Customer service training is almost always undertaken to address some problem or achieve some goal that has been eluding a business. The problem is that most businesses wait too long to do it, contends Drew Stevens, a St. Louis-based consultant who specializes in helping businesses acquire and retain customers. He estimates that almost 90 percent of clients he has worked with fall into that category.

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Training is too often conceived in a reactive rather than a proactive manner, Stevens asserts. Companies that have the greatest success with customer service training are those that integrate it into a holistic, process-based approach — and doing that requires the direct involvement of the business owner or CEO.

By way of example, Stevens cites work he recently did for a medical practice. Posing as a prospective patient, he called the office, made inquiries about appointments, and spent time sitting in the waiting room. That allowed him to identify existing issues, emerging issues, and opportunities, and to make recommendations on timely customer service training options addressing all three areas.

“It’s amazing what you can discover as a mystery shopper from a customer service perspective,” he says. “Businesses need to do more of this kind of thing — even just calling some clients — to find out what the true issues are. And CEOs need to be involved in this. Most don’t spend enough time with clients, and they need to understand what their clients are saying before launching a program.”

Owners of growing businesses also need to have realistic expectations after customer service training is delivered. “When you wait too long and then bring in customer service training, often there is an expectation that behavior will change immediately,” Stevens says. “That won’t happen. It takes time, which is why training should be part of a broader, process-based approach to addressing issues.”

Finally, experts unanimously agree that customer service training must be an ongoing endeavor at every business. “Learning, as well as training, is continual,” says Reneé Evenson, author of Award-Winning Customer Service: 101 Ways to Guarantee Great Performance (Amacom). “Always be on the lookout for new ways to do the old. Start this process again when new products are introduced. Train efficiencies.”

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