath between sentences and slides can slow you down with the added advantage of calming your nerves.
Ø Film Your Performance. Professional speaking programs use video cameras to show students how to improve their presence on stage. As painful as it may be to watch yourself on film, this is the best way to discover your flaws and nervous ticks. You may find that you sway, play with your pen, jingle the change in your pockets or look like you’re dancing because you’re moving around so much. Using a video camera to capture your performance lets you identify your nervous habits and break them before you leave the audience talking about how many times you said, “Um.”
Ø Use Note Cards or Cheat Sheets. Even the President gets a teleprompter to give his speeches and you have the right to use notes or 3x5 cards to keep you on track. Just be careful not to read them or rely on them too heavily. Fill them with only short bullets to jog your memory and keep your flow, but avoid writing your entire speech verbatim on the cards.
Ø Warm Up the Audience. The best way to get the crowd on your side is to open with humor. Start with a joke or quip that is related to your topic. For help with locating material, check out www.the-jokes.com or www.jokes.comfor free access to all kinds of one-liners.
Ø Keep an Eye on the Clock. Audiences and event organizers appreciate speakers who stick to the timeline. Keep an eye on the time so you can speed it up or slow it down. You can also plant someone in the audience to give you hand signals if necessary.
Ø Talk to Foreheads. You should be making an effort to speak to the whole audience, which means looking around the room and making each attendee feel as though you are speaking to them directly. If eye contact makes you even more nervous, then talk to foreheads. Nobody will really notice your lack of true connection yet you will still convey your ability to engage the entire room.
Ø Don’t Forget to Smile. Use inflection in your voice and keep a smile on your face. Your audience can mirror your behavior and if you get on stage with a stone face and monotone expression, the whole audience will be depressed (or asleep) by the time you’re done. Weave in some humor or anecdotes and let your personality shine through.
Whether you’re speaking to a room of six or six hundred, these tips should help you become a more polished presenter. Remember that the number one key to success is to be as prepared as possible. Another great way to learn new techniques is to critique how other presenters perform. Watch presentations on television or at venues in your area. Notice how the speakers engage the audience and watch for tricks that you can incorporate into your own regimen.
You may never develop an affection for speaking in front of a crowd, but that doesn’t mean you can’t master the challenge. With the right amount of effort, your performance can rank with the pros.
2. Video conferencing Basics of video conference
Videoconferencing is the conduct of a videoconference (also known as avideo conference or videoteleconference) by a set of telecommunicationtechnologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called 'visual collaboration' and is a type of groupware.
Videoconferencing differs from videophone calls in that it's designed to serve a conference rather than individuals. It is an intermediate form of video telephony, first deployed commercially by AT&T during the early 1970s using their Picture phone technology.
The core technology used in a videoconferencing system is digital compression of audio and video streams in real time. The hardware or software that performs compression is called a codec (coder/decoder). Compression rates of up to 1:500 can be achieved. The resulting digital stream of 1s and 0s is subdivided into labeled packets, which are then transmitted through a digital network of some kind (usually ISDN or IP). The use of audio modems in the transmission line allow for the use of POTS, or the Plain Old Telephone System, in some low-speed applications, such as video telephony, because they convert the digital pulses to/from analog waves in the audio spectrum range.
The other components required for a videoconferencing system include:
- Video input : video camera or webcam
- Video output: computer monitor , television or projector
- Audio input: microphones, CD/DVD player, cassette player, or any other source of PreAmp audio outlet.
- Audio output: usually loudspeakers associated with the display device or telephone
- Data transfer: analog or digital telephone network, LAN or Internet
- Computer: a data processing unit that ties together the other components, does the compressing and decompressing, and initiates and maintains the data linkage via the network.
What is Video Conferencing?
Video Conferencing enables you to see, hear and speak, as well as share documents and other information with customers, suppliers, business associates and employees in various locations in a real-time collaboration environment.
Who should use Video Conferencing?
