by Train Those Standards & Procedures Into Your Teams
There is no point having service standards if you don’t train them into teams.
Behavioural training is often the best method as many people are unconscious about their own behaviour. We call this unconscious incompetence, see diagram below, training and feedback helps people move through the different steps.
The role of leaders is critical as part of the training process, are they modelling the right behaviours? Are they giving feedback, allowing for repeated practice?
Each staff member must be able to understand and demonstrate each of the service standards they are accountable for.
As leaders it is crucial, we provide ongoing coaching and training to all team members to ensure they are implementing all standards all the time.
And provide consequences for non-performance and reward high performance – Catch people doing something right!
To read more about service standards and training those service standards into teams – click here 10 Actions To Implement A Customer Loyalty Research Program
Training on the job is all about repetition and practice, equally, it’s about how you know what to train?
Recently I was working with one of my clients and a new frontline employee whose main role was answer customer telephone enquiries. We spent time working through the role and the service standard required to fulfill on the role, understanding and practicing the scripts – grounding down in the type of information and solutions so as to have customers experience resolution on the call and how to capture the information and promises made to each customer after the call.
She looked and sounded great on the telephone, so our client signed off and sent her off to fulfil on her role.
Meeting up with both the client and the employee her at the end of her shift, I was disappointed to see that the information she had captured did not meet the criteria of the service standard.
When I went back over what we had done to ‘set her up, to win’ I realised, we hadn’t set up regular check-in’s – we had not monitored or provided coaching and feedback for continuous improvement at all during her shift.
We did not ask to see the first 6 customer telephone enquiries she had completed, for example or the next 6 etc, etc. In NOT doing so, we missed the opportunity to coach and provide feedback as a way of supporting her and creating a win/win scenario.
When our employees win, we win. It’s about setting your team up to win, not fail.
Had we have done so, I am very clear the end result would have been very different. What was missing was having a ‘training standard’ in place which includes a ‘test and measure’.
Bottomline is, we had a new employee, training from a distance, with no monitoring, coaching or feedback and the quality didn’t meet our standards!
My point is, once you have trained your new service standards into your team, If you are not ‘Testing and Measuring’ how do you know what to train – we must know and understand the gaps.
Create the Gap, Bridge the Gap!
For example, I am currently working on a workshop I am holding later this week for one of my clients who has changed their business model to accommodate COVID restrictions and one of the things I will be focusing on is ‘Test and Measure’.
With the majority of their team now working remotely, we are focussing on HOW they can test and measure the new service standards they have trained into their teams, what’s working really well and WHAT needs continuous monitoring, coaching and feedback.
It’s very easy to monitor in-house but how do we monitor when these services are provided remotely?
For example, Voice Messages, how do they sound? And What feeling are you creating?
Often voice messages are not well set up, you hear voices in the background for example or the message itself is spoken very fast, making it hard to hear and understand.
Sometimes we need to SLOW IT DOWN!
I was just actually watching a video I did myself and noticed how fast I speak and need to SLOW IT DOWN!
Are they monitoring how their frontline customer service team are answering telephone calls and responding to emails? This may mean calling or auditing randomly.
If we have frontline customer service team members working from home. It’s very tough! I’m not wanting to be hard on people BUT if they have children or pets in the background and cannot manage a quiet, private space to work from.
People are understanding to a degree but how does this really impact your businesses first impression?
And again, If you’re a service based business,
- how many calls go unanswered?
- how many voice messages are not returned?
- how many telephone calls are customers making to chase responses to requests?
- how many calls are happening right now compared to what you used to have before COVID, has the number increased or decreased and if it has changed – WHY?
And of course, the same questions apply to emails and any other forms of customer communication like online messages.
It’s not just about monitoring volume, but as a percentage of ——.
How are you setting your team up to win, NOT FAIL whilst working remotely?
How are you Training Those Standards And Procedures Into Your Teams?
What Test and Measure system do you have in place to record your teams progress?
And,
How are you testing and measuring your teams performance with a view to continuous improvement?
If you would like to have a chat with me about ‘Create the Gap, Bridge the Gap’ and customer loyalty best practice contact me I look forward to hearing from you
Warm regards,
Craig