The Customer Focus Training Top Forty is by Ray Miller
Lately we have been getting an unusually large number of inquiries from people globally asking the following question: “What should customer focus training accomplish?”
Since this training is a significant investment, it is essential that you maximize your return on investment from this training.
In response to these inquiries we have put together a list of the essential learning objectives your training should achieve. The list below is based on our experience with implementing highly successful customer focus training initiatives over the past 20 years. We hope you will find it helpful.
Whether you are planning to develop your own training programs or you are sourcing an external provider, it is important to ensure that the training enables your employees to implement sustainable customer-focused improvements in all their day-to-day interactions with customers and each other.
In this article we have detailed what your managers, supervisors, team leaders, customer contact employees and support staff need to be able to do differently as a result of the training.
In other words, the learning objectives the training you provide should achieve.
We have separated these objectives into two groups:
– non-management staff and
– those who supervise others
The learning needs of these groups are significantly different if you are to maximize sustainable change and customer-focused improvements.
Let’s start with non-management staff.
At the very least, your training should achieve the following objectives:
1. Align participants with the customer focus goals and values of the Company
2. Enhance participant commitment and passion for service excellence
3. Enable participants to understand their impact on the customer, their impact on their department and their contribution and impact on the Company’s short and long-term goals and objectives
4. Provide participants with a clear understanding of what is required of them in order to create and sustain customer loyalty, particularly in times of economic uncertainty
5. Strengthen their ability to forge strong internal service partnerships, improve teamwork and cooperation both internally and with third party resources
6. Enable participants to utilize a proven process for dealing with any customer situations including the most difficult and challenging in order to arrive at solutions which impress the customer yet fall within the policy and procedural boundaries for given situations
7. Understand or be reminded of the importance of service quality
8. Understand why customer focus is a critical strategy for the Company
9. Define customer service excellence at your Company
10. Understand how they individually contribute to the customer’s experience and to the Organization’s success
11. Identify critical customer touch-points, determine what will satisfy customers, identify what level of discretion they have, and determine ways to exceed customer expectations
12. Identify what obstacles are preventing them from using the discretion they have been given and develop a plan for how they will use this discretion in order to enhance the customer experience
13. Identify and implement specific actions which will improve service delivery to external customers
14. Identify the impact of strong internal partnerships on the customer’s experience
15. Identify and implement specific actions which will improve their internal service partnerships specifically related to the escalation of situations from their internal partners, and also other internal service issues which are having a negative impact on long-term customer loyalty
16. Quickly and easily identify communication barriers and act to remove or at least minimize these barriers
17. Deal effectively with personality conflicts and disagreements
18. Apply effective communication approaches with both customers as well as co-workers, in person or on the telephone
19. Identify and remove obstacles to service delivery; communicate obstacles to management
In addition to the foregoing, any employees who interact directly with customers may also need training which enables them to:
20. Gather and use customer feedback at the local level to identify service improvement opportunities
21. Implement a proactive approach to and improved handling of customer problems
22. Develop communication strategies for “moments of truth” (critical issues/problems)
23. Evaluate any given communication situation to determine and apply the best approach both to achieve their objectives and to build respect and credibility
24. Communicate negative information with positive results
25. Clarify customer issues and concerns
26. Handle complaints in a manner which at the very least satisfies the customer and which aims at exceeding customer expectations
27. Interact with customers in a way which focuses on building long-term relationships
What about Managers, Supervisors and Team Leaders?
Now let’s consider what those who supervise others need to know and do in order to build and maintain the kind of environment where customer focus best practices flourish. Not surprisingly, they need training which achieves all of the above objectives. In addition, their training should ensure that they can:
28. Understand and are committed to their pivotal role in implementing a customer-focused strategy
29. Clearly articulate a definition of what customer service is at the Company
30. Demonstrate and build passion for service excellence
31. Motivate and energize their staff to increase service quality
32. Develop and communicate service standards; set service performance goals; monitor and measure performance against these standards and goals
33. Embed customer-focused leadership practices into their day-to-day management practices.
34. Strengthen internal service partnerships (enhance communication, cooperation and teamwork specifically as these relate to exceptional service delivery)
35. Implement a proactive approach to the improved handling of customer problems
36. Pro-actively measure service performance, give constructive service performance feedback and hold staff accountable
37. Pro-actively gather and use customer and internal partner feedback at the local level to identify service improvement opportunities
38. Assess existing processes and identify ways to continually enhance the customer’s experience
39. Identify and remove obstacles to service delivery at their departmental level
40. Understand what they must do to embed service excellence across the Company
By ensuring that the training you provide accomplishes all of these objectives you can be certain that you will have provided your employees with the mind-set, knowledge, skills and tools they will need to become customer-focused.
On a parallel track to your training you will need to address issues associated with your policies, procedures, performance management processes, measurement practices, and reward and recognition practices, but these are fodder for future articles.
If you are not sure where to go from here, give us a call or send us an email. We will be happy to help.
Ray Miller is the Author of That’s Customer Focus! and The Customer Focus Companion, Training programs including Customer-Focused Leadership, Customers Forever: Delivering Exceptional Customer Service, Customer-Focused Communication and The Wow Factor. He is also Managing Partner of The Training Bank
The Training Bank is a full service training and development firm which specializes in fully customizable Leadership, Customer Focus, Service Excellence, Management and Supervisory Development training.
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