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I Got an Email: Maximizing YOur ROI on Service Training
| Guest post by: Ray Miller |
Article Overview: This article discusses how you can improve your return on investment for service training by describing what you can do to ensure that the training gets embedded into daily life.
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Free Download - The Consequences of Poor Service in the New Economy By Ray Miller |
I Got an Email: Maximizing YOur ROI on Service Training
In the 20 years
that I have been conducting service excellence training for thousands of
participants, there is one thing that has remained constant. At the beginning
of most sessions I ask the participants to introduce themselves and tell me why
they are taking time from their busy lives to attend the training. Eighty percent
of the time I get one answer, “I got and email that told be to be here!” This is
followed closely by, “I just wanted a couple days away from my desk.”
Apart from the
course title, they had no idea what kind of journey they were about to embark
on, how this training would help them in fulfilling their role or what was
expected of them regarding what they were to do differently after the training.
Training is an
important but expensive investment. Like all investments you want a good ROI.
In the case of training your ROI is measured by the extent to which people
actually apply what they learn in the training, on-the-job. What you do before
and after the training will dictate your ROI.
Here are some tips
on how to improve your return on your service training investment.
1. Select the right training
Select customer
focus training which targets everything people need to know and do in order to
maximize the customer experience. This goes well beyond what many service
training programs currently cover. But this is an article topic unto itself.
Ensure the
training includes both customer-contact and support staff. All too often,
companies focus service training only on the frontline. Yet, one of the greatest
causes of service problems is o a lack of cooperation, communication and
teamwork between service providers and the rest of an organization. If you
can’t get it right internally, you will never get it right for the paying
customer.
2. Define expectations and
accountability
Prior to the
training, you need to sit down with the participant(s) and discuss what the
training is about, why it is important and what your expectations are regarding
what they will need to do differently, and how you are going to measure this.
This defines expectations and accountability. This ensures they know what’s
expected of them and I guarantee they will pay attention.
The training
should have some form of action planning tool within it so that participants
will document how they will apply the training.
3. Review action plans and goals
Following the
training, again sit down with each participant and review their action plans,
establish performance goals and objectives related to the training provided and
determine what you can do to support their efforts.
Now for the real
work!
4. Reinforce and embed service
behaviour
When it comes to
customer focus training, many managers assume that once their people are trained
they will do things differently. Wouldn’t it be nice if this were true. The
reality is that without constant reinforcement and accountability, even with a
good action plan, people will not make radical changes in their behaviour
overnight.
The only way to embed
new service behaviour is to spend time with your team, exploring how the
concepts and strategies presented in the training apply to your department,
establish performance standards related to the various strategies, agree upon
how you will measure the expected performance, explain how you will help them
to achieve these new performance goals and the consequence (good or poor) of service
performance.
Once everyone
knows your expectations and what exceptional service performance looks like in
your area of responsibility:
- Pay attention
- Give feedback
- Hold everyone accountable for service performance
- Recognize and reward service excellence
- Listen to your customers and continually look for ways to add value from their perspective
…and most importantly, ensure that what you do every day when interacting with your customers and staff embodies all the service values of customer-focused leaders.
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Article Tags: retunr on training investment, service training
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About the Author: Ray Miller RSS for Ray's articles - Visit Ray's website Ray has been working with organizations, large and small, for over 20 years. "Our business is global. We have clients in Canada, the USA, the UK, Europe and the Pacific Rim. Our clients use us because we create training that actually works and gets results. We focus not only on providing the very best content but also on embedding the training into participant day-to-day performance." Our books have been purchased by individuals in over 50 countries as well. Click on the link provided here and you can complete our How Customer Focused are You online assessment. This will help you determine your company’s current level of Customer Focus. Click Here to get you access code. For more about The Training Bank, go to www.thetrainingbank.com. or visit www.thatscustomerfocus.com Click here to visit Ray's website   Customer Focus |
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Budget.
- I believe the biggest barrier is related to budget.
Training tends to be a normal practice for a big company.
But I have to consider it seriously as an entrepreneur.
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