There have been a range of studies into the links between customer satisfaction and business performance.   These have shown that a key element of customer satisfaction is the experience the customer receives when dealing with an organisation.  These studies have shown a strong correlation between perceived customer satisfaction and service quality with sales.  Service quality has been found to have a lasting effect into future year’s sales.

One important area affecting customer satisfaction was complaints handling.  The essentials of providing a fast response, timely information on the complaints handling process and achieving a satisfactory outcome for the complaint improved perceived satisfaction levels.  So quickly working to resolve a complaint increases customer satisfaction.  We’ve also experience of increased customer loyalty resulting from well-handled customer complaints.

The experience of these studies shows that investing in customer service can make a real difference to organisational performance and results. This perhaps explains why there is no shortage of customer service training available.  If you want to know more about these studies just pop an email though to me at: Alison@trainingtoachieveuk.com

However, the training is only part of the answer.  One of the main problems is that customer feedback is a lagging indicator. It can take time to see the customer service improvements resulting in increased customer feedback scores.

One of the interesting challenges in this area is that employees intuitively know when they have given or received bad service.  This means that they may be offering what they think is great customer service, rather than what has been defined as great customer service. This makes defining what good service actually is an important task of senior management. The company ethos, culture and reward systems send out to employees signals about what is valued and there is a need to seek to achieve employee buy-in to the same culture to achieve results.

To do this the customer contact points need to have a common level of training to support their customer service delivery. The wider organisation also needs to understand the impact that the whole business is aiming to deliver for customers so that the customer service teams are properly supported.

So a customer service course is not a quick fix, to have a lasting benefit it needs to be part of a customer service strategy reinforced by organisational goals and reward systems.  This requires investment of time by senior management to create the right cultural framework.

Once these strategic issues are tackled then finding the right training solution is straightforward. There are a range of training courses that are cost effective.  Customer service and complaints handling courses can reinforce the culture the organisation is promoting and achieve real benefits in improving the customer service experience.

At Training To Achieve we’ve found that a strategic approach to customer service and complaints handling courses can pay dividends for organisations. We have also found that as well as training customer contact staff by also training managers and internal trainers we can provide a lasting legacy and boost the performance of businesses over time.

Alison Miles-Jenkins

Founder and CEO
Training To Achieve