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American Express

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Submitted By reganbd
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American Express is the one of the most popular financial company since it started. According to Nelson & Quick (2011), American express (AmEx) was founded in 1850 and started to provide freight forwarding and delivery services around the world and since then it is also known as global financial services company (p. 215). The company is well known for various financial services such as credit card, charge card, and travelers’ check. Maulik Vyas (2011), explained Amex cards hold around 24% of the total dollar volume of credit card transactions within the US. It is the highest of any card issuer so far. American Express has about 65,000 employees around the world to enhance the quality of service. To increase the superiority of humongous amount of employee Amex established American Express Learning center, where employee get training to increase their quality.

Analysis
American Express set up a learning center for the employee to improve the service of quality which is called American Express Learning Network (AELN). AELN’s customer service training program provided two types of application theories, one is learning theory and another is goal setting theory. The aim of AELN is to train their each employee to provide great customer service to existing customer and future customer. According to Harrison, AELN’s vice president (VP), primary learning for customer care employees, how they are introducing themselves toward customer and how they make sure customer that security level of all customer information is secured (p. 215). The training programs involve solving customer problem whether it is quarries of clients, a credit card replacement issue, a request for information, or some other issue. AELN would provide for employees both technical and soft skills training. Technical training would provide the customer service experts to get a better knowledge of the specific job, and give information to use all the different software applications, process forms, and other skills. Nelson and Quick (2011) stated that, Software skills training provided topics as the customer care principles, how to speak and listen to customers, dispute resolutions, and others (p. 215). "We are getting more and more power to make the decisions at our level," says Tate, who works at a major American Express service center in Phoenix ( Frauenheim, 2010, para. 3). If any small business card holders call in saving he has conflict with his vendor, in these case representative of American Express has the authority to make a conference call and to try to resolve the clash.
American Express Learning Networks also provided learning and goal setting theory application for leadership development. This is a vital method of AELN with learning and performance management responsibility to create expert employee for AmEx. AELN’s has experiment this theory on three groups of employees. According to Nelson and Quick (2011), the first batch of trainees or learners would experience only online distribution of learning materials, without any help from any sources such as, peer conversation, formal conference, or by talking to senior leaders of the organization. As a result they could learn from experiences from seniors and many other practical sources. The next batch trainees would get the experience from the indoor training without any backing from internet resources or formal events. This process helps them to learn from books. The last group learners would practice a mix of learning approach which combination of first and second group activities plus they would interacted with the senior organizational leaders, internet learning which is self-directed, and they also encouraged to discuss among the trainees (p. 215). These three applications of learning and goal setting theory experimented by AELN to create expert leader for AmEX.
Among all assessments blended learning approach result was more effective than the other assessment outcome. Blended learning approach resulted the return on investment (ROI ) through cost benefit of sales productivity from the learners report which is qualified to the learners training cost. Mixed learning also emphasized on assessing the transfer climate, where leadership training would be applied and continued on the job. Learning actually related with the cognitive activity of developing knowledge about topics, which lead to change behavior. Bandura’s social learning theory said, “Learning occurs through the observation of other people and the modeling of their behavior”. He also believe, learning theory is the idea of task-oriented, self-efficacy, an individual’s beliefs expectancies about his or her ability to perform a specific task effectively (Nelson & Quick, 2011, p. 188).
I completely agree with the Jeanette Harrison’s learning philosophy. Learning within a business organization should change the life of outside of the workplace. I think learning theory help a person to be more responsible not only their workplace also helps to responsible to their real life. Moreover, through learning theory people can learn how to interact more effectively with others, which is more important for a person in their social life. According to Brian Summerfield (2008), the main objectives of learning Network are to motivate their employees and make sure that, their work place is the great work place to work and balancing the techno based knowledge program with more social and experiential offerings and concentrating on customer treatment as the primary target of employee development (para. 9). Besides, of course education is the great path to a better life, but if we mix learning with education life would be even better.

Conclusion
Finally we can say that, the reason of establish AELN for AmEX is still running quite successfully. AELN set up a scientific theory for their customer service department and also for leadership development. A person not only change their attitude toward their workplace they could change their real life by learning theory approaches. It is confirmed that, end game of learning theory is extraordinary customer care and excellent focus on customer treatment.

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