How to ensure your staff consistently delivers a good customer experience.……by customer service training that really works

Staff Training Videos

Do you wonder how to get consistency with what your customers experience every time they have contact with your organisation? Have you put time, money and resources into customer service training courses with little return or evidence of impact?

I have been reading a book called ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg, which I would highly recommend. In it, Duhigg covers organisational habits and how successful companies create routines and habits that are apparent throughout the company. In the book he covers how Paul O’Neill was responsible for transforming global company Alcoa, simply by instilling new habits around their safety procedures. O’Neill says:

“By attacking one habit and then watching the changes ripple through an organisation….you can’t order people to change. That’s not how the brain works. So I decided I was going to start by focusing on one thing. If I could start disrupting the habits around one thing, it would spread throughout the entire company”

What I think is important about this and something often overlooked by training departments and managers is that if you can identify one thing that if was changed or adopted by staff it would have great impact and then you make this habit throughout your organisation, the results can be far reaching.

Of course, to do this successfully you need to get real buy-in and engagement in the issue or the objective from your staff. Once you have got this buy-in you need to create systems, formulas and attitudes that are adopted and become habits.

Of course this is all easier said than done and it is all to easy to get sucked into expensive solutions, trainers and courses and not achieve this objective. Which is why you need to consider this as a 3 pronged training system:

1/ Buy-in and engagement from staff – this requires communicating successfully with them and getting them on board. You might do this via managers, meetings, through and event or conference, away day or team building or virtual systems such as e-learning, video or digital platforms. All of the above methods should be considered carefully in terms of how the messages are being delivered in a way to achieve buy-in and therefore need to be creative, thought provoking and impactful. Just having a conference in a hotel room with the operations director delivering a PowerPoint presentation is not going to result in buy in or changing anyone’s though process!

2/ Delivery of the how – once you have achieved buy-in and successfully communicated the need for change or the importance of the issue, you need to deliver how they do it in a way that gets understood, remembered and implemented. Successful ways you can do this include forum theatre, experiential training, video and e-learning and digital solutions.

3/ Consistency, monitoring and review – the only way to ensure that training becomes standard practice is monitor, get feedback and respond to the experiences of staff. Follow up training sessions, resources and a digital system to help with the on-going implementation of the training will help to ensure long term success with your objectives.

Customer service is one of the most critical factors in whether a business is successful in a long term and the best way you can ensure a great customer experience for your customer is to follow the steps above and ensure they have the right attitude, knowledge and support to have great habits when dealing with customers.

If you would like help and support with your training objectives and delivering training experiences, digital solutions, including video and e-learning to help you contact us for a free consultation and ideas for what would work successfully in your organisation.