So, you’re ready to send your team to customer service training. The big question is whether or not your team is ready.
Chance are, they aren’t.
A 2010 McKinsey & Company survey revealed that approximately 75 percent of training programs failed to measurably improve business performance. A lack of preparation is one of the biggest culprits.
This post will get to the heart of the problem and explain what you can do about it.
Why Employees Are Uninspired
I frequently volunteer to facilitate an open-enrollment customer service class for nonprofit organizations. Anyone can sign-up and I never know who will be there until the day of the class. As participants arrive, I like to ask them why they signed up for the training.
Here are the top three reasons:
- They were told to be there.
- The class looked interesting.
- The class gave them credit towards a certificate program.
That’s a pretty uninspiring list. Unfortunately, most of the employees who come to customer service training aren’t really sure why they’re there.
My experience in the corporate world suggests this is pretty much the norm.
Very rarely does someone attend because they’re trying to solve a specific problem. It’s unusual for someone to read the course description and work out exactly what they hope to learn.
A 2005 T&D article by Jack Zenger, Joe Folkman, and Robert Sherwin estimated that preparation accounted for 26 percent of learning while the learning event only accounted for 24 percent (50 percent came from follow-up). In other words, the work you do to get ready for training is more important that the training itself! However, the authors estimated that companies typically spent just 10 percent their training time, money, and resources on the preparation phase.
How To Prepare Employees
A simple action plan can help you maximize learning by ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks. My go-to planning tool is the one-page Workshop Planner.
Here’s a short video that explains how to use this worksheet. I’ve also provided more detailed instructions below. The planning process should take no more than one hour.
Step 1: Identify Your Purpose
It’s important for employees to know why they’re attending training. That’s pretty hard to explain if you can’t clearly articulate this yourself. So, start by answering these three questions:
- What are the Expected Outcomes?
- What is the Existing Performance?
- What are the Cause(s) for the Gap?
Enter the answers in the boxes at the top of the worksheet:
Now, it’s gut check time. Do you really need customer service training?
Training is typically responsible for just 1 percent of performance. I can think of at least six ways to improve customer service without training. You should only schedule training if you really need it.
Step 2: Identify Pre-Training Actions
The bottom two-thirds of the worksheet is laid out in a grid. Use this to create a list of action items for participants, their supervisor(s), and the trainer.
Start by thinking about what participants need to do to prepare for the training.
At a minimum, employees should be able to answer three questions:
- What’s the training about?
- How will this class help me do my job?
- How can I apply what I’ve learned back on the job?
Next, determine what the employees’ supervisor(s) needs to do to make sure that happens. Typical actions include announcing the training to employees and coaching them to ensure they can answer the three questions.
Finally, determine what the trainer needs to do to help the supervisor(s) prepare employees. My clients typically ask me to provide them with a class description they can share.
Step 3: Identify Training Actions
Now it’s time to set a few expectations for employees while attending the training event. These are typically very few. Examples include:
- Being fully present and engaged
- Making appropriate scheduling arrangements
Next, move down the column to decide what the employees’ supervisor(s) need to do to ensure that happens. For example, supervisors often need to make scheduling adjustments to maintain operational coverage while employees participate in training.
Finally, decide what the trainer needs to do to support this.
Step 4: Identify Follow-up Actions
Don’t wait until the training is over to decide how employees should implement what they’ve learned. Create a plan now to make sure it happens.
Start by deciding what employees should specifically do to implement their new skills. Then, decide what the supervisor(s) should do to ensure it happens. Here are a few examples from recent training classes:
- Call a team meeting to ask employees how they applied what they learned.
- Coach employees one-on-one to see if they’re using their new skills.
- Survey employees to identify which skills they’ve tried.
Finally, determine what support the employees’ supervisor(s) need from the trainer. With my clients, I typically hold a follow-up meeting 30 days after the training to check-in with leaders and see what help they need to sustain their progress.