Anyone who normally gets on an airplane for business or professional use will save time, money and wear and tear by meeting and collaborating with colleagues and customers via Video Conferencing. Some of the worlds largest, most respected corporations count on ACT for our reliable, professional, easy-to-use video conferencing services. Small- and medium-sized businesses also appreciate the powerful efficiencies of video conferencing. In addition, state and federal government groups, not-for-profit organizations, trade associations, attorneys, accountants, physicians, educators, executive search firms, consulting companies and human resource professionals utilize our services regularly.
What is Multipoint Video Conferencing?
Think of multipoint video conferencing as the video conferencing equivalent of a telephone conference call. With a multipoint video conference, as many sites as you require can participate in a multi-person, multi-location, multi-presentation meeting.
There are three different ways of displaying your multi-point video conference. You can:
- Show all sites simultaneously in a windows format.
- Show only the site where a participant is currently speaking.
- Actively manage your video conference on the go with an operator who will change the video image from location to location when appropriate.
Regardless of how you show the video, audio from all sites will be shared at all times just like a telephone conference call.
Whether you need to communicate with three sites or 60, ACT can arrange your next multi-location meeting with a multipoint video conference.
What components are required for a video meeting?
The minimum required components at each endpoint of a video conference are a microphone, a camera, a codec, a monitor and a speaker. The camera and microphone capture the image and sound, while the codec converts the video and audio into a digital signal, encodes it and sends it out. The codec at the other end decodes the signal and distributes the video and audio to the receiving monitor and speaker.
Module: V
1. Front office
Front office is a business term that refers to a company's departments that come in contact with clients, including the marketing, sales, and service departments.
In the hotel industry, the front office welcomes guests to the accommodation section: meeting and greeting them, taking and organizing reservations, allocating check in and out of rooms, organizing porter service, issuing keys and other security arrangements, passing on messages to customers and settling the accounts.
In American professional sports, the term refers to upper management of a club, especially player personnel decision-makers.
2. Public Relation
Public relations, abbreviated as PR, is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc.
An earlier definition of public relations, by The first World Assembly of Public Relations Associations, held in Mexico City, in August 1978, was "the art andsocial science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organizational leaders, and implementing planned programs of action, which will serve both the organization and the public interest."
Others define it as the practice of managing communication between an organization and its publics. Public relations provides an organization or individualexposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that provide a third-party endorsement and do not direct payment. Common activities include speaking at conferences, working with the media, crisis communications,social media engagement, and employee communication.
The European view of public relations notes that besides a relational form of interactivity there is also a reflective paradigm that is concerned with publics and the public sphere; not only with relational, which can in principle be private, but also with public consequences of organizational behaviour. A much broader view of interactive communication using the Internet, as outlined by Phillips and Young in Online Public Relations Second Edition (2009), describes the form and nature of Internet-mediated public relations. It encompasses social media and other channels for communication and many platforms for communication such aspersonal computers (PCs), mobile phones and video game consoles with Internet access. The increasing use of the mentioned technologies give the media a democratisation power and thus, aid to the demystification of subjects.
Public relations is used to build rapport with employees, customers, investors,voters, or the general public. Almost any organization that has a stake in how it is portrayed in the public arena employs some level of public relations. There are a number of public relations disciplines falling under the banner of corporate communications, such as analyst relations, media relations, investor relations,internal communications and labor relations. Most of them include the aspect of peer review to get liability.
Other public relations disciplines include:
- Financial public relations – providing information mainly to businessreporters
- Consumer/lifestyle public relations – gaining publicity for a particular product or service, rather than using advertising
- Crisis public relations – responding to negative accusations or information
- Industry relations – providing information to trade bodies
- Government relations – engaging government departments to influence policymaking
3. THE IMPORTANCE OF TELEPHONE SKILLS
Telephone skills are the most important aspect of being successful in a call center job. When you work on the phone all day as a customer service representative, the telephone is the one and only tool that will make or break your success.
