One Thing Great Customer Service Managers Do Differently

Great customer service managers always seem cool, calm, and collected.

This flies in the face of reason. The typical manager spends most of their day putting out fires or running to the next meeting. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done. 

How can these elite managers remain calm? Where do they find the time to coach, train, and develop their employees?

Great managers do at least one thing very differently than everyone else.

Meet The Ever-Present Teddy

My wife, Sally, and I traveled in December to spend Christmas with family. We stopped for a night at a resort on our way back home.

That's where we met Teddy. He was a supervisor who seemed to be everywhere we went.

We first met Teddy when we arrived at our room. He and another associate had just dropped off some fruit as a welcome amenity. Teddy and his colleague took a moment to help bring our bags in and give us a brief orientation.

We later saw Teddy at dinner. Our server noticed that we enjoyed wine. She mentioned that Teddy was helping her learn more about wine too. Teddy was working in the restaurant, so he stopped by our table to chat about wine for a moment.

The next morning, we saw Teddy in the restaurant again at breakfast. He spotted us and came over to our table to say hello. We talked for a moment before he went off to show a server how to set up a table for a large group.

Every time we saw Teddy, he was doing one thing that great customer service leaders do differently. Did you spot it?

He was constantly training and coaching employees. 

Teddy showed an associate how to deliver an amenity to a room so the associate could do it himself. He helped a server learn about wine so she could serve her guests more confidently. He helped another server set up for a large party so she knew what to do the next time.

Teddy never did the work for them. He also didn't leave them to struggle by themselves. He did the task with them side-by-side so he could show them the right way to do things through hands-on instruction.

 

Show, Don't Take

Managers often make the mistake of doing their employees' work for them.

They take on a problem and fix it because they know how. It's an instinctive move that feels faster when the manager is pressed for time.

This causes two issues. 

First, the employee doesn't learn how to solve the problem or complete the task. This leads to the second problem - the manager has all but guaranteed that they're going to have to deal with the same issue again.

I call this the manager's paradox. You can either spend time you don't have developing your employees now, or spend twice as much time fixing problems later.

Managers like Teddy don't do their employees' work for them. They'll often do employees' work with them, but this is different. It's part of an ongoing process to delegate, empower, train, observe, and coach employee performance. 

It's hard work, but the reward is a motivated and capable team of employees.

 

Resources

There's a certain bravery involved when your plate is full, but you take a moment to develop yourself and your team. It causes short-term pain, but long-term gain.

I've compiled a list of 51 terrific resources - books, websites, blogs, and other tools.

How To Prepare Your Team For Customer Service Training

So, you're ready to send your team to customer service training. The big question is whether or not your team is ready.

Chance are, they aren't.

A 2010 McKinsey & Company survey revealed that approximately 75 percent of training programs failed to measurably improve business performance. A lack of preparation is one of the biggest culprits.

This post will get to the heart of the problem and explain what you can do about it.

A group of smiling employees are attending a training class and raising their hands to participate.

Why employees are unprepared for training

I frequently volunteer to facilitate an open-enrollment customer service class for nonprofit organizations. Anyone can sign-up and I never know who will be there until the day of the class. As participants arrive, I like to ask them why they signed up for the training. 

Here are the top three reasons:

  1. They were told to be there.

  2. The class looked interesting.

  3. The class gave them credit towards a certificate program.

That's a pretty uninspiring list of reasons to sign up for a class. Unfortunately, most of the employees who come to customer service training aren't really sure why they're there. 

My experience in the corporate world suggests this is pretty much the norm.

Very rarely does someone attend because they're trying to solve a specific problem. It's unusual for someone to read the course description and work out exactly what they hope to learn.

That’s a big miss, because learning is fundamentally about solving problems.

The fault rests not on the employees, but on their manager. Here are some common mistakes managers make when they assign people to take training:

  • The problem is not clearly defined.

  • The training does not clearly address the problem.

  • Employees don’t know what they’re expected to do with the training.

  • Employees aren’t explicitly told what they need to do differently as a result of the training.

