Success Model: The Training Process for Service Technicians. A decade at Terex Material Handling.

In April 2014, Nicole Schlegel carried out the “customer oriented behaviour for service technicians” for the 50th time.

What is it that binds us to brands and companies? Among the key factors are product quality and design as well as corporate identity. However, we are influenced most by interaction with the employees of a company, whom we approach regarding information and who help us along. That’s why Nicole Schlegel, in her quality as business and HR developer, has been monitoring and analysing the change of the job profile of service technicians for many years. It is often the service­ technicians that shape our image of a corporate brand.

A dedicated job profile

Service technicians are personalities with high specialist expertise, social responsibility and communication skills. The job profile of a service technician is extensive and comprises a broad range of tasks: you will find here, the mechanic is just as active in this field as the highly specialized high tech equipment expert. Service technicians check, analyse, and advise on technical and logistical issues, aiming to solve their clients’ problems. Often enough, a service technician knows the client’s equipment better than anybody else.

The calling card of a company

In addition to their technical expertise, service technicians must possess additional skills. This means good manners, communicative skills, a sharp and keen sense for the proper measures as well as circumspective behaviour, which are essential to structure processes during a specific working situation under consideration of costs, benefits and risks. As service technicians are usually working on site, i.e. exposed to the scrutiny of their clients, they bear a high level of social responsibility. In addition, they change almost daily their place of work, integrating themselves in the organisational structures of different client companies and operating in the social fabric of the client’s staff.

With strong brand awareness

Due to interacting with different contact persons, the job of a service technician also requires a certain degree of sensitivity. Against the background of their different functions, responsibilities and roles, contact persons frequently view a service technician as representing the entire company. Many questions relating to the company and its products as well as the relevant attitudes can be answered and communicated by the service technician on site. Moreover, the client meets the service technician in person and can see and experience him live in action, which means that the client is able to visualize the professional operation of duties to be performed: he receives well structured information at first hand and is personally assisted as part of problem-solving and advisory discussions. It is a standard requirement to be adhered to by the service technicians to make this quality visible and conceivable to the client.

Consequently, for Nicole Schlegel, service technicians can play a decisive role for the brand strength of a company. In the ideal case, by their conduct, they have dedicated themselves to the company’s brand values, by integrating the client into the company’s values and creating values for the client.

Strategic competence management

The Terex Material Handling training and development process of a service technician takes place as part of a three-stage strategic competence management, whereby behaviour, conduct, practices and conflict management are trained and promoted. It is only through specific practical key skills and the relevant awareness and understanding that the occupation of a service technician turns out to be real and sustainable.

That’s why, for Nicole Schlegel, the holistic approach of the competence management is important, since not only individual competence facets are trained during this programme but also professional as well as methodical and social competences are involved. The entire training process is gradually structured by means of a specific programme that is methodically and didactically built on interactive exercises, practical cases, video trainings and a proprietary instruction video.

A client orientated service team

This training programme creates a shared philosophy among the Terex Material Handling service technicians and strengthens their team as a whole. By joint learning and training, their knowledge and experiences are passed on to the service teams across different sites. The training process already begins at the formative stage, with junior service technicians being prepared for the real situation at the client at an early stage. New staff members are introduced through the training programme into intra-corporate standards of communication and conduct for client orientation, thus, this programme enables them a safe and successful start for their career.

A decade of success

Thus, service technicians are of use to their company in a double sense, as they provide for an indispensable customer service and they can – with appropriate assistance – be brand ambassadors, thus delivering the brand promise of the company. Having realized this, Terex Material Handling has been training its service technicians in cooperation with Nicole Schlegel for 10 years on a regular and comprehensive basis. Nicole Schlegel tailored the training process for service technicians, which during the spring of this year was held for the 50th time.

Jürgen Nowoczin, Senior Manager Learning & Development at Terex Material Handling & Port Solutions, says, “We are proud of this sustainability, and we would like to congratulate our cooperation partner, Nicole Schlegel, for her excellent and longstanding cooperation.”