To survive in today's highly-competitive global marketplace of learning products and/or training services, educational and training institutions will have to (i) improve their quality, (ii) offer niche but needed products and/or services, and (iii) reach new, untapped market segments. As training is now a big business, to ensure their programs' sustainability and financial viability, educational institutions (incl. in-service, non-degree training institutions) must be demand-driven, market-sensitive and customer service oriented.

Training institutions in most countries, especially in the Third World, face competition not only from local educational institutions. They must also fend off the mushrooming of international/foreign training institutions in their own backyard, and compete with many overseas educational institutions offering distance learning programs. Especially in time of organizational downsizing and budget cuts, training institutions will have to do "more with less". In many developing countries, public-sector training institutions are also facing tough competition from private or commercially-operated training vendors.

To maintain the competitive edge, training institutions will continuously need to (i) improve and revise their learner-centered curricula to meet the rapidly changing market needs, (ii) use more innovative and interactive learning technologies and (iii) apply peer-based/participatory learning methods, that can increase cost-effectiveness of the training process. In addition to improving such training quality, training institutions must also manage more strategically the available physical, financial and human capital resources, as well as professionally and creatively market their training products and services to ensure their financial health.

However, one critical aspect often neglected by training/educational institutions in the efforts to improve training quality and increase their business competitive edge is in providing quality customer service. Historically, in years past, most educational institutions, including in-service training centers, either did not need to market or offer client service due to a supply-constraint situation (i.e., more demand than supply) or a subsidized/contracted training business (i.e., training programs were funded, subsidized or commissioned by donor agencies, governments, etc.).

Thus, actual learners were seldom provided with quality customer service as the “real” clients were the government or donor agencies' decision makers. The economics of educational and training programs had changed considerably in recent years. Subsidy or funding from government agencies and international donors have now decreased substantially, and an increasing number of training participants and/or their companies/organizations are contributing significantly the cost of such training.

Conceptually, there is a close and direct causal relationship between high quality customer care & personalized client service and the effectiveness of the learning process. Simply put, a satisfied and happy client (in a comfortable and conducive learning environment where all essential personal needs are taken care of) can and will learn easier, faster and better. In the context of improving training quality, excellent customer service is an integral part of the learning process, and contributes significantly to providing a memorable “total” learning experience to training participants.

Strategically, it is more advantageous to increase training institutions' competitive edge through better quality customer service as it requires relatively less resources than by improving other training quality aspects which need more investment. The major investment necessary for improving customer service is basically in changing the “mind-set” and/or “attitudes” of the institution's management and training staff, and to “unlearned” certain “poor-practices” which are not sensitive and conducive to learner-centered actions and client-oriented activities.

In the competitive global training market of the 21st century, it is not enough for training institutions to only provide high quality instruction or technical contents delivery. Poorly managed training institutions, which do not properly market their training programs and provide quality and personalized customer service before, during, and after training, are unlikely to survive. Only by providing training clients and their employers with a memorable “total” learning experience which exceeds their expectations, can we expect such satisfied customers to become our “repeat” clients and best “Sales Agents”.

As part of institution/staff capacity building, this workshop is offered as a collaborative learning opportunity for training executives/managers and practitioners to discuss concepts/methods for creative customer care and personalized client service applicable to training institutions and services/products.