You can segment the Telecom industry into telecom equipment, telecom services, and wireless communication. Again, these segments have their sub-sections. An industry as diverse as telecom numerous unique learning and development (L&D) challenges face it. It would be best if you considered the diverse and global learning needs of your employees. Some of these challenges include improving talent retention, delivering new products and services, and boosting the market share. Additionally, the telco sector needs to address strategic alignment, transfer learning, empower individuals, gather feedback, and measure effectiveness. Let us now understand some of the issues faced by the telecom industry when it comes to learning and development.
Delivering real-time, contextualised, and personalised learning support to employees:
Since the telecom industry is constantly evolving with innovations and technologies, corporate training platform needs to equip employees with real-time knowledge they can apply on the job. The diverse needs of the industry’s global workforce require that the learning sessions are also highly customised as per individual requirements.
Encouraging self-development:
The modern employee aims toward self-development, and this behavioural trend applies to the telecom industry as well. Employees have a unique insight into the requirements of their role — and when they direct their development, with support from line managers, those needs are more likely to be addressed.
Ensuring that technology is seen as a learning tool, and that content is still important:
Relevant learning is a vital concern. Premium-quality content is still a driving force for suitable training materials. Although technology plays an essential role in disseminating knowledge, it is content that makes the difference.
Building effective programs with the understanding that “One size does not fit all”:
Here, again, we need to consider the concept of personalised training modules. Not every employee is the same, and they have different learning needs. Therefore, a generic training model cannot serve the needs of the entire workforce.
Quick and personalised customer service
Your customer service department needs training on addressing client issues quickly and accurately. Most telecom service providers receive millions of customer requests every day. And with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a boost in this number. With numerous requests and employees working from home, delivering instant and empathetic assistance becomes a problem. Some of the skills that employees need to learn are immediacy, personalisation, and omnichannel communication. Otherwise, long waiting times, annoying to-and-fro conversations with multiple executives, and unsatisfactory automated responses will lead to a loss of rapport.
Complex operational processes
The telecom industry deals with millions of subscribers and a variety of products and customised solutions. Hence, operational tasks are complex. Moreover, face-to-face assistance is no longer an option. Tasks like service configuration, invoicing, order fulfilment, and payments need the development of new skills.
Remote working
With Covid-19 showing no signs of subsiding anytime soon, you cannot afford to house hundreds of employees inside a contact centre. As a result, most companies are migrating to remote working. The telecom industry is heavily dependant on contact centres to assist their customers. Therefore, it is a challenge to offer customer support with agents working from home. It gets even more complicated when your team relies on complex and on-premise technology. Hence, your staff needs training on other easy-to-use technology such as the cloud.
Network security
With the implementation of new learning technologies, ensuring network security is another major challenge for telecom operators. New technologies mean new threats to the security of networks and applications. The problem multiplies when teams are working remotely and customers asking for assistance from home. Hence, your training software has to contain measures such as reliable and secure authentication features.
What are the solutions?
In these indefinite times, organisations must take the right actions to redefine their strategies. Companies should be proactive in designing programs that extend learning beyond the course. The management should encourage communication among employees and offer alternatives by harnessing technology on an individual and organisational need basis. Easy access to learning, information sharing, and social collaboration will ultimately drive operational efficiency. And the solution to all of the above problems is to go digital!
Go digital
Migrating to digital channels will enable you to train your employees from a virtual location. You can constantly update your Learning Management System to address the changing requirements of your workforce — thanks to the continually evolving nature of the telecom industry. Moreover, eLearning leads to increased retention levels, fewer costs, and self-paced training. Hence, it would help if you considered online learning methodologies as your next training model.
m-Learning
Again, mobile-optimised online learning sessions enable employees to instantly scour through a module that addresses a specific issue — say, a particular category of customer requests or complaints. It also ensures continuous, comprehensive, and relevant knowledge dissemination on the go. Mobile-based learning is vital for dispersed telco teams who need a flexible yet targeted learning methodology. Hence, mobile learning is the ideal strategy to accelerate your training in the telecom industry.
Microlearning
Microlearning allows learners to absorb information in bits and apply them directly on the job. It leads to increased knowledge retention and absorption rates. Now, you should not merely use microlearning to augment your existing training materials. It would be best if you opted for an all-inclusive curriculum, which covers all your enterprise requirements. In short, rather than stand-alone modules, you must think of a full-fledged ‘Enterprise-oriented’ course. And this means that you should pay special attention to content generation and instructional design.
What’s more?
The easy-to-implement LMS technologies, such as SaaS-based LMS, can be implemented not only in traditional organisations but as when your staff is working from home. What’s more? Gamified learning software like PlayAblo encourages trainees to work toward self-development by keeping them motivated. Assessment-based modules urge learners to move forward in their corporate learning journey within a healthy, competitive environment. What’s more? When you implement a solution like PlayAblo, you can also keep track of your employees’ learning progress. Our training programs can be customised as per individual and departmental requirements — giving you the liberty of polishing the skills of your diverse, dispersed workforce.
Conclusion
For designing a training program specifically targeted toward the telecom industry, it is necessary to complement technological advancements with an efficient strategy, which has a customer- and employee-first approach. Only then, your organisation will thrive in this highly competitive environment. If you want to stay on top of your game, you should leverage technologies such as digital learning. If you need additional information, our executives at PlayAblo are just a call away!
