I can't be the only one who is passionate about customer service or the customer expereince but I don't see a lot written on this subject within training zone. Is this because leadership, management development and coaching are considered sexier and customer service is considered boring in comparison ?
At the end of the day, our customers pay our wages not the accounts department. Surely the subject deserves more airtime ?
John Dell'Armi
4 Responses
Follow the money…
John, that’s an interesting question.
Many organisations tend to focus on training their mangement more than others hoping to get good ROI. This leads to more demand for leadership skills and eventually more talk about the subject.
I don’t think it is much to do with sexiness, it is much more to do with who pays for such training and the benfit you get based on that training. Indeed customer service is quite critical but that won’t be useful if the captain of ship is heading the wrong direction or doesnt have a clue how to handle his or her staff.
Training Materials
Ehsan Honary
An interest in customer service and customer experience?
Hi John
You might want to take a look at one of our sister sites, MyCustomer.com. You are welcome to register over there as well as here, as I think you might find some of the stuff of interest if this is your passion.
Let me know your thoughts on whether this is a good recommendation for you or if I have misunderstood your question!
All the best
It’s just more interesting?
As a suggestion, leadership is just a more interesting topic!
Customer service really has one right answer, and as soon as that has been agreed in a company the trick is to just keep getting everyone to do it. An inspiring leader will make this happen, as mentioned in the answer above.
There isn’t really a right answer for leadership and that is still getting heavily debated, not least on this site!
While both topics could be considered instinctive, good customer service is far easier to make happen than good leadership. If anyone disagrees I am happy to debate this!
Cant you combine both into 1 session?
what i mean by that is.. leadership is offering a service to your ‘internal’ customers or your colleagues and not just the external customers, taking into consideration objection handling, negotiation, man-management and probably a few other subjects, which to be honest forms the basis of my customer service training, so apart froma few tweaks cant they both be sexy?
i think they can, providing the trainer knows how to communicate effectively with his audience, and has the knowledge to sell the training to the room then i believe both of these sessions can be as sexy as you want them.. (gettin kinda wierd thoughts about sexy training now lol)
and one other thing about training and coaching leadership to managers, i have found that this is quite tricky as they (the leaders/managers) feel they dont need training as their egos take over and they take little notice of the trainer.. "why do i need training ?" " i am a manager of people i do not need training" etc.. etc.. where as the for example call centre customer service advisor will act like a sponge, this is why i have in the past, combined both the departments in the same training (unless it is actual management training i.e. disciplinary, abscence management etc..)
again just my little opinions and feel free to comment 🙂