Customer service training was the first thing I ever got involved with in my learning and development career.  I loved it both for the challenge it gave me as a trainer but also for the significant positive impact it had on the organisation.  Twenty odd years later I still feel that buzz but also carry a weighty burden of frustration about the ‘tick box’ way that it is sometimes approached.  For many organisations it seems to come around every few years but with the advent of service centres, overseas call centres and the role of e-mail technology in customer liaison and troubleshooting there are a whole new set of challenges.

Some of these lessons are about the content design and style of the delivery of any training but some are about the way organisations market manage and integrate this area of development into what they do.  It’s easy to find the latest approach and pay top dollar and still be disappointed with the results.
Innovation is clearly important and here at Grosvenor we continually seek to develop new approaches and activities.  We have amazing experience in call handling development gleaned from working in the private sector which we combine with sensitivity about what organisations are trying to achieve.  We also use professional role players if we need to create something that’s as close to real as we can get.  In conjunction with our partners we are also developing an approach which is less about making staff behave in certain ways and more about understanding the transactions between people and the organisation indeed people in the organisation.  This is based on the relationship between service delivery and expectation and creating parallel transactions.

As a starting point although it’s obvious be sure to start with the end in mind! OK so I know it’s the age-old story of getting your learning objectives straight before you start but is that really happening?  The danger is that organisations can get swept along on a wave of what seems to be the right thing to do at the time.  Is it the trend or part of the change agenda of an incoming senior manager (sorry if that a bit direct!).  These things may not in themselves be bad but if the purpose isn’t clear it can lead to training that is disconnected, hard to evaluate and patronising to already hard pressed staff. And finally is performance going to be managed.  It’s amazing how many workshops I have run in which I discover that many of the line managers have not even talked to their participants before the event about its purpose and the desired outcomes.  Even less have made any arrangement to follow up with their staff after the event.  Why do you think this happens?  What is the true cost to training that does not get the support to flourish?

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