  • There are no plans to discuss the training before or after it occurs.

It’s no wonder so many employees are confused when they attend training! Some think of it as an interruption to their “real” work. Others feel they’re being punished for doing something wrong. Still others look at training as fun “recognition” without considering how they should implement what they learn.

If you want employees to do a better job learning, you need an action plan.

 

How to create an action plan for training

A simple action plan can help you maximize learning by ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks. My go-to planning tool is the one-page Workshop Planner.

Here's a short video that explains how to use this worksheet. I've also provided more detailed instructions below. The planning process should take no more than one hour.

Step 1: Identify Your Purpose

It's important for employees to know why they're attending training. That's pretty hard to explain if you can't clearly articulate this yourself. So, start by answering these three questions:

  1. What are the Expected Outcomes?

  2. What is the Existing Performance?

  3. What are the Cause(s) for the Gap?

Enter the answers in the boxes at the top of the worksheet:

Use this grid to identify your objectives for a training program.

Now, it's gut check time. Do you really need customer service training? 

Training is typically responsible for just 1 percent of performance. I can think of at least six ways to improve customer service without training. You should only schedule training if you really need it.

Still aren’t sure? This video tutorial can help you decide. The video includes a hands-on exercise with a live training class. You can download this worksheet to follow along.

Let’s say you do the analysis and you definitely need training.

Setting clear and measurable objectives is crucial. Don’t skip this step or do it half-way. A goal such as “improve customer service” is generic and confusing. There’s no way to tell if you’ve accomplished it.

You can use this primer to create solid learning objectives.

 

Step 2: Identify Pre-Training Actions

The bottom two-thirds of the worksheet is laid out in a grid.

You’ll notice there are percentages listed at the top of each column. These were offered by Jack Zenger, Joe Folkman, and Robert Sherman in a 2005 article in TD magazine called “The Promise of Phase 3.” The figures are rough estimates of the learning impact of each phase. While there’s no hard data to support their claim, it anecdotally I’ve seen the results.

Use the grid to create a list of action items for participants, their supervisor(s), and the trainer. Start by thinking about what participants need to do to prepare for the training. 

Workshop planning worksheet. The Before Training column is highlighted.

At a minimum, participants should be able to answer three questions:

  1. What's the training about?

  2. How will this class help me do my job?

  3. How can I apply what I've learned back on the job?

Next, determine what the participants' supervisor(s) needs to do to make sure that happens. Typical actions include announcing the training to employees and coaching them to ensure they can answer the three questions.

Finally, determine what the trainer needs to do to help the supervisor(s) prepare prepare. For example, my clients typically ask me to provide them with a class description and possibly some pre-work they can share.

 

Step 3: Identify Training Actions

Now it's time to set a few expectations for employees while attending the training event. These are typically very few. Examples include:

  • Being fully present

  • Engaging with the content

Workshop planner worksheet. The during training column is highlighted.

Next, move down the column to decide what the employees' supervisor(s) need to do to ensure that happens. For example, supervisors often need to make scheduling adjustments to maintain operational coverage while employees participate in training.

Finally, decide what the trainer needs to do to support this. My clients typically ask me to make the training engaging and ensure it supports the learning objectives we agreed upon.

 

Step 4: Identify Follow-up Actions

Don't wait until the training is over to decide how employees should implement what they've learned. Create a plan now to make sure it happens.

Workshop planning worksheet. The “After Training” column is highlighted.

Start by deciding what participants should specifically do to implement their new skills. Then, decide what the supervisor(s) should do to ensure it happens. Here are a few examples from recent training classes:

  • Call a team meeting to ask employees how they applied what they learned.

  • Coach employees one-on-one to see if they're using their new skills.

  • Survey employees to identify which skills they've tried.

Finally, determine what support the participants' supervisor(s) need from the trainer. With my clients, I typically hold a follow-up meeting 30 days after the training to check-in with leaders and see what help they need to sustain their progress.

Learn More

You can see an example of a workshop planner being completed here.

