A potential customer walks into your office. Her name is
Jane and she has decided to move her kids out of the city to a more rural
environment. She has a home-based business selling products over the
Internet. She has telecommunications needs and she has come to you.
When Jane paid a visit to your telephone company, there
were several things that should have happened to enhance her experience and
get her to decide she wanted to do business with you.
Everything likely went well if your company had given its
employees customer service and sales training. When it comes to turning the
Janes of the world into customers, training is critical. Here are some things
small carriers should think about as they plan for an effective
training program.
What are the objectives? Ask your employees about
the skills development they need and then ask supervisors for the same input
as it pertains to their employees. Also ask supervisors about skills they
need to help their staff improve. Then ask management what skills they think
the company needs and that they themselves need. Ask customers where your
employees need to improve in the area of sales and service.
Is learning fun at your company? Most employees
have been through training barely able to keep their eyes open because the
presenter did nothing but talk and push the button to advance the next Power
Point slide. People learn and retain information better when they’re actively
involved in the learning process. The trainer should incorporate interactive
exercises into the training to help the participants internalize the
information. The exercises should reinforce the skills the participants are
expected to learn.
What does the trainer know about your company?
Many of the employees who work for your telephone company have years of
experience. Your company’s products and customers are different from another
telecom down the road. If a trainer brought in from the outside is to
effectively help your employees improve, he or she must understand your
company and the challenges it faces. Does the trainer talk with you in advance
to understand your objectives? Does he interview staff to learn the
challenges they face doing their jobs?
What happens after training? Your employees have
been doing their jobs for a number of years with the skills they have. One day
of skill development may not have significant impact on years of doing it
another way. Does the trainer offer to do refresher sessions to help
reinforce the new skills? How will the company reinforce the skills taught in
training? How will the company coach employees as they use those new skills?
Repetition Works. Training your employees
once every year or two on customer service and sales skills will not give them
complete confidence and knowledge to be effective. Establish monthly meetings
to review new skills. Selling is a new role for many telecom CSRs and they are
not always comfortable doing it.
Practice, Practice, Practice. A critical part of
becoming comfortable with new skills is putting them to practice. Role
playing is an important tool in taking the new skill or behavior into a
real-world environment. Practicing skills in a safe environment with coworkers
will improve your staff’s confidence and effectiveness when dealing with
customers.
Now something else needs to be done. You need to
evaluate your training program. Donald Kirkpatrick is a leader in assessing
training programs and he has identified four areas to evaluate.
Evaluate employee reaction. Have each employee
complete a simple survey at the end of raining. Ask them to rate the
facilitator, the content, group involvement, audio-visual aids, handouts and
location. Ask if the training will help them perform their jobs better. Ask
them what they liked most and least about the program.
Evaluate learning. There are three things that
facilitators can teach: knowledge, skills and attitude. To determine what the
employees learned from the training, ask them to answer the following
questions. What knowledge did you gain from training? What skills did you
learn? Did you experience a change in attitude when it comes to providing
service to our customers?
Evaluate behavior. What happens when employees
leave the classroom? To measure the effectiveness of the training on
improving a behavior, interview supervisors and management that interact with
those employees. Ask employees if they feel they’re doing anything different
in their job as a result of the training. To measure long-term impact,
interview employees and supervisors over a six-month period to see if the new
skills have permanently impacted behavior.
Evaluate results. This is the most difficult area
to measure so be sure the objectives you started with were clearly defined and
measurable. If you have a goal to increase sales by 5 percent, plan to track
sales during the months prior to training so you can see any gains when you
measure again for a number of months after training. If your goal is to
improve the customer-service skills of your employees, you must survey
customers in advance of training to establish a benchmark for customer
service. Then you must survey customers again after training.
The people at your telephone company who provide service
and sell your products are critical to improving customer loyalty and
increasing revenue. How much of an investment have you made in the last 12
months to provide them with the skills and tools they need to persuade your
customers they should buy from you instead of the competition?
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David Saxby is president of Measure-X, a Phoenix, Ariz.-based measurement,
training and recognition company that specializes in customer service and
sales skills training for utilities. He can be reached at 888-644-5499 or via
e-mail at
david@measure-x.com. Visit the Measure-X Web site at
www.measure-x.com.
