Geschreven door Marijn de Geus | June 24, 2012
Large retail companies, hospitality firms or airlines see large numbers of people 'at the frontline', personnel with frequent customer contact. For customers these people make or break the company. Many have heard: "they are the face of our company". Their welcome, handling complaints, product explanations, buy signal antenna, dealing with impatient or slow customers, define image and customer experience.
A customer is rather treated learned friendly than spontaneously indifferent. Additionally, it is about serious money: people who are pleasantly treated buy more and come back more often. It is one of my reasons for going back to Albert Heijn (a dutch supermarket) and McDonalds.
You and I note however that many companies fail to train their staff in this regard. Sometimes this is due to selection errors or because the vision on customer service is only described vaguely and not scripted in desired behavior. In many cases companies shrink their investment in development. They figure that it is not profitable to train the employees (sometimes young, poorly educated and short or part-timers). But that was when we only had the classroom training: good for awareness, too short and fragmentary for grinding.
The calculation can now be made again. Because with online training, costs are drastically reduced and the training effect substantially better. Moreover, visible because video recordings never lie. In an online training you create examples, instructions and training materials, and each employee can get to work in a proprietary program, alone, in a group and with a clever feedback system. Companies can develop modules themselves or hire expertise from training agencies to develop in short time a blended or complete online training. Better customer contact is pleasant for everyone involved and a profitable trained ‘businesscard’ pays itself back very quickly.