ATD 2015 Conference Re-cap: Training is Changing Fast

The Association for Talent Development’s 2015 International Conference & Exposition may have finally caused a tipping point in how we train employees. 

I’ll address this more in just a minute.

But first, here’s an overview of the conference in case you missed it:

The conference was held in Orlando, FL and featured nearly 10,000 training professionals from around the world. There were keynote presentations, breakout sessions in 10 topical tracks, and a massive expo hall with more than 400 exhibitors.

You can read more here:

Image courtesy of ATD

Image courtesy of ATD

Training is Changing

Rigid, formal training will soon be a thing of the past. The classroom may soon be gone or at least unrecognizable. E-learning may look very different.

In it’s place? Problem-centered, self-directed learning where participants train themselves.

In customer service, this has huge implications on the way we deliver training over a number of topics:

  • Training new hires
  • Developing customer service skills
  • Product knowledge training
  • Educating customers
  • Developing customer service leaders

I’ll dive deeper into the how and why over the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are a few resources to start exploring.

On a personal note, I was one of nine recipients of the CPLP Contributor Award, which recognizes holders of the Certified Professional in Learning and Performance credential for outstanding volunteer efforts to support, promote, and advance the CPLP program.

How Phone.com Uses Support Tickets to Spot Training Topics

Here’s a common challenge for customer service leaders:

You want to give your reps training and support to allow them to do a better job of serving their customers. The challenge is learning what exactly they need to be successful.

You might be sitting on an untapped gold mine.

Phone.com has implemented a program where they search support tickets for training topics. The goal is to give front line customer support agents the tools, resources, and training they need to serve customers more effectively.

If you're unfamiliar with Phone.com, they provide telephone service to small businesses. (Full disclosure: I’m a happy Phone.com customer.)

I first learned about this program from a post written by Jenny Dempsey on the Communicate Better Blog. 

Dempsey is Phone.com’s Customer Success Manager. She was kind enough to share with me some additional details.

moneytree.jpg

The Phone.com customer support team is organized into three tiers:

Tier 1 handles most inquiries. They can resolve a wide range of issues including billing, technical support, and account set-up.

Tier 2 is comprised of supervisors and leads. They might get involved with a more complicated issue or a problem that needs to be escalated to a supervisor.

Tier 3 is the advanced engineering team. They work on the really difficult technical problems.

When a Tier 1 agent is unable to solve a problem, they create a support ticket that gets routed to a Tier 2 or Tier 3 agent. The ticket essentially documents the issue and requests assistance.

This is a fairly common process for many technical support teams.

Phone.com’s Tier 3 team noticed they’d occasionally receive tickets for issues that could have or should have been resolved by the Tier 1 agent. The Tier 3 team started bringing these issues to team meetings so they could be discussed.

Bringing these tickets out in the open revealed a number of root causes:

  • Product documentation is sometimes out of date.
  • Tier 1 agents haven't been trained on some newly discovered solutions.
  • Individual Tier 1 agents sometimes need additional reminders, coaching, and feedback.

The initial approach was informal. It came from Tier 3 agents being empowered and engaged enough to share feedback with the rest of the team.

The program has since been formalized a bit. Customer support leaders actively solicit tickets that represent training opportunities. They conduct a root cause analysis, and then implement whatever training, documentation, or coaching is needed.

They’ve even given the program a fun name: Opportunities for Awesome.

The program is still in the early stages, but this is a best practice that promises to deliver a number of benefits:

  • Fewer escalations - Tier 1 agents can learn to solve more issues on their own.
  • Faster resolutions - Customers won’t have to wait for escalated tickets.
  • Happier customers - Less wait time equals happier customers.

How Training Reinforces Old Skills and Discourages New Ones

“The training was life changing.”

That’s how Matt felt about the week-long leadership course he had just attended. It was the most inspirational training he had ever experienced.

Now, Matt’s head was full of new ideas. He was excited to use what he learned to help his team achieve unprecedented levels of service.

Fast forward a few months and Matt's excitement had waned.

I asked Matt what he had implemented from the leadership course. My question was met with a prolonged silence.

