Customers For Life

Dont train in isolation
Mike,

I did a management report on this for my CTP.

I wanted to analyse if training was the solution to reverse the exodus of customers from a utilities company.

My findings came up with; although it would be possible to train staff to ‘not miss opportunities’ and remind them of benefits, listening and objection handling skills, a probable solution before training lay elsewhere. The staff themselves together with analysis of customers stated reasons for leaving identified that it was lack of delivery on behalf of the company (other depts – set up procedures, direct debits, wrong billing etc) that was causing the loss. The overall conclusion was that it wouldnt be viable to train staff since they would be rendered ineffective unless critical delivery problems in other areas were addressed first.

I write this to add some perpective on the issue for you. The staff were doing a good job objection handling wise and had a firm grasp of all the issues but were not being listened to with regards customer losses and had no recourse to influence other key procesess.

One Response

User deleted says:

July 15, 2003 at 11:00 am

Dont train in isolation
Mike,

I did a management report on this for my CTP.

I wanted to analyse if training was the solution to reverse the exodus of customers from a utilities company.

My findings came up with; although it would be possible to train staff to ‘not miss opportunities’ and remind them of benefits, listening and objection handling skills, a probable solution before training lay elsewhere. The staff themselves together with analysis of customers stated reasons for leaving identified that it was lack of delivery on behalf of the company (other depts – set up procedures, direct debits, wrong billing etc) that was causing the loss. The overall conclusion was that it wouldnt be viable to train staff since they would be rendered ineffective unless critical delivery problems in other areas were addressed first.

I write this to add some perpective on the issue for you. The staff were doing a good job objection handling wise and had a firm grasp of all the issues but were not being listened to with regards customer losses and had no recourse to influence other key procesess.