Customer Service Training
Alison McGuire examines some of the options available to companies who are looking to enhance the interaction between their staff and their customers.
We are all aware of the huge disparities in the levels of customer service that we receive. Whether it’s a call centre, retail, or public or private services, the attitude of the person you are dealing with will have a profound effect on your likelihood of returning to that business. Training in this area is experiencing a boom, with more companies large and small investing in customer service training for their staff.
Dave Finnegan, Director of Professional Development, who provide customer service training to a range of business sectors, asserts that this is the area that will make or break a business. “This type of training is like going to a gym, for a businesses. It increases productivity and staff motivation. All the large companies that are thriving today are the ones that spend a considerable amount on customer service training.” When asked what he considered were the common challenges across the sectors he deals with, Finnegan commented that “it’s simply a case of getting it right. Whether you’re a Local Authority staff member at the side of the road, dealing with irate and aggressive people, or in financial
services dealing with somebody who’s gone overdrawn, it comes down to making the customer feel warm, satisfied and safe. Everyone today is expected to have fabulous CS skills, it’s the businesses that go after the laserlike precision of the key aspects of making customers feel valued that will thrive in
business. We’ve all had experiences of companies that take an issue, and resolve it to the point where you are really happy, and these are the companies we take our business back to.”
Increasingly, buyers of customer service training are seeking to develop an ethos within their company which enables each of their customers to feel that they are being treated as an individual, whose personal needs are valued.
“Connecting with people through communication is the key,” says Mandy Spencer Hunt, of Spencer Hunt Consulting. Spencer Hunt has extensive experience of providing customer service training in the healthcare industry. “My customer care training programme is fundamentally about identifying customer needs and developing effective communication skills” she explains. “My programme consists of simple exercises around identifying customer needs and then establishing channels of communication with them that enable the customer to have those needs satisfied. Important elements of the courses are verbal and non-verbal communication skills and assertiveness training.”
Of course, communication skills should be a standard element of course content in customer services training in all sectors. Effective communication is the start point for connecting with people, and providing great service. Once this is in place it’s a case of tailoring the content to suit your specific needs, so make sure your training provider spends time to understand what your specific challenges are, so that your employees get the most out of it, and your customers get the service you desire.
Liam McMahon, the Managing Director of New Horizons Ireland, affirms that his training company prioritises customisation of its programmes to different sectoral needs. “We offer training options,” he explains. “Firstly, there are generic, public programmes, which cover all aspects of customer service. We also offer a tailored approach for a specific group within an organisation, whereby we analyse their goals and objectives, and build the learning around that.” McMahon commented that, quite often, clients come to him saying they want “to raise the bar and get a higher level of customer service delivered by an identified group of employees. They rely on us to analyse what this next level is and to help them achieve it through training.”
There are other emerging trends in customer service training. Some providers are training customer service staff in some of the psychological and behavioural content behind communication theory. Emotional intelligence and neuro-linguistic programming are two such theories which are starting to find a footing in training courses involving customer interaction. However, the buyer should beware. Some training providers who purport expertise in these areas, misrepresent their levels of skill and knowledge. The best advice in this arena is to proceed with caution, and do your research beforehand. Go to a reputable provider (by using NLP and EI accredited practitioners) and ask for references from other companies who have used their interventions.
Knowing whether or not your training has ‘worked’ for your staff, and eventually your customers, is sometimes a challenge, both in terms of measuring an improvement in the level of service provided, and a return on your investment. In this context, Liam McMahon suggested that, “roleplaying is the key to the success of training such as this. You can listen to an instructor all day, and learn the theory, but the real learning happens during the roleplay, where people try out the new skills for themselves.”
Mandy Spencer Hunt uses a collaborative approach with the HR teams of her clients. “The aim of our programme with health service staff was to raise people’s awareness about the impact of their interactions on patients, their families, and each other. We carried out feedback focus groups (post
training) to assess the impact of the program and mostly people admit to thinking more about what they are doing and saying, as a result of the training.”
Aoife Moore, a retailer who engages customer training providers on a regular basis, to train her staff in the areas of communication and interaction, says that “it is critical to have a clear goal in mind for the training, at the outset. We have a clear set of guidelines about what the training should deliver, and this is laid out for the training company we use before we start. These guidelines could include a particular challenge we’re having, or could be a brief to help us decide what the next level of customer service should look like to us, and how we should go about achieving it. With these guidelines, we find it easier to measure improvement as a result of the training.”
There is clear need to acquire objective data or feedback on employees’ performance once they return to the workplace. Direct observation of the skills being used at the point of interaction with a customer is the best type of data if you can get it. However, getting it can be tricky – the tendency is that even by virtue of the fact that the delegate is being watched, this will ‘enhance their performance.’ Recording equipment or remote listening devices in call centres can provide a more objective feedback medium, but what about face to face interactions?
In all scenarios of customer service, you can’t beat getting the opinion of those directly impacted by the level of customer service you provide – the customers themselves. There are many types of customer satisfaction scoring methods available, from online or phone questionnaires, to focus groups, to the more traditional paper questionnaires.
In her company, Aoife Moore developed customer satisfaction scoring systems for her staff. “We were very fortunate. The trainer we used was able to walk us through the type of questions we should be asking of our customers, so that we could see if an improvement in skills had taken place. They advised us to measure some customers with the same questions both before and after the training, so that we could see any differences clearly. The best advice we got was to stick to yes or no questions. Did the member of staff smile and say thank you? Did they make eye contact?”
If this type of scoring system is not practical for your business, then you may decide to go down the route of mystery shopping. This is becoming a popular way to assess the customer service skills of staff in a way that remains objective, and focuses directly on the areas in which they are being trained during the interaction.
With the right brief, and collaboration with your service provider, you can establish a set of criteria by which your staff will be assessed. The mystery shopper then comes in, and simply plays the part of the customer. The advantages of this is that the assessment of the criteria is their primary reason for being
there, so they are more focussed on the customer service they’re receiving. Secondly, you receive a full report after the shops have taken place, which focus directly on the criteria you decided.
One mystery shopper recounted a wonderful tale to First Train which involved an interaction at a supermarket. Having had his few items chucked through the checkout, with no smile or eye contact throughout, eventually he was given his change and receipt without so much as a ‘have a nice day’. Prompted to question such dismal customer service, he asked the staff member serving him would they not even say ‘thank you’ to him? To this he got the response: “It says it on the receipt.” Needless to say, there was a fair amount of business in it for the training provider!
Customer service doesn’t even have to be that starkly desperate in order to lose you customers. A good investment in training in this area can heighten awareness, improve performance, and ultimately ensure that customers are spending their bucks exactly where you want them to – with you.
Mini Review
Crowning the Customer (Feargal Quinn, O’Brien Press Ltd, 2002)
In the ultimate accolade from a competitor, Sir Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tesco, has said “Feargal Quinn created a wonderful supermarket built around the shopping experience which became a model for retailers around the world.”
In this book, Fergal Quinn, CEO of Superquinn, writes: “All too often the real energy of marketing goes into attracting new customers while the ultimately more important task of nurturing the existing customer base gets a lower priority.”
This book is a hands-on guide for businesses that deal with customers person-to-person. Feargal Quinn explains: The ‘Boomerang Principle’; How to listen effectively to the customer; Customer panels; Why you should increase the number of complaints; How to introduce fun and surprise into business.
Instinctively, Feargal Quinn looks at business the way his customers do: noting the apparently tiny things and drawing from them huge conclusions. No theory is advanced without practical, entirely convincing, examples.
Without a doubt, this is an essential handbook for managers, company directors and employees alike.