Finally, Matt said, “If I have to be honest with you, I haven’t used anything.”

Matt’s story isn’t unusual. In fact, it’s typical. Companies spend thousands of dollars to send employees to training and nothing happens.

They hope for better customer service, better leadership, and better results. All they really get is a big training bill. Even worse, the training might actually reinforce old habits rather than build new ones.

Let’s explore why this happens and what you can do to change it.

The Vortex

Matt was buried in work when he returned to the office after the week-long training. He faced a mountain of phone calls, emails, status meetings, updates, and project work. 

This is hardly unusual. Most of us face increased workloads after attending training. Like most of us, Matt worked hard to grind through it.

This whirlwind of post-training activity is called the Vortex. It heightens fatigue and stress levels and sucks up all of your attention. 

We revert to our old habits when fatigue and stress levels rise. This delays the application of anything you learned in training. Unfortunately, this delay happens at the most critical time for learning.

The Vortex consumes the time we know we should spend applying what we've just learned. We push aside the new lessons for a later date when we're more caught up. That date rarely arrives.

 

Learning & Forgetting

A 2006 experiment by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke revealed how we easily forget what we learn.

Students at Washington University in St. Louis were asked to memorize poetry passages. Some students were then asked to study the passages for additional periods while other students were immediately tested on their recollection of the passage.

All students were tested again five minutes later to see how much of the poetry they could recall.

The students who spent more time studying fared a little better, recalling an average of 81 percent of the poetry vs. 75 percent for the students who had studied once and then were tested.

An interesting thing happened a week later when the researchers tested the students again.

The students who studied once and then were tested retained 14 percent more than the students were spent more time studying!

This experiment shows us two things about learning and forgetting.

First, testing is critical to long-term memory. Testing can come in many forms. It might be a knowledge quiz, but it could also be opportunities to apply new knowledge to a real problem.

Second, we forget information quickly. The students had all forgotten roughly half of the poetry passage after just one week. Now, imagine how much content from a week-long or even a day-long course would be forgotten after just one week!

Unfortunately, the post-training Vortex ensures any on-the-job application will be delayed and much of what we learned will be forgotten.

 

Improving Training

The ideal learning environment involves intense practice, smaller chunks of learning, or both.

Training should also focus on helping learners solve current problems. In this way, the new learning isn't a distraction from the post-training Vortex; it's a solution.

There are many ways to achieve this, but you have to think beyond the traditional event-based training module where participants attend a class or take an e-learning and that’s it.

Here are a few examples:

A flipped learning approach trains content by video or e-learning and gives participants practical opportunities to apply what they learned.

I’ve had success training contact center agents via a series of one-hour webinars. Each session focuses on one specific skill. The sessions are scheduled two weeks apart to give participants time to apply what they learned in between.

An action learning approach can also be highly effective. Here, participants work on a real-world problem. They’re given access to self-paced learning and real-time coaching as they need it. 

The key to all of these approaches is less study time and more immediate application.

Changing the traditional event-based learning model takes guts, but it can be highly effective. Your participants will retain more, apply more, and achieve more.

For more information on how learning can be improved, check out this short video on LinkedIn Learning.

Six Ways to Supercharge Your Customer Service Training

Let’s confront the truth about customer service training.

The latest ATD State of the Industry report lists customer service training as the fifth most common training topic for U.S. companies. Despite widespread popularity, it often fails to help teams significantly improve their performance.

Many customer service managers describe a temporary bump:

  1. Employees attend training.

  2. They get motivated for a week or two.

  3. Gradually, they settle back into their old patterns.

You can avoid this problem and supercharge your customer service training by applying these six tips.

Tip #1: Target your needs

Skip the generic training. Send your team to a customer service program that targets their specific needs.

The best way to do this is to create a customized program in-house or hire a professional customer service trainer to assist you. 

However, you can still customize your training even if you’re using an off-the-shelf product like my Customer Service Fundamentals course on Lynda.com. 