Learning and honing telephone and listening skills is the best possible thing a call center agent can do to prove themselves valuable to a company.
Great telephone skills do many good things to maintain an excellent relationship with customers which in turn benefits every person involved from the owner of the company to the call center employee, to the customer.
Some people will find that they have a knack for these skills, and it will be easy to learn and implement the skills a company offers in training. Others may have to work at it a little harder, but it is far from impossible if you are dedicated to being the best call center customer service agent you can be.
I was lucky to have a knack for these skills, but I’ve met plenty of people and helped many people that had to work at it to truly grasp the whole concept of what good telephone skills were all about.
Why are telephone skills important?
The reasons good telephone skills are so important to a call center and (unknowingly) to a customer are many.
Let’s say a customer calls in, confused about her cellular phone service. She doesn’t understand why there are so many text message charges on their bill.
Now, instead of finding the reason for the customer and explaining how the billing works and how they can control this portion of their bill, a customer service agent may simply apologize for the inconvenience and credit the charges to the customer’s account.
Great service, right? Wrong!
This might please the customer now and seem to the agent that they offered excellent customer service, but in reality the customer service agent has done a disservice to both the customer and the call center.
What will happen next month when the customer calls in for the same reason and the customer service agent refuses to credit the charges because in reality, the customer is responsible for those charges?
You end up with an angry customer, a frustrated customer service agent, and a call center that is in jeopardy of losing a client!
Confused? Let me shed some light on this situation.
The customer is calling in because they have a high amount of text message charges on their bill, and they simply don’t understand why. Instead of taking the easy road and crediting this unexplained charge to a customer’s account to make them happy for the time being, the agent can easily acknowledge the customer’s concerns, look into the bill and explain why the charges are valid.
It may be because their teenager uses the text message feature a hundred times a month and each text message costs ten cents.
By explaining this to the customer and walking them through how to find and read these charges on the bill, the customer service agent has empowered the customer to regain control of their own cellular service.
By going another step and offering a text message package, the customer now has options that will help keep their bill under control. And by doing these things, the possibility of the customer calling in next month with the same problem has been eliminated. Amazing what listening skills can do to truly help a customer!
The most important aspects I have found to offering great customer service are all in the telephone skills. Even if an agent has a great service attitude, without these basic skills, he or she doesn’t stand a chance of becoming successful in this field of work, and the dead end will be found a lot sooner than later.
Once I learned to implement the following skills into my daily work life, nothing was able to stop me. It is how I have been able to experience the different aspects of working in a call center from being a call center agent, to an assistant call center manager. It’s how I landed a job in the quality assurance department of a call center, and how I successfully managed call center teams for years.
These skills include:
- Smiling
Smiles and gestures can easily be heard over the phone, so keeping that smile on your face helps to create a positive engagement with customer every time you talk to them. - Empathy
If you can’t put yourself in a customer’s shoes especially when you know they are wrong, how can you understand why they have the feelings they do about the issues they have called in about? If you cannot come to an understanding of why a customer is calling, it’s practically impossible to help them in any positive way. - Problem Solving Skills
- No question about it, when you work as a customer service agent, you will get problem calls that require some solving. Generally, the company you work for will offer the tools to solve any problem a customer may have, but it is your job to learn how to use them effectively.
These are just a couple of the most important skills needed when working as a customer service agent, but these will definitely get the ball rolling for an honest career in this field.
It goes beyond simply knowing what these skills are and what they can do to help an agent succeed. Practice makes perfect is what you hear many people say, and the saying fits perfectly into this equation.
4. Soft Skills
Soft skills is a sociological term relating to a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills complement hard skills (part of a person's IQ), which are the occupational requirements of a job and many other activities.
