Employee Customer Service Training: Assessing Needs for Best Results - Essay Sample

Paper Type: Essay

Pages: 7

Wordcount: 1683 Words

Date: 2023-02-27

Categories:

Introduction

Employee customer service alludes to showing workers the abilities needed to serve clients to give them the best customer experience. Through this training, the workers obtain vital skills and information hence improving their viability and effectiveness in service delivery. It's essential to evaluate the needs for training new employees when organizing a customer service training program. Assessment of needs entails assessing the company, the employees and their duties. This aids in determining the sort of training is needed within the company. Furthermore, it is crucial to evaluate the knowledge and skills lacked by new workers in specific fields to identify the most necessary form of training for quality customer service (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). This paper aims at discussing the functions of needs assessment and the execution plan of employee customer service training, justifying the training methods needed to enhance customer service in retails stores.

Functions of Needs Assessment

Assessment of the new employee customer service training needs is most significant prior to planning, execution and implementation of the training program itself. This assessment aids in determining the inadequacy of the new worker's knowledge and skill, which are critical in quality service provision to clients. Needs assessment simplifies the process of identifying the most suitable methods to train workers, failure to which it may lead to a waste of valuable resources and time through the adoption of wrong training methods. This training, in turn, becomes valueless to the workers. Additionally, assessment of need also demands a clear understanding of customer's expectations, demands and needs. Studying these demands promotes a better understanding of customers and helps in determining the best methods to meet these expectations.

Another critical importance of the need assessment of new employee customer service training is that it uncovers various performance limitation factors that impair employees output. These performance limitations may include the disconnection between customer expectations and customer demands, and the required employees' knowledge and skills to fulfill these demands (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). It may also include the overall lack of relevant skills and expertise or other performance factors such as employee motivation or incentive, work equipment, etc. Through training, the organization can only resolve the lack of skills and knowledge, but the need assessment may expose other factors that impair quality service provision.

The need assessment may also expose the employees' readiness and willingness to take part in the training. This is important since some employees may not be proficient enough to get the best out of practice. Additionally, the assessment will help highlight the poorly performed areas of production, therefore, enhancing the training program development process.

Execution Plan

Both organizational success and Customer satisfaction are highly dependent on the effectiveness of customer service. Below are the steps involved in the new employee customer service

Customer Need Identification

In retail stores, employees interact with customers directly. It is, therefore, vital to understand the customers' needs to implement a successful customer service training program. The most common expectation of customers in retail stores includes help in locating goods within the store, after-sale services like carrying packaging and delivering purchased products. Also, customers expect the workers to be approachable and understanding enough when conversing with them. Customer satisfaction can be measured through direct customer feedback.

Evaluating the Skills and Knowledge of the Employees

For effective execution of the customer service training program, it's essential to assess the workers' abilities that are needed to fulfill customers' demands in retail stores. Employees who are new may not have the fundamental knowledge concerning every product produced in the organization or the aptitudes required in connecting with clients.

Developing and Executing the Training Method

In retail stores; Role playing, Simulation training and training on the job are the perfect methods of training the new employees. The trainings give them the skills and knowledge of how to directly deal with diverse customers in different scenarios (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017). Role-playing may be utilized during their reporting day or few first days of work, whereas training on the job will be a continuous process every day while at work. Simulation training may be applied to both of these scenarios.

Employees Evaluation

Continuous evaluation of employees is beneficial for the organization since it ensures that they meet the set organizational standards of customer service. Practical assessment can be attained through monitoring employees' behavior, taking into account their feedback, and most importantly, through customer feedback.

Justification of the Training Methods

The training methods that will be utilized in giving new employees the relevant training are on-the-job and training role-playing methods which in turn will ensure the company's customer service standards are attained. The use of these two strategies is the most suitable for successful employee training in a retail store.

The Roleplaying training method would require the new employee to assume various roles and duties and play the scenarios that come up while in the retail store. A practical example may be three workers may be asked to act out a situation where one employee impersonates a customer; the second employees to enact an employee within the store while the other to play the role of an employee at the payment counter (Desatnick, 1987).. Through this, they all get to experience and comprehend how they'll interact with customers and their day to day work situation within the establishment.

Continuous practice with different scenarios enables the employees to understand their roles correctly, know what is expected of them and hence offer quality customer service.

Whereas role-playing equips new employees with an idea of the kind of experiences they should expect in the job and how to act in response to them, on-the-job training provides the employees with the exact, first-hand experiences. This form of exercise is highly dependent on supervision, whereby the manager keenly observes the employee, offering the relevant knowledge by directly imparting the required service skills. Furthermore, on-the-job training provides the chance to actually to exercise what the employees have been taught during the role-playing training (Desatnick, 1987). The main advantage of the on-the-job training method is that it gives room for direct feedback from the supervisor. Where the employee is capable, the supervisor may praise them. Where the employee fails, the supervisor may recommend behavioral corrections or give further explanation of the required actions and the desired results. Both methods are the most effective forms of customer service training in a retail store.

Employee Motivation

With the continuous growth of the economy, the business environment becomes more competitive day by day; hence, to keep a competitive edge, many organizations have made a substantial investment in customer service training. However, for the effectiveness of these training to be beneficial to the organization, the employees must be willing to learn and adapt to the ever-changing customer expectation and demands (Noe & Wilk, 1993). Therefore, it is necessary that the organization motivates the un-interested employees to the empress and attend these training sessions. This can be done in the following ways:

Incentives

Incentives refer to anything that can incite action or motivation to attend training sessions. These may be in the form of extra pay or training allowances, issuing of certificates on completion of the training, or even promotion opportunities. Even though Incentives should also be offered for motivation, it is also essential to show the importance of training even without them (Noe & Wilk, 1993). This way, the un-interested employee will understand that their careers depend on these training. This way, the employee will remain highly motivated.

Quizzing

Quizzing is an informal form of examination or test for the employees on the topics discussed in the training sessions. This can be done during the training or back in the retail shop during workdays. Knowing that they will be quizzed compels them not only to attend but also to be attentive during the training (Noe & Wilk, 1993). It is, therefore, essential to let them know from the start that they will be tested to get effective results.

Survey

Assessment of the effectiveness of the training is crucial since it helps the management to understand the arrears that have been addressed, those that were left out and hoe to design the next training program. The following questionnaire can be used to obtain the employees' feedback during the assessment of the efficiency of the new employee customer service training.

Sample Questionnaire

Personal Information

Employee's Name_______________________________

Branch_________________________________________

Department______________________________________

Survey Question

Indicate your level of Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction on the following statement by ticking against your option.

The supervisor's effort to evaluate employee's strengths and weaknesses