  1. Determine your team’s specific training needs.

  2. Select the modules that are most appropriate.

  3. Hold follow-up discussions to help your team make the modules relevant to them.

 

Tip #2: Prepare your team

Make sure your employees are fully committed to the training. One way to do this is to focus on how the training can help them do their jobs.

I always ask my clients to make sure their employees can answer these three questions before the training begins:

  1. What’s the training about?

  2. How is it relevant to me?

  3. How will I be able to apply what I learn back on the job?

 

Tip #3: Follow-up

Researchers estimate that as much as 50 percent of learning happens after the training class. That’s when employees try out their new skills. In many causes, employees need support and encouragement to change old habits. 

This makes it critical to incorporate some sort of follow-up activity to help them out.

Examples include:

 

Tip #4: Make sure it’s a training need

Before sending employees to training, make sure training is what they really need. Many customer service problems are misdiagnosed as a training issue. In many cases, another issue is the real problem.

Examples include a poor product, an unfriendly policy, or a toxic culture. Whatever the cause, your service can only be as good as the weakest link in the chain.

There are many tools that can help you diagnose a customer service problem such as the Five Whys technique and Quick Fix Checklist.

 

Tip #5: Eliminate role-playing

There’s a persistent myth that role-playing is an effective customer service training method. It’s not.

Role-playing actually hurts learning because it divides the employee’s attention between learning the new skill and acting out a role. To make matters worse, most employees don't enjoy it.

You can fix this problem by utilizing an experiential learning approach that helps employees apply new skills in a realistic setting.

 

Tip #6: Follow the 70-20-10 rule

A 2009 study by the American Society for Training and Development popularized what’s now known as the 70-20-10 rule for training.

  • 70% of learning comes from experience

  • 20% of learning comes from your boss

  • 10% of learning comes from formal training

The percentages aren’t hard and fast, but the concept is illuminating. Since formal customer service training only accounts for 10% of learning, leadership messages and on-the-job experience need to be aligned with the training or the training will fail.

You can fix this problem by ensuring that formal learning, leadership, and on-the-job experiences are all pointing employees in the same direction.

  • Ask employees to help create the training

  • Run a pilot program so participants can tell their peers about the results

  • Use the Workshop Planner to map out ways to involve the team

Customer service training can make a big difference when done right.

Training Concept You Need to Know: The Magic Window

The Constanzas earned their nickname in new hire training. Their constant bickering perfectly imitated George Constanza’s parents on the the TV show Seinfeld.

This argument was over a role play exercise.

“You’re not doing it right,” said Mrs. Constanza. She was breaking character to correct Mr. Constanza’s data entry error.

“You can’t see me! You’re on the phone!” yelled Mr. Constanza. He wanted none of Mrs. Constanza’s coaching as he struggled his way through entering the order.

“But you’re doing it wrong.”

“You can’t see me! You’re on the phone!”

The scene devolved into a stand off. Mr. Constanza kept trying to figure out the computer system. Mrs. Constanza retreated to another part of the training room.

The trainer watched the entire scene and did nothing. 

She was deliberately letting them fail to see if either one would make it through the magic window. 

The Learning Curve

It’s helpful to take a trip along the learning curve to understand why the trainer was standing back while the Constanzas went down in flames.

The learning curve consists of four distinct stages that were first identified by Noel Burch in the 1970s. They're known as the Four Stages of Competency: 

  1. Unconscious Incompetent: You don’t know what you don’t know.
  2. Conscious Incompetent: You know what you don’t know.
  3. Conscious Competent: You know what you know.
  4. Unconscious Competent: You don’t know what you know.

Most people can relate to these stages when they think about how they learned to drive a car. 

You were Unconscious Incompetent before you got behind the wheel. Driving may have seemed easy, or least it was more exciting than intimidating.

A specific situation jolted you into the Conscious Incompetent stage. This probably happened the first time you drove. Perhaps it was an oncoming car or stalling a manual transmission vehicle. 

Passing your driving test was the ultimate Conscious Competent moment. You were vividly aware of everything you did as the person in the passenger seat noted every move on a checklist. 

