Lesson plans: keeping customers satisfied—and keeping the company healthy—often depends on how well customer service reps are trained - Special Report: Training Development

HR Magazine, Feb, 2003 by Frank Fossi

The training starts on Day One, and it never really ends, When new hires report for work in the customer service section of American Express Financial Advisors in downtown Minneapolis, they begin an eight-week regimen designed to ensure they can handle their role in building and solidifying the firm's client base. At the beginning, they split their days between learning about American Express's investment products and practicing the ways they will work with the company's financial advisers and clients, After the go live on the phones alongside the rest of the company's several hundred customer service representatives, they know they will be getting at least a couple of weeks of additional training every year.

Customer service "is extremely high in the pecking order of American Express, and this is the biggest division of our client services center," says Craig Sneltjes, director of employees services for American Express Financial Advisors, Training the division's customer service reps is particularly intense because of the job's requirements, Reps have to be knowledgeable m discussing the content and handling transactions of financial products over the phone with both the customers and the company's financial experts. Also, the reps work in the highly regulated securities industry, and some are required tohave, among other credentials, a license from the National Association of Securities Dealers.

Ongoing training is a mix of classroom and web-based instruction on subjects such as new financial products or changes in securities regulations. Some instruction comes in half-hour e-learning modules that an employee can view on a computer. Other instruction may require a day or two of both classroom- and web-based training.

American Express's emphasis on training reflects not only the company's particular needs but also the basic business principle--applicable to companies of all types and sizes and especially evident in down economic times--that it costs less to serve customers well and keep them on the roster than to try to replace them after they've left you. "It costs 10 times more to get a new customer than to maintain an existing customer," says Diane Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor LLC, a training and consulting firm in Portsmouth, N.H. "You really want to keep existing customers happy."

Surveys show that poor customer service is the leading complaint--even ahead of prices--cited by customers who stop buying a company's products or services. Providing good service and maintaining customer loyalty typically depends on how ably customer service reps work the phones, take product orders, offer technical assistance and nurture business relationships. Especially in industries where products change quickly, such as medical technology it's crucial "to make sure customer service reps are prepared for those changes," says Christopher Randall, director of training and development services at Welch Allyn Inc., a medical equipment manufacturer in Skaneateles Falls, N.Y.

Because a customer service job has specific time constraints, can be highly technical and maintains a critical relationship with customers, training for customer service reps has unique characteristics. Key factors for companies to consider in structuring their customer service training programs include time and place, who conducts the training and whether e-learning should play a role.

Scheduling

Simply determining schedules for training customer service reps can be challenging. Many companies identify periods when call volumes subside or when some employees can cover inquiries while others take a class.

At Process Software Inc. in Framingham, Mass., the 10 customer service employees are split into two groups for half-day training sessions on new products, says Don Frye, manager of technical support and management information services. While half the reps receive instruction in an on-site classroom in the morning, the rest handle all incoming phone calls. The roles are reversed in the afternoon or on the following day, says Frye.

The Welch Allyn company leverages its East Coast location when scheduling customer service reps' training. By setting sessions for early morning, up to three hours ahead of the start of the business day in other parts of the country, the company not only takes advantage of lower call volume but also gets reps' attention when they presumably are sharpest--at the start of their day. "Morning has been good for us," says Randall, who has 60 to 80 reps in training at a time.

As in virtually all other types of training, class size and length must be limited. Says Ron Zemke, president of Performance Research Associates, a training firm in Minneapolis: "Once you get past 20 people, you're really not training, you're speaking." And when Durkin, who has worked with Process Software, does training on phone and listening skills, she rarely lets a class go longer than four hours--enough time "to get the message across" without boring the employees, she says.