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By Ray Miller
When most people think of customer service training, they usually target the training needs of their frontline staff . After all these are the employees who are dealing directly with customers. Makes sense right? They devote time and money enhancing the capabilities of these folks in the hope that they will apply what they learn so that they improve the way in which they deal with customers.
Now let’s face it, that’s pretty important these days, particularly since 8 out of 10 customers will look elsewhere if they are not happy about the manner in which they have been served . Recent research reveals that 7 in 10 customers are willing to pay an average of 13% more for products and services if they believe that the service provider will back up these products and services with consistent , exceptional customer service*.
Considering these significant numbers, clearly , providing training which maximizes the customer experience has become an important investment. The problem is that spending money on developing the service knowledge and skills of customer-facing employees is only a small part of the overall equation .
Ask any of your customer-facing staff about what gets in the way of delivering the very best service and they will likely tell you thatit is :
- restrictive rules, regulations, policies and procedures
- No authority to tailor a solution to immediately fix a customer problem , frustration or complaint
- No support, cooperation or urgency from support departments who do not serve customers directly or who have conflicting priorities which do not include the customer
- Managers who reinforce policies and procedures rather than look for approaches which will make it easier for customers to do business
Customer Focus training not only addresses the education and training needs of customer contact staff and it also provides a structure , process and strategies for how all other staff maximize the success of every customer interaction impacted by their work . Regardless of the role supportemployees play within a company , what they do affects customers in someway .
Knowing their role, why what they do is essential to the success of customer interactions and what they need to know and do in order to maximize the customer experience is essential . Particularly since an extremely high percentage of service issues are due to a lack of communication, cooperation and teamwork between service providers and support employees . But customer focus swings both ways . As much as support staff need to help customer-contact people to win with the customer, customer-contact staff need to encourage their colleagues to partner with them for the benefit of the customer . Customer Focus training addresses this.
Customer Focus training also targets what all levels of managers within your company need to know and do in order to embed customer focus throughout their respective areas of responsibility as well as, what they need to do in order to create a sustainable customer-focused culture . Why? The main reason for the failure of most service initiatives is not employees’ unwillingness to deliver exceptional service but managers’ unwillingness to make the changes in their leadership practices, processes and procedures or how they do business to reflect what their customers value .
Managers need to practise what they preach , define service performance boundaries and standards, pay attention to service performance, hold people accountable and recognize and reward service excellence . A good customer focus training program targets these issues as well .
Customer service training address the symptoms of the problem. Customer Focus training provides the opportunity for a cure . It requires a commitment and hard work which is a worthwhile investment, that is, if you really want to keep your customers and grow your business.
If you would like to know more about how you can ensure that your training customer focus training produces the results you need, email us at support@thetrainingbank.com or give us a call at 1-416-698-8230.
*Source: 2010 and 2011 American Express Global Service Barometer.
Ray Miller is the Author of That’s Customer Focus and The Customer Focus Companion. He is also the creator of Maximizing the Customer Experience Online Training Certification Program and five other highly successful Customer Focus and Service Excellence Training Classroom Programs. He is the Managing Partner of The Training Bank, a Toronto, Canada based, international training and consulting firm which specializes in Customer-Focus and Service Excellence training that gets results.
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