Today, you are a Unconscious Competent driver. You can get in your car, drive to work, and have no idea how you got there. Driving a car doesn’t take much brain power at all.

 

The Magic Window

The most important part of any learning process is the transition from Unconscious Incompetent to Conscious Incompetent.

I call this transition the Magic Window.

Learning is impossible unless a person makes this transition. People stuck in the Unconscious Incompetent stage don’t realize exactly what they have to learn, so they aren’t able to change behavior.

Which brings us back to the Constanzas. 

Neither one of them had made it through the magic window. They repeatedly failed at exercises yet couldn’t seem to grasp that they were falling behind. The rest of the new hire class made it through a long time ago. 

Pairing the Constanzas in the role play was a deliberate move. So was letting them work it out without providing feedback. The trainer was following an established protocol to give them one more chance to reach the Conscious Incompetent stage.

 

The Magic Window Protocol

There’s a protocol trainers should follow to move their learners through the magic window.

The first step is challenge. 

Learners need to experience a challenge so they move from Unconscious Incompetent to the Conscious Incompetent stage.

It might be a quiz, a hands-on activity, or even a difficult discussion question. 

An unfortunate side effect of challenge is learner confidence and motivation often takes a dive. Nobody likes to fail, especially if other people are around to see it.

It’s tough to balance challenge with learner self-esteem, but it’s essential.

Sadly, challenge alone isn’t always enough to help people move through the magic window. The Constanzas were challenged but didn’t realize they were struggling, even when they began falling behind their fellow new hires.

That’s when a second step is required: feedback.

This is when the trainer gives the participant specific feedback about their performance. A good trainer is careful to preserve the learner’s self-esteem, but is also direct in their assessment. They make it clear what aspects of performance need to be improved.

This direct feedback is often enough for the participant to realize they have some learning to do. Unfortunately, the Constanzas both found this feedback hard to accept. The trainer gave them feedback individually, but their reactions were remarkably similar.

They thought they were doing fine. They’d work harder to make sure they caught up. There was even a hint that the trainer needed to be more effective.

That’s when a third step is required: self-assessment.

At this stage, the trainer asks the participant to self-assess their performance. This shift to self-critique can often help a participant overcome self-esteem barriers and focus strictly on their performance. 

Some participants finally admit they're struggling. Others, like the Constanzas, continue to insist they’re doing just fine.

That’s when a fourth and final step is required: failure.

This step feels a bit harsh, but it’s also necessary. In this stage, the trainer allows the learner to fail on their own without a figurative safety net. (In situations where a literal safety net is required, this step would be cruel and should be avoided.)

In this particular class, the trainer paired the Constanzas together for a role-playing activity so other participants wouldn’t be affected. This gave them once last chance to break through the magic window. 

Unfortunately, neither one of them made it. They blamed each other. They blamed the trainer, the computer system, and the content. 

For them, the magic window remained closed.

Here's Your Next Level Customer Service Action Plan

You sense an opportunity to improve customer service.

Not that your team’s customer service is bad. It’s pretty good, actually. It’s just that it could be better. 

The promise of taking customer service to the next level is alluring. Happier customers equals more referrals, increased customer retention, and ultimately more revenue. It costs less to serve happy customers. It’s also a lot more fun.

But, where do you start?

This is a common question for customer service leaders. There’s a whole universe full of ideas out there. You can find customer service blogs, books, and videos galore. Everyone has advice and much of it makes at least some sense.

Distilling this information down to a few key actions isn’t easy.

That’s why I’ve compiled this action plan to help. It contains essential steps that you can take to elevate your team’s service. Links to tools and resources are also included. 

 

Next Level Customer Service Action Plan

Step 1: Define Outstanding Service

The first and most important step is to define outstanding customer service. Every employee must share the same definition and be able to describe how the definition applies to them. You can use my step-by-step guide to help create your definition.

 

Step 2: Measure Outstanding Service

You have to be able to measure something if you want to improve it. Setting a SMART goal for customer service will allow you to track progress and can help motivate the team. Here’s a worksheet you can use to help you set SMART goals. 

