By John Tschohl

A sales clerk talks to a friend on the telephone while a customer stands waiting, money in hand, to make a purchase. A receptionist leaves a caller on hold interminably, never checking back to see if he would like to continue to wait or leave a message. When a customer arrives at the appointed time to pick up her car, the mechanic tells her the repairs won't be completed until the next day.

These are not uncommon occurrences; they are the norm. Exceptional customer service is the key to the success of any business and, yet, employers spend more money on copy machine maintenance than they do on training their people. Unfortunately, their employees break down more often than their machines, but they fail to do anything about it.

Too many employers aren't aware of the bottom-line benefits of training their employees to provide exceptional customer service. They are reluctant to spend money on training, and many just don't believe they can change behaviors and attitudes. The less employers pay employees, the less they value those employees. The less they value employees, the less they train them. And yet, 99 percent of customer contact is made through those employees.

The great fear for many employers is that they will spend the money to train employees, who will soon leave for other jobs. To them, I say, "Offer it and they will stay." What's worse, to train employees and take the chance that some might leave the company, or to not train them and have them stay? It's not a difficult choice.

A good training program not only decreases employee turnover and increases employee loyalty, it increases sales and customer loyalty. Based on the generally accepted rule that attracting a new customer costs five times as much as keeping a current customer, a good employee training program has a value of at least five times its cost.

A few years ago, Citicorp conducted a study of 17 companies that had been recognized for superior customer service. It found that each company made investments of up to 2 percent of gross sales for formal, on-going service education programs.

A good training program also increases productivity. The late Warren Blanding, a leading service consultant and president of the Customer Service Institute in Silver Spring, Md., found that, under conditions of typical productivity in customer service operations, an employee earning $6 to $7 an hour has an actual fully distributed cost of as much as $20 to $25 an hour. If, through training, that employee becomes 10 percent more productive, the cost is reduced to $16 to $22, a savings of about $209 per employee per day.

I offer these tips for employers when establishing an employee customer service training program:

• Take 10 percent of your advertising budget and use it to train your employees.
• Spend a minimum of 40 hours per year training each employee in the art of customer service.
• In order to create a culture change and keep enthusiasm high, you must introduce a new training program every six months.
• Service education for front-line employees must be at least six solid hours, with a follow-up session a month or two later, if you expect a behavior change and a commitment to service standards.
• Establish clear objectives, so employees know what you want them to be able to do once they've completed the program.
• Communication, cooperation, and commitment--from top-level management to front-line employees--are critical to the success of any training program and to changing a company's culture.

Employers must begin to realize that it is knowledgeable, courteous, helpful employees that bring in--and retain--customers. Advertising will bring customers in the door, but poor service will turn them away and point them in the direction of a competitor. Employees must hire good people, train them, coach them, and reward them.

John Tschohl, president of the Minneapolis-based Service Quality Institute, is an international management consultant and speaker. He has written several books on customer service, including Achieving Excellence Through Customer Service, Cashing In, and The Customer is Boss, and has developed more than 26 customer service training programs that have been distributed and presented throughout the world. John can be reached at (952) 884-3311; e-mail at quality@servicequality.com; or visit his web site at www.customer-service.com.