Customer service training is never ending

RENOWNED SALESPERSON, Zig Ziglar, once said “Customer service training is like bathing.”

It is unending in the life of a business. If you bathe once and never do it again, you will eventually stink, and people will start avoiding you. The same is true for customer service training. If you train staff once and never retrain them, they will forget what was taught, eventually they will start providing poor service and customers will start avoiding your business.

Recently, a group of us visited a restaurant for lunch. Having been there before, we knew that the heat of the sun could be merciless on the outside terrace, so we asked to be seated inside. The Waiter argued that they had already set up for us outside. Scolded us for not saying prior where we wanted to sit, then took just a minute to prepare a table inside.

That was the start of an unforgetting experience. It was evident that the staff was new and that they were not customer-centric. Zig Ziglar also said, “The only thing worse that training employees and losing them is not training them and keeping them.” He was right; training your employees effectively is the single most important thing you can do to ensure an amazing customer experience. A poorly-trained employee is a dangerous ambassador for your brand. When a customer is left feeling that the experience was poor, you are left having to deal with the fallout from that service failure.

Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience Expert said :“Onboard training is the ideal time to impart your customer service values to employees. Because once they get in the habit of providing an amazing customer experience, it will become second nature to them.”

Hyken said if you don’t train employees properly on the customer experience you expect from them,your new employees will develop their own habits and their own standards for customer experience and in some cases that could be a disaster.

He cautioned managers not to let employees establish bad customer service habits that they have to deprogram months into their work.

By then, who knows how many customers they would have alienated or frustrated and who knows how many customers will never return again.

Instead, managers should take the time to train and motivate staff properly the first time.

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