Is Your Customer Service Training Program Really Working?

Odds are, when you started your business, you set goals to provide superior customer service, build strong relationships with every customer, and create a glowing reputation for your company. However, as your business grows, it can be difficult to uphold the level of service you initially intended to provide. To avoid falling into this trap, and to help you continue to meet your lofty goals, make sure your customer service training is up to snuff.

The Value of Good Customer Service

Customer service is the heart of every company, and as such, has a tremendous impact on every aspect of your business. Everything from your employee retention rate to your overall success is impacted by the customer experience you provide.

The Importance of Proper Training

Unless you prepare them accordingly, you can’t expect your employees to perform at an optimal (and consistent) level. Your staff is held accountable for implementing what they’ve learned on a daily basis, but the responsibility for what they learn falls on the employer. The more you invest in training your employees, the more you can expect from them, the more they’ll produce, and the more you can expect your company to grow.

Measuring Your Training Program

It’s crucial that you periodically evaluate your training program and take stock of your team’s performance. Doing so will help you gain valuable insight into what’s working, what’s falling short, and what’s failing miserably.

Here are five ways to measure whether or not your training program is working:

1. Are Employees Satisfied with the Training?

   One simple way to determine if your training program is successful is to ask your employees. Did they learn anything? Was the training relevant to their job? Will the training help them do their jobs better? It’s very rare for employees to come out of training raving about what they’ve learned – but you also don’t want them to complain that the time spent in training was wasted time.

   Even more important, employees who are unsatisfied with their training tend to underperform. Unhappy and underperforming employees aren’t likely to stay with your company for long – which bring us to our second metric.

2. Employee Retention Rate

   Employees feel better about themselves when they know what they’re doing. When employees are empowered with knowledge, they feel confident about handling the tasks assigned to them. And when they do their jobs well, management is happy and – more important – customers are happy. The better trained your employees are, the better they will perform, and the happier they will be. All of which leads to higher employee retention rates.

3. Repeat Customers

   Any business owner knows that the cost to acquire a new customer is higher than the cost to convert current customers into repeat customers. Therefore, your mission should be to make customers happy during their very first interaction with you. This massive responsibility is often left in the hands of your customer service team.

   The best customer service professionals know that a disgruntled customer can be converted into a loyal customer if their problems are properly addressed and solved. More often than not, repeat customers are a direct result of their interaction with your company, which means their interaction with your customer service team. And remember, the best employees are the best trained employees.

4. Increased Profits

   Although it’s harder to track the correlation between training and profit, it stands to reason that happy customers become repeat customers. And your customer service team (who we hope has undergone thorough training) plays a major role in making your customers happy. When you look at it like that, the link between training and increased profit is clearer: the better the training, the better the service, the better the profit.

5. Reputation and Reviews

   The most obvious indicator that you have a great training program in place is customer feedback. Are people writing reviews, online or otherwise, raving about their experience with your company? If so, your training program is working. Bad reviews, on the other hand, should serve as a wake-up call telling you to revamp your training program.

   Put simply: the best way to maximize profit is to invest in your biggest asset – your employees. And the easiest way to invest in your employees is train them to succeed.