If you’re working on planning, building, and implementing your business’s receptionist training platform, you’ve got a big task ahead of you. It’s not easy to envision an entire curriculum, much less put it into action! Do it right, though, and you’ll be able to turn a new hire—even one with minimal reception experience—into a valuable asset in no time. Here are four steps for building your business’s receptionist training:
Choose Your Main Themes
First, think about the major themes you want to cover in your business’s receptionist training. They might be things like administrative and bookkeeping tasks, insurance and billing, and people skills. These themes should serve as “umbrella” categories that cover just about everything your reception team will need to know.
Let’s say you’re a dental practitioner working on building your first dental office receptionist course for new hires. You’ll want to create themes like basic dental knowledge, administrative tasks and computer skills, and dental insurance knowledge.
Create Subcategories
Now, start to drill down from your main themes and create subcategories. If one of the main themes of your receptionist training is people skills, for example, think about the ways that those skills will come into play. Phone etiquette is one; receptionists must possess essential phone skills for converting potential customers into paying clients. Multitasking could be another—as you know, a great receptionist is a great multitasker! These subcategories will help new hires focus on specific skills they’ll need as they continue through your receptionist training.
Remember the dental practitioner from the hypothetical above? An example of a subcategory for the “basic dental knowledge” theme might be something like “recognizing an emergency situation based on symptoms.” When this information is included in your dental office receptionist course, your front-desk team will be able to take a patient in real pain and get them scheduled at your office promptly, without the need for the dentist’s opinion or approval in the moment.
Draft an Outline
The next step in your plan for receptionist training is to synthesize your main themes and subcategories into a working document. Create an outline that illustrates the main themes along with their subcategories, along with specific bullet points to even further detail your receptionist training curriculum.
Implement
The last step is implementing your receptionist training plan in the real world. Your curriculum could take many forms: a classroom-based approach with an instructor, an online course, take-home packets complete with a quiz to be turned in later… the possibilities go on and on.
The key to building your business’s receptionist training platform lies in a manageable, step-by-step approach. Create main themes, boil it down into subcategories with detailed bullets, draft a working document to get your thoughts on paper, and then turn it into whatever form you’d like. Before you know it, your business’s receptionist training will be producing real-world results!
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