Police officers enhance customer care skills |14 July 2018

A group of police officers from the Police Headquarters Command Centre are following a three-day training session to boost and strengthen their understanding as well as enhance their approach when attending to customers.

The training which started on Thursday will end today, Saturday, and it is being led by Maria and Mark Stevens of locally based Hope Consultant & Recruitment Company.

Inspector Winifred Baccarie of the Police Public Relations Unit noted that the training is the first in a series that the police force will be conducting for all of its members starting with a group of officers from the Command Centre.

She pointed out that police officers respond to and attend to public calls and requests for assistance every day and officers have to be able to attend to them  well and in a professional manner that inspire their confidence.

For her part Ms Stevens said it is important that the officers constantly boost their listening and questioning skills in order to better assist the public and do their job better.

“It is important to build good relationships between the public and the Command Centre, it is important that the officers can differentiate between a normal call and an emergency call for them to deliver a better service,” Ms Stevens pointed out.

She said the group is very active and keen to boost their understanding in order to make a difference in the way they work.

One of the participants, Corporal Cécile Barbé, said she is making the most of this opportunity which to her comes to strengthen what she already knew and was doing but she said it is always good to improve on communication skills and techniques when dealing with the public.

“But I feel new officers in the force should have been the first to follow the training,” she said.

For constable Tania Victor “dealing with the public is not always smooth running and the training will boost our capacity to better respond to and deal with the public”.