What is AODA customer service training?

 AODA training is a program that will give the employees basic knowledge about accessibility and how it might influence people suffering from disabilities. You mostly think of disabilities as either visible or physical. But, AODA training will always include all kinds of disabilities and not just the visible and physical ones. It will also cover the non-visible disabilities like mental health and learning disabilities within the pack.

Understanding more about the AODA customer service:

The customer service standard mandates that the service providers should always lookout for ways to break down the barriers, which will prevent the customers with disabilities from accessing services that they might need. The barriers must be due to physical obstacles and more. With proper Accessible Customer Service Training, the employees will learn how to handle customers with disabilities and even the ones suffering from mental disabilities. It is one way to grow the human touch among people.

Who will need the training session?

Once you are sure of the real meaning behind the AODA training, it is time to learn who will need the training sessions. People who must have this training as part of their module will be agents, workers, volunteers, and contractors.

• Everyone who is interacting with the third parties or the public as a representative of the provider should be associated with the AODA training programs. 
• For example, some workers who might interact with such third parties will be receptionists or the guest service personnel, salespeople, servers, hosts in restaurants, and more.
• On the other hand, some of the job descriptions of the workers will not involve dealing with the public. But, in practice, some of them, like the cleaning staff and security guards, have to interact with the public daily. So, these workers must have the AODA training by their sides.
• Along with that, the workers who are held responsible for approving, developing, and even reviewing customer procedures, service policies, and practices should have this training as well. 
• There are some workers who are responsible for policy development. Some of those are managers drafting policies, directors signing off on policies before the firms can use them, and also anyone associated with updating old policies. They must have the AODA training for sure.
• This kind of requirement will ensure that the employees will have the current awareness needed for crating or updating policies in such a way that those become rightfully accessible to disabled individuals as well.

When is the right time to train workers on AODA training?

Workers need to be trained ASAP once they are hired. On the other hand, workers should have training when the AODA customer service policies of the organizations get updated. Along with that, all the private sector and public sector firms with 20 or more workers must document every time whenever they are training workers. The documentation must complete the detail of how many workers had received the AODA training and the date when the training took place.

What will the workers get trained in?

The AODA training will cover some specified topics. Some of those are:

• AODA purpose
• Needs of the customer service standards
• Ways to communicate with customers suffering from visible and non-visible disabilities
• Ways to interact with customers with support persons, service animals, and assistive devices
• Ways to use equipment or devices that provider has to help customers to access services or goods
• Ways to assist a customer with difficulty in accessing services or goods

Checking in with the best AODA training session is important before you can book one slot for your employees to get trained in. 

Changingpaces is a pioneer inaccessible customer service training in Ontario. The founder of Changing paces, Trish Robichaud is a sought-after AODA consultant in Ontario and has been providing customer service training to organizations for 15years.