Soft skills are personal attributes that enhance an individual's interactions, job performance and career prospects. Unlike hard skills, which are about a person's skill set and ability to perform a certain type of task or activity, soft skills are interpersonal and broadly applicable.**
A person's soft skill EQ is an important part of their individual contribution to the success of an organization. Particularly those organizations dealing with customers face-to-face are generally more successful, if they train their staff to use these skills. Screening or training for personal habits or traits such as dependability and conscientiousness can yield significant return on investment for an organization. For this reason, soft skills are increasingly sought out by employers in addition to standard qualifications.
It has been suggested that in a number of professions soft skills may be more important over the long term than occupational skills. The legal profession is one example where the ability to deal with people effectively and politely, more than their mere occupational skills, can determine the professional success of a lawyer.
Increasingly, over the last two decades, it has been recognized that when IT Professionals acquire soft skills, better relationships are built between IT and the other business units within the enterprise, fostering alignment. A key element of IT Professionals building these relationships is their ability to communicate, it has been suggested that communication is a measurable and improvable type of intelligence, "CQ" (Communication Quotient). Soft Skills are behavioralcompetencies. Also known as Interpersonal Skills, or people skills, they include proficiencies such as communication skills, conflict resolution and negotiation, personal effectiveness, creative problem solving, strategic thinking, team building, influencing skills and selling skills, to name a few.
5. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
Professional people and those working in acknowledged professions exercise specialist knowledge and skill. How the use of this knowledge should be governed when providing a service to the public can be considered a moral issue and is termed professional ethics.
Professionals are capable of making judgements, applying their skills and reaching informed decisions in situations that the general public cannot, because they have not received the relevant training. One of the earliest examples of professional ethics is probably the Hippocratic oath to which doctors still adhere to this day.
COMPONENTS
A number of professional organisations define their ethical approach as a number of discrete components. Typically these include:
IMPLEMENTATION
Most professions have internally enforced codes of practice that members of the profession must follow, to prevent exploitation of the client and preserve the integrity of the profession. This is not only for the benefit of the client but also the benefit of those belonging to the profession. Disciplinary codes allow the profession to define a standard of conduct and ensure that individual practitioners meet this standard, by disciplining them from the professional body if they do not practice accordingly. This allows those professionals who act with conscience to practice in the knowledge that they will not be undermined commercially by those who have less ethical qualms. It also maintains the public’s trust in the profession, meaning that the public will continue to seek their services.
Internal regulation
In cases where professional bodies regulate their own ethics there are opportunities for such bodies to become self-serving and to fail to follow their own ethical code when dealing with renegade members. This is because the nature of professions is that they have almost a complete monopoly on a particular area of knowledge. For example, until recently, the English courts deferred to the professional consensus on matters relating to their practice that lay outside case law and legislation.
STATUTORY REGULATION
In many countries there is some statutory regulation of professional ethical standards such as the statutory bodies that regulate nursing and midwifery inEngland and Wales. Failure to comply with standards can thus become a matter for the courts.
EXAMPLES
For example, a lay member of the public could not be held responsible for failing to act to save a car crash victim because they could not give an emergencytracheotomy. This is because they do not have the relevant knowledge. In contrast, a fully trained doctor (with the correct equipment) would be capable of making the correct diagnosis and carrying out the procedure and we would think it wrong if they stood by and failed to help in this situation. You cannot be held accountable for failing to do something that you do not have the ability to do.
A business may approach an professional engineer to certify the safety of a project which is not safe. Whilst one engineer may refuse to certify the project on moral grounds, the business may find a less scrupulous engineer who will be prepared to certify the project for a bribe, thus saving the business the expense of redesigning.
The biggest challenge many of us face is how to balance the demands of family, friends, and career. While we want happy and fulfilling lives outside of work, we have to make personal sacrifices in order to achieve our career aspirations. How do you balance those sacrifices so they don’t greatly interfere with your personal goals? How do you fit roles such as wife, mother, and friend into an already hectic schedule? Since time is precious, keeping a balance between the two worlds can be a challenge. Fortunately, with proper planning, balance is possible. Several Fortune 500 corporate executives revealed their balancing strategies to me. They offer proof that it is possible to have not only a successful career, but a rewarding and enjoyable personal life as well.
