The True Reason Your Customer Care Training Fails to Deliver: A Hard Assessment
Forget everything you’ve been told about client service training. Following two decades in this industry, I can tell you that most of what passes for employee education in this space is total nonsense.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your team already know they should be friendly to customers. They understand they should smile, say please and thank you, and fix complaints quickly. The gap is is how to handle the mental strain that comes with dealing with difficult people repeatedly.
A few years ago, I was working with a major phone company here in Sydney. Their service scores were awful, and executives kept pouring money at standard training programs. You know the type – practice scenarios about saying hello, learning company procedures, and countless seminars about “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.”
Total rubbish.
The core challenge wasn’t that staff didn’t know how to be courteous. The problem was that they were exhausted from dealing with everyone else’s frustration without any methods to shield their own emotional state. Consider this: when someone calls to complain about their internet being down for the fifth time this month, they’re not just angry about the connection fault. They’re livid because they feel helpless, and your team member becomes the target of all that pent-up rage.
Most training programs entirely miss this psychological reality. Instead, they focus on basic skills that sound good in concept but crumble the moment someone starts shouting at your staff.
This is what really helps: teaching your staff emotional regulation techniques before you even mention service delivery techniques. I’m talking about mindfulness practices, emotional barriers, and most importantly, authorisation to step back when things get too intense.
With that telecommunications company, we started what I call “Psychological Protection” training. Instead of focusing on scripts, we taught team members how to spot when they were internalising a customer’s negativity and how to psychologically step back without appearing disconnected.
The outcomes were dramatic. Customer satisfaction scores increased by 35% in three months, but more importantly, employee retention dropped by 50%. Turns out when your staff feel protected to handle challenging customers, they actually like helping customers resolve their issues.
Here’s another thing that frustrates me: the fixation with artificial enthusiasm. You know what I’m talking about – those training sessions where they tell staff to “constantly maintain a cheerful demeanor” regardless of the context.
Absolute rubbish.
People can sense fake positivity from a kilometre away. What they truly want is real attention for their situation. Sometimes that means admitting that yes, their experience actually suck, and you’re going to do whatever it takes to help them resolve it.
I recall working with a big shopping company in Melbourne where management had insisted on that all service calls had to start with “Hello, thank you for picking [Company Name], how can I make your day wonderful?”
Seriously.
Can you imagine: you call because your costly product stopped working two days after the coverage ran out, and some unfortunate staff member has to pretend they can make your day “amazing.” It’s ridiculous.
We eliminated that policy and changed it with simple genuineness training. Teach your staff to actually listen to what the person is explaining, validate their concern, and then concentrate on practical solutions.
Customer satisfaction improved right away.
After all these years of working in this field, I’m sure that the most significant issue with customer service training isn’t the training itself – it’s the unrealistic expectations we put on front-line staff and the complete absence of company-wide support to resolve the underlying issues of terrible customer service.
Fix those challenges first, and your customer service training will really have a chance to work.
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