Okay so you have just recruited the newest member/s of your team and like so many other team leaders, supervisors or Managers of customer service teams it is likely that you have done some induction training with them.
The question is have you done any customer service training with them? If you are looking for your new team members to be successful you will probably have to put a training plan together for them, particularly for customer service type training if that is the role you have recruited for.
If you are doing this there are other things to consider as well, such as could any of your existing team members benefit from additional customer service training or a refresher of some description.
Training is often the best investment of your time with new recruits as it gives you the opportunity to start building longer term relationships with them for both you and the team, as well as that there are other benefits to giving them training in all aspects of their role as well as customer service training, I have set out some of the benefits below:
- It creates uniformity
In other words you really want your own team generally saying the same thing to customers, in other words your team need to know your expectations and the way you want things done, so by offering training early on in your new recruits career it will help them to do this.
- It creates confidence
The new recruit may be a little nervous and particularly if they have not done this type of role before so it will create confidence for them. It allows all new recruits to have an equal level of skills when they start and they also see customer service training and other training courses as an investment in them
- Job satisfaction should increase
Without adequate training new recruits are often left in the dark as their managers use a sink or swim approach. Any help you can give and offer at the beginning will be a major benefit in the longer run.
I know it is difficult as there are hundreds of other people and tasks competing for your time but generally we need to make our team willing and able as soon as we possibly can and if we do this we will create more time for ourselves in the long run.
- Goal setting
Training people and giving them the resources makes the role of goal setting and performance management so much easier.
Even if we look at performance management in its rawest terms it is still all about setting goals and expecting people to achieve the results you desire. In fact it goes back to the structure of:
Set and agree SMART goals
*Remove any barriers
*Provide them with necessary resources
Agree how you will manage monitor and measure
Let them have a go
Give them relevant effective feedback
We cannot possibly manage peoples performance if we do not provide them with the resources and remove the barriers which are the two points with the *
It is impossible for people to achieve the goals unless we have given them the relevant customer service training.
- Reduce employee turnover
If we equip our team with the correct training it stands to reason they should do a better job, if they do a good job it will help worth job satisfaction and team morale etc.
One of the greatest drains on finance and time in organisations is recruitment and if our staff turnover is high because we operate a sink or swim process we will probably end up with a low morale workforce and time spent recruiting.
In simple terms it just makes good common sense to train your team when you have new starters and also carry out refresher training in areas such as best practices for customer service training and other areas
