Soft Skills As Power

 

 

How can companies navigate life with a pandemic that still hasn’t gone away after three years? We’ve all had to face numerous challenges during the outbreak. We’ve become heavily reliant on technology and everything digital to adjust and adapt. Because of long periods of lockdowns and isolation, our human connections have suffered.

Today, as we grapple with rebuilding our businesses and lives, we have to take a closer look at and reexamine the things that make us human and connect us with each other.

We have to relearn skills on how we relate and interact with one another, taking into account the emotional and psychological scars that the pandemic has left. We have to do a relevance and reality check and ask ourselves some tough questions like the ones that follow:

How has customer behavior changed and why?

Three years of unpredictable lockdowns around the world have made people more understanding but also more demanding. With the uncertainty that affected all parts of society, people became more tolerant. But at the same time, people got used to the nameless, faceless processes of online transactions because there was no other choice.
Everything seemed urgent as we fought to survive and stay sane during the process. People are juggling these seemingly contradictory feelings along with an eagerness to get back to pre-pandemic life.

What challenges do these changes bring to businesses, and why is it essential that we address them?

As things open up, businesses now need to navigate these new customer expectations that require higher levels of trust and reassurance. They must equip their staff with the tools to communicate to the customer that they have their best interests in mind.

They need to capture the customer’s attention (in the best way possible) and deliver on not only the product but the experience of their business to make the best bid for customer loyalty and not lose even more business. Competition in the industry is fiercer as everyone tries to bounce back. An in-depth understanding of today’s customer behavior can only be a leg-up in the market.

What will be some non-negotiable qualities the workforce will have to learn to improve?

The staff, especially frontliners, must get better at reading their customers right the first time. Great people and communication skills are needed. Businesses have to train their staff to think on their feet and deliver their services with an extra sparkle that leaves a good impression. Customers want to feel they have someone on their side, especially during this time that requires heightened awareness, hypervigilance, and uncertainty.

There is an element of anxiety that they need to be aware of and that their frontliners need to address. The window of opportunity to do all this is much smaller than it has ever been before. It is also why people with these skill sets will stand out from the rest of the pack.

The individuals who can adapt to these exceptional circumstances will be regarded as leaders in their field, finding new ways to build reliance and trust into the daily scenarios of their work—seen as a predictor of a business’s viability and the road to its overall success.

What is one of the way to ensure that the workforce gets adept at the so-called soft skills above?

Companies have to revisit their training programs and partner with companies specializing in soft skills training, like Via Perlas and Tebs Gomez of SilverTrain.ph whom I have personally worked.

The face of business may constantly be changing, but people will primarily run it. And as long as there are people on earth, emotions will always exist. Mastering the skill of making another human feel less alone will always be an asset, especially in business. These soft skills are power skills because there is no greater power than the ability to connect with another human being.  

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You may contact Armando “Butz” Bartolome for questions and more information.

By email: [email protected]

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