WC Duke Associates, Inc.

How are your employees measuring up?

executives reading report

You really need to know.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Customer Service Training

How do you know all that training you do is really working? If your employee turnover is high, your philosophy may be, "Why train them when they are going to leave." Yeah, but what if you don't train them and the stay? How can you get the most for your training dollars?

Most companies understand the importance of customer service training as part of their strategy to maintain and increase their business. Without a mechanism for measuring the results, the effectiveness of this training may not be recognized.

Typically the interaction between your customers and your personnel more than likely is subjective and takes place in one-on-one settings, without managers viewing any activity. Because of this dynamic, trying to measure the impact of customer service training is difficult.

There are generic ways you can measure customer service. Here are some suggestions that can be easily customized and implemented at your facility.

Customer Comment Cards and Satisfaction Surveys

Your business may already have a comment-card system in place. These systems favor the personnel having the most customer contact. You may want to consider expanding the focus of these cards to include employees who many not have regular customer contact, as they too have an important impact of your service and company image.

Catch Me At My Best

Either the managers or the customers document situations in which employees exceeded the client's expectations. Forms are easily visible and available. The form provides space for a short description of the good service and the name of the employee. The employee receives a certificate, plus a copy is posted in the employee area, as well as placed into their personnel file.

Give small appreciation gifts to the customers for participating, such as a discount coupon. In addition to the certificate, some companies also provide the employee being recognized with a small reward. This adds to the enthusiasm and is an incentive for other personnel to be caught giving exemplary service.

Covert Operations

Many businesses already have mystery-shopping programs for a variety of reasons. It is easy to expand this program to measure the level of customer service provided by your personnel. Define your service standards and objectives to the shopping company, so they can evaluate them as part of their visit. Follow through by recognizing those employees providing commendable service.

With these programs, your company can ensure their investment of time and money in customer service training results in worthwhile outcomes. Your business will be able to measure the progress and the contributions your training programs have on your productivity and profits.