The art of training

FVSU is in the middle of a customer service training blitz. Every staff member will be receiving a day and a half of instruction on how best to interact with and help callers and visitors to campus. In a world where communication is often limited to text messaging and e-mails, it's nice to know that face-to-face interaction is still being studied and perfected. It's also nice to know that FVSU cares enough to want to make sure every student and parent is treated with kindness and respect, that callers are helped as effectively as possible, or passed to a more knowledgeable resource with efficiency.
Job training is usually reserved for either new employees or bright stars in the corporate world. In nine years in a communications field, I was sent for training once, and that only when I told my bosses I was willing to take my vacation time and pay my own way to a conference three hours from home. In the year I've been at FVSU, I've been to two in-house training sessions, with one more scheduled, and was allowed - no, encouraged - to plan and execute a series of computer training sessions for my office and any others interested in attending. Cool.

--Misty Cline works for the Office of Marketing and Communications at Fort Valley State University