CUSTOMER SERVICE AND TRAINING STRATEGY

Customer service has become a ‘global business imperative’ in which industries have successively learnt from one another, with hospitals following banks that followed hotels. Call centres also can learn from other organizations, which have top customer service operations and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company which twice won the US Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award for service, is rightly praised as a role model. Compared to an industry norm of 2.2 per cent of payroll spent on training, the Ritz-Carlton spent 12 per cent, which may partly account for the fact that while the hotel industry has an average annual turnover of 115 per cent, the Ritz-Carlton has 24 per cent. In the UK, CallNorthWest stated that most organizations reported a positive link between training and employee retention.

It is not the content of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel’s training programme that should be learnt from but the fact that there is an ongoing passion and priority given to learning that includes setting aside time each day. It was not just about spending money on training that would ensure customer excellence. Numerous methods could be used that did not cost and he stated, ‘It is simply a matter of changing the management philosophy toward one in which learning is emphasized, defined and reinforced on an ongoing basis. It is a matter of fully recognizing learning as a strategic priority.’ This perspective, ‘The importance of proper training of teleworkers, telemanagers and of those non-teleworkers with whom they deal regularly cannot be over-stressed.’

In the United States, a survey of training by the Yankee Group in 2002 found that 62 per cent of call centre managers believed that training was their highest priority. Moreover, although expressing reservations about the self-reporting of figures, the American Society for Training and DevelopmentState of the Industry Report  stated that customer service agents had 17 per cent, the highest proportion of payroll spent on training of all occupations.

However, the Yankee Group survey found that half of call centres, including large ones, gave a total annual training budget of only $50,000. The analyst commented that:

These low budget estimates indicate that even for large contact centres, training is not yet enough of a high priority to command a large budget, and more education is needed regarding the realistic costs involved with implementing training solutions.

There would appear to be rather contradictory messages about training, with a general recognition that it is valuable but there is not always the will to invest sufficient resources in developing knowledge and skills. One powerful reason is that the main purpose of contact centres is cost reduction and this inevitably translates to the training budget. Although the industry believes it is strategic in fact it does not have a clear perspective about how learning affects the effectiveness of operations. He said that while executives were exerting pressure to reduce costs, the shop-floor managers know the importance of training and that ‘trained agents are happier and more successful, and they know training works’.