 

Step 3: Align Your Team Towards Outstanding Service

This step involves making sure your basic functions are all pointed towards outstanding customer service. Like a car that's out of alignment, it's difficult to keep your team heading in the right direction when parts are misaligned. You can use this Customer Service Alignment Check to review your team.

 

Step 4: Look for quick fixes

A lot of customer service challenges can be solved very quickly if you know where to look. Use the Quick Fix Checklist and diagnose the root causes of customer service problems. 

 

Step 5: Analyze Voice of Customer Data

Your customers can help you pinpoint a lot of problems, but having a customer satisfaction survey isn’t enough. You need to make sure you’re asking the right questions and then extracting meaningful insight from the results. 

Here are a series of blog posts that provide step-by-step instructions on developing an effective Voice of the Customer (VOC) program:

If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, you can check out my course, Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service. Here’s a short preview:

Step 6: Find Hidden Obstacles

There are a lot of hidden and even counter-intuitive obstacles that can make it hard for employees to deliver outstanding customer service. My book, Getting Service Right, reveals ten of the most common obstacles and provides practical advice for overcoming each one. 

 

Step 7: Provide Customer Service Training

Notice that training is number 7 on the list, not number 1. This isn't an accident. A lot of problems can be solved without training.

Sometimes, employees do need new skills to take their service to the next levels. You can access training-related posts on my blog or take my Customer Service Foundations course on LinkedIn Learning.

 

Step 8: Constantly Reinforce Outstanding Service

Taking your team’s service to the next level isn’t just a one-time project. It’s an ongoing process that needs constant reinforcement. Here’s a blog post I wrote on ten ways to reinforce outstanding customer service. 

You can also sign your employees up to receive my free Customer Service Tip of the Week email.

A Customer Service Training Technique That's Easy as 1, 2, 3

Great service comes from great training.

Great service comes from great training.

Training customer service employees doesn’t have to be too difficult or time-consuming.

I recently wrote a post that demonstrated how performance checklists can be used to quickly create highly effective training programs. This post is about a three step technique you can use to deliver training to your employees.

It’s call the Tell, Show, Do Technique. 

This technique may be the oldest technique in the book. That’s probably because it’s highly effective. You don’t need an advanced degree in adult learning to use it and it’s perfect for one-on-one training.

Here’s how the Tell, Show, Do Technique works:

 

Step 1: Tell the trainee what they should do and why. 

Imagine you’re training a new employee on the proper way to greet customers. The trainer should start by explaining the proper greeting. The trainer should also explain why this is important to good service, such as describing how a good greeting creates a positive first impression.

A lot of training fails because the trainer stops here and never completes steps two and three. They just tell and tell.

There are three problems with relying on telling alone.

  1. Most people don’t learn best by listening.
  2. It doesn’t require learner engagement, which makes memorization difficult.
  3. You never get confirmation that the learner as actually learned anything.

As Harold Stolyvitch pointed out in his outstanding book on employee training, Telling Ain’t Training.

 

Step 2: Show the trainee how to do it properly.

Most people are visually dominant learners. That means seeing an example is an extremely important part of the learning process.

Even for those that aren't visually dominant, an example can show them what success should look like.

If you’re training someone on how to greet customers, you might demonstrate the proper greeting. It’s best if you can do it with a real customer, but you can just give a demonstration if that’s not feasible.

 

Step 3: Have the trainee do it

We don’t really know whether someone has learned something until we see them do it.

This makes step three critical. The learning process isn’t complete until the trainee can demonstrate the expected performance.

If you’re training someone on how to greet customers, this is when you ask them to demonstrate the proper greeting. Ideally, they can do this by greeting real customers, but you can also role-play if that’s not feasible.

You might be asking what happens if they don’t do it correctly. This is a real possibility since we all struggle a bit when we try something out for the first time. 

A good trainer will provide coaching and feedback to help the trainee understand what needs to be improved and then have them do it again. This process should be repeated until the trainee can demonstrate the desired performance correctly.