Customer Service

Recent surveys show around 80 percent of Australians are employed in some form of service industry, from retail and hospitality to publishing and advertising.

But only three out of 10 have a natural capability for customer service-based roles. Monica Higgins looks at ways to improve your company profit through staff customer service training.

What of those staff who are too busy pushing papers to give their customers a second thought; or those who can’t help but allow a bad day to affect their tone-of-voice and overall professional manner? Chances are these sub-standard levels of customer service will have a direct impact on your company’s profits.

“Customer service is paramount,” says Greg Stockwell, director of Customer Service Training Australia. “We still lag behind other countries, such as the US, when it comes to service, but we’re showing a vast improvement.”

We can attribute this progress to the fact we’re becoming more customer-service-centric. Australian business owners and managers are realising effective customer service is not only an essential provision but, more importantly, it is also equal to profit.

At the front line of improving customer service in Australia are myriad training programs designed to help staff who are not naturally gifted with the customer service ‘gene’. Depending on the size of your business and its specific requirements, the programs will vary from one-week interactive programs to one- or two-hour refresher courses.

Two academics from Central Queensland University have developed a new Customer Service Predictor (CSP) tool they are planning to roll out to Australia and the world. “The CSP is a web-based psychometric instrument that assesses intrinsic or innate personal characteristics in the subject,” says Tony Ward, one of the tool’s developers. Findings from a decade of research show good customer service skills are usually innate, so the tool will help companies to get it right from the start by only recruiting the best people for customer service roles.

The CSP tool is also a great indicator for training and retraining opportunities, Ward stresses. “As companies can’t fire someone because their innate characteristics don’t fit the profile, it can also be used as a training predictor. So this is not a negative tool, but one that will help to deliver quality staff performance.”

The tool produces an overall score and an individual profile that highlights certain weaknesses. “We offer a one- to two-hour training program that addresses areas of weakness,” says Ward. “The profile will draw attention to subtle areas of weakness that employees may be unaware of harbouring. For example, those suited to a customer service role are organised, but disorganised people may not realise that this is affecting their ability to provide good customer service.”