In 25 years of studying the impact of customer service training, and designing and delivering engaging content on the subject matter, our experience and research has proven that more than 60% of customer service training activities have no sustainability beyond 30-days. Why might this be?
First and foremost, customer service training shouldn't start and end with frontline staff. It should originate in the boardroom with senior leadership. In essence, if an organization has mediocre or poor customer service it is not the frontline employee's fault as most would think, its actually senior leadership's fault.
Second, customer service is a critical function of leadership. Yet, if senior leaders don't perceive it as a strategic business imperative, neither will their employees. At the root, employees have the same level of enthusiasm (or apathy) for customer service as senior leadership mirrors and allows. Bottom-line, a leader who is service-oriented tends to hire employees who are service-oriented.
In my consulting practice, I coach thousands of mid-manager and senior executives every year - and I have yet to encounter one leader who is content with hearing that the crappy service that their customer's experience on a regular basis is their fault. This is a message that no one wants to believe or hear.
Increasing the success rate
So, now that we are past the cold, hard facts let's look at how to turn things around. Increasing the success rate of your customer service initiative or training program starts with a few essential elements, which must be ignited and sustained by senior leadership.
1. Organizational Purpose - Clarify the Vision and Mission of your organization in terms of the expected level of service that should be consistently provided to your customers; not in terms of what sounds good from a marketing perspective. Keep the vision and mission brief and simple; statements that every employee from the boardroom to the storeroom can understand and relate to
2. Organizational Objectives - Clarify the Goals and Objectives of the organization in terms of customer loyalty and employee engagement; of course, along with other business objectives that need to be measured like sales, profitability, productivity, and quality.
3. Organizational Message - Intentionally talk about customer service every opportunity you have, to demonstrate that it is an important element in the success and sustainability of the organization. If senior leadership regards customer service as insignificant acts of kindness that happen only when we have "time", then it will be inconsistent and sporadic throughout the organization. When you don't consistently focus on customer service in your message, neither do your mid-managers, and this level of apathy will trickle down to employees.
4. Organizational Alignment - Look at all internal processes (from HR to Operations) and assess if they truly enhance or impede the achievement of excellence, employee engagement, and customer loyalty. So often, senior leaders make very well-intended decisions impacting operational changes from their seat in boardroom, honestly believing that these changes will improve the organization. Yet they never follow-up, by looking back down the road to ensure the changes were accomplished as intended. This results in half-executed processes that add frustration and complexity at the line employee level. In the final analysis, what was intended to be a great company-wide initiative, negatively impacts employee morale and the customer experience.
5. Organizational Accountability - Hold every employee, including senior leaders accountable for attending annual customer service training. Of course, training at every level should be customized to the audience; which means that the senior leader and mid-manager level training and message is different from what is disseminated to front-line staff. Then set up systems and processes for tracking improvements in customer service, and rewarding and recognizing those who consistently exceed expectations.
When this level of leadership is employed with a high degree of consistency and commitment, the process of making customer service training stick is made easier, and the end result is immeasurable. Bottom-line, studies conducted by the Gallup organization time and again indicate that when employees are fully-engaged in their work, they directly impact productivity, customer loyalty, sales, and ultimately bottom-line profit.