SET YOUR PRIORITIES EARLY
The first step to achieving balance is to get your family to agree on what the priorities should be. Realize that business success often requires long hours and travel. In these instances, support from your family has to be there. Additionally, when children are involved, many people discover that they have to re-balance their lives so they have time to spend with the kids.
Ellen Hancock, Chairman and CEO of Exodus Communication, described both her personal and professional life as successful, but not necessarily balanced. However, this situation worked for her because she had the buy-in of each family member. As she explained, “There are sacrifices. But your friends and family, your spouse, your parents, all have to support the situation and have an understanding that, yes, this is important.” Hancock went on to explain that her schedule did not always allow her to be as available as other women, but she managed to do what it took to keep everyone happy.
Hancock, like many others, made the decision that family was indeed a top priority. As such, they strove for new ways to carve out family time each day. They were aware that few people say at the end of their lives, “I wish I had spent more time at work.”
Jean Hamilton, CEO of Prudential Institutional, used some of her business practices to make time for family. She said, “The time I spent with my family and friends was not what I wanted it to be. That’s why I began to focus on ways to be more efficient with my personal time. I began to apply some of the efficiency tools that I learned from business. For example, I got very aggressive about scheduling time with friends and family. Everything went on my calendar. That’s how I dealt with things in business, so I did the same outside of the office. Using those kinds of tools helped me minimize the sacrifices.”
CONSIDER WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU
When placed in identical situations, no two people will make the same choices. Each person has to evaluate the event and then make a decision based on what is right for her at the moment. Just because an outcome worked for one person, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for another.
Prioritize your own commitments. Decide what is most important to you. Where do you want to spend your time and energy? How important is your career in the scheme of your life? How do you define success?
Mary Farrell, Managing Director, Senior Investment Strategist and Member of the Policy Committee for PaineWebber, Inc., decided to be available for global vacation travel. The decision affected her career, and she understood that. She didn’t expect people to overlook her absences. Many others in her position would not have made such a drastic decision, but Farrell made the best choice based on her values.
Every day we hear of increasing numbers of people who reach the pinnacle of their careers and decide it’s time to embark on a new stage of life. They quit their jobs, start a family, change careers, or take an extended leave. Others start businesses out of their homes so they can be with their families.
Some companies are reluctant to support a person’s career advancement if they don’t know the person’s goals—both personal and professional. Therefore, once you know what you want, communicate it to your management and get support. If the company will not support your personal goals as well as your professional ones, then it’s time to evaluate whether this is the right company for you.
Farrell searched long and hard for a company that would support both her career and personal aspirations. She worked at several firms before landing at one that was open to the kind of flexibility she needed. As long as the work was done, her boss didn’t care if she went to the school play—and she managed to make it to quite a few. It took dedication to make up the work at the end of the day, but it was vital that she be allowed that kind of flexibility.
BALANCE POINTS TO CONSIDER
Before you make any drastic changes to your personal or professional life, consider the implications of each decision and how you plan to integrate the changes into your schedule. For example:
- What effect will having children have on your life?
- How much time do you want to take off when you have a child?
- Do you want to come back to work full time?
- What support systems exist to help you?
- Will leaving at 5:00 allow you to get your work done? If not, are you willing to take work home?
- How much control do you have over your workload?
Different jobs have different requirements. Farrell found that by moving to the research department she was better able to achieve her goals. What about your current position? Study your field to see if it meets your goals and aspirations. If not, it may be time to consider a change.
WHAT’S YOUR BALANCING DECISION?
We all make sacrifices to get what we want. Most top executives do not sleep eight hours. Many of them work on weekends. These are choices they make in order to have what they want. Think about where you want to be in 10 or 20 years and what it will take to get there. What choices and sacrifices will you need to make today to achieve your goals tomorrow?
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