How to Reinforce Service Skills & Attitudes after Training

Last week a Training Client ask me to share some tips with their Management Team on how to reinforce learnings from our training sessions with their Employees.

I wrote this up and sent it off to them and thought that perhaps it might be helpful for others too.

Training isn't the whole enchilada

It’s well understood that Training is only a relatively small part of the equation when you’re looking to improve Customer Service skills & attitudes. 

What training does really well is: 

·      Get everybody on the same page

·      Allow a forum for folks to share, challenge and ponder

·      Establish a common language (for example we teach UNER and ER)

·      To get people motivated to consider change

 But training alone is never enough.

It’s the follow-up work and the way the ‘eco-system’ back at the Organization works that drives whether new skills & attitudes are brought to life in Customer interactions – or whether the Training manual goes into a folder and dies a slow death.

So what are the practices leading Organizations use to instil learnings and make them part of the way people work?

Here are some thoughts.

 We can learn a lot from high performing Contact Centers

Interestingly, Contact Center environments tend to do better at integrating new Customer Service skills & attitudes into Team Members. 

That’s due in part to the structured approach & processes that many Contact Centers take. And it's also a reflection of the maturity of the Contact Center industry.

So what we can we learn from high performing Contact Centers and the Managers & Leaders who work there?

1.    They arrange & conduct appropriate/suitable training. 

Whether that comes through orientation, ongoing sessions, videos, online, face to face – there’s a regular and systematic approach to saying, ‘hey guys, these are the behaviours that matter when we interact with Customers’.

Because you can't be vague here. Clarity matters.

2.    They prove to everyone that these behaviours are indeed important – and to help reinforce how they’re actually used - Managers & Leaders use regular monitoring & coaching to guide Team Members. 

On a regular basis (at the very least 1x per week), a random call or email or live chat transcript is selected and ‘monitored’ against the desired behaviours.  

Followed by a coaching discussion where the Manager reconfirms what went well (the strengths) and identifies areas of improvement and how to improve (weaknesses). 

This is officially called ‘Transaction Coaching’ in the industry (and is how we teach it) and it’s perhaps the single most important skill & practice employed in Organizations to help individuals apply and use behaviours well.

Training – without any follow up Coaching – simply falls by the wayside. 

Or relies solely on the intrinsic motivation and character of Employees to decide what they’ll use, when they’ll use it or how they’ll use it. 

Definitely not the best strategy to build culture and create consistency.

The good news is that after some period of ongoing Monitoring & Coaching, people improve. Quality goes up.

And it's possible to graduate people to self-coaching which is always amazing.

3.     They talk about the behaviours regularly. 

 When you want your people to know something is important – you talk about it.  A lot.

Whether it’s at a weekly Team meeting, a daily rah rah session to warm everyone up or a monthly internal Awards, the behaviours that matter get regular air time. 

Because the line Manager has the biggest impact on what Employees see is important.  On the assumptions they make as to what it takes to 'succeed' around here.

Put another way, ‘My boss doesn’t talk about, it doesn’t come up in my reviews and I never hear anyone else around here talk about it – so it can’t be that important.’ 

But for bosses to talk about behaviours they need to believe in them too. Are they using the behaviours in their emails? In their communications with Customers? With Employees?  

That’s where the rubber hits the road.  

It helps to always remember that Employees do what is measured, what is championed and what is incentivized (where incentives can relate to Performance Reviews or internal Employee Awards for example – not specifically $$).

 Are these behaviours regularly measured, championed and incentivized? That’s what turns behaviour practice into culture.  

 The role of Culture 

Serving Customers well (and today that means everyone) is about the culture of the Organization.  

It transcends the performance of individual behaviours and represents the bigger picture.

This is the kind of Service we deliver around here. What Customers say about the kind of Service we deliver around here.

Every Leader & Manager has a big role to play in driving culture through what they say, what they do and who they are as a person.

Of course there is more to Culture - but Managers & Leaders play such a key role. And when they embrace that role - that's when things move and change.

I hope this short article has been helpful!

Daniel Ord

daniel.ord@omnitouchinternational.com / www.omnitouchinternational.com

#customerservice #cx #customerexperience #training #skills #attitudes #culture

What Managers & Leaders do

Interesting, Contact Centre environments tend to do better at integrating knew Customer Service skills & attitudes into Team Members.

That’s due in part to the structured approach that is taken at a department level. And a lot can be learned from how successful Contact Centres work.

1.    Firstly, they conduct appropriate/suitable training. Whether that comes through orientation, ongoing sessions, videos, online, face to face – there’s a regular and systematic approach to saying, ‘hey guys, these are the behaviours that matter when we interact with Customers’.

2.    To prove to everyone that these behaviours are indeed important – and to help reinforce how they’re actually used, Contact Centres use monitoring & coaching to guide Team Members.

On a regular basis (at the very least 1x per week), a random call or email or live chat transcript is selected and ‘monitored’ against the desired behaviours. 

Followed by a coaching discussion where the Manager reconfirms what went well (the strengths) and identifies areas of improvement and how to improve (weaknesses).

This is officially called ‘Transaction Coaching’ and it’s perhaps the single most important skill & practice employed in Organizations to help individuals apply and use new (or not so new) behaviours well.

Training – without any follow up Coaching – simply falls by the wayside. Or relies on the intrinsic motivation and character of Employees to decide what they’ll use, when they’ll use it or how they’ll use it.

The good news is that after a period of ongoing Monitoring & Coaching, people improve. And ultimately can reach a level of self-coaching – which is the ideal (though it can take a while for some folks to reach that level).

3.     They talk about the behaviours regularly. 

When you want your people to know something is important – you talk about it. Whether it’s at a weekly Team meeting, a daily rah rah session to warm everyone up or a monthly internal Awards, the behaviours that matter are spoken about.

Because the direct Manager has the biggest impact on what Employees see is important. Or put another way, ‘My boss doesn’t talk about, it doesn’t come up in my reviews and I never hear anyone else around here talk about it – so it can’t be that important.’

But for bosses to talk about behaviours they need to believe in them too. Are they using the behaviours in their emails? In their communications with Customers? With Employees? 

That’s where the rubber hits the road. What does the direct boss do. And does he/she talk about these behaviours?

In closing for this section it helps to always remember that Employees do what is measured, what is celebrated and what is incentivized (which could relate to Performance Reviews or internal Employee Awards for example – not specifically $$).

Are these behaviours measured, celebrated and incentivized? That’s what brings behaviour practice into a culture.

The role of Culture

Serving Customers well (and today that means everyone) is about the culture of the Organization.

It transcends the individual behaviours such as ‘ER’ and ‘Human Touch’ and says – to succeed around here, in our place, we do things like this. 

Which is a simplistic but powerful way of saying we believe in Service – and to make that a reality, here are the ways we do (and don’t) speak to Customers and indirectly to each other.

That means that every leader & manager has a big ability impact culture through what they say, what they do and (at the risk of repeating) how much they talk about the importance of service.

It always help to remind ourselves that ‘people like us, do things like this’.

That’s just some how some of the world’s leading Contact Centres – with sometimes tens of thousands of Employees, work to build culture and behaviour across broad Employee populations – many in different cities, countries & continents.

Ideally then, there is a Service Vision, or a Customer Service Vision, or a Service Delivery Vision or a CX Vision that describes the kind of service we deliver around here. Another big part of a service culture.