In the first installment of this four part blog series I shared that there is more to sustaining a culture of customer service than classroom training, yet this is an essential part of the overall formula. In this third installment on the subject, you’ll gain two more tips you can use to achieve your career customer service goals within your organization.

 Make a Great First Impression On New Hires

 Over 50% of new hires make a decision whether they will stay with your company within their first month on the job. 20% of them decide during the first week. You can greatly influence this decision by making sure a new employee’s transition into his job role goes smoothly, and experience the added benefit from a customer service delivery standpoint too. When employees are expected to provide service to others, they can more easily adapt to these expectations in a less stressful environment. Effective employee onboarding includes developing a plan for day one and the following first 60 days, making sure an employee receives the support, tools and equipment needed to perform her job, and providing training, including customer service.

Maximize the Value of Classroom Customer Service Training

 Classroom based customer service training can have a meaningful impact on employees when it includes a few key components. First, make sure the session is highly interactive. Utilize exercises that allow participants to apply customer service skills to realistic scenarios and to truly explore what it means to deliver excellent service. In addition, one of my favorite ways to end a session is to ask participants to make customer service commitments that they will carryout in their jobs following the session. Through this exercise employees take ownership of what they will do in front of their coworkers, and I like to document these and post them in a common area following the session such as a break room or the area where employees clock in and out each day.

What are some of your ideas for cracking the code of establishing a customer service culture? Share them with us here, and tune in next week for the final installment in this series where we will talk about the role refresher training and reward and recognition programs play in customer service delivery.

 Are you interested in more information about customer service training? uDrive subscribers have access to tools and templates that can help. These can be found in the Resources for the Parking Manager section of the site.