By JoAnna Brandi
As a customer care trainer who works with companies of all shapes and sizes, I’m well aware of the ‘extreme cautiousness’ with which most organizations are approaching any purchases – especially when it comes to training their employees to be and do their best. As I see it, there are three main challenges:
1) They have a small training budget – or perhaps no budget for training at all.
2) They’ve downsized, making it difficult for anyone to be away from their desks to attend training sessions for any length of time.
3) Even if they’ve bounced back from tough times, they don’t completely trust that the market will bounce back. As one of my prospective clients put it, “I have to check with my boss when I want to purchase a pencil.”
Meanwhile, employees suffer from the stress of the worry and of the extra workloads they carry. That stress affects their relationships with each other and, of course, the experience they provide to their customers. And we all know how negative experiences can erode the bottom line. The great news is, there are simple, no-cost techniques managers can implement to maintain ongoing training even as employees are behind their desks. They’re known as ‘Teachable Moments.’
Successfully used by educators for years, Teachable Moments are spontaneous opportunities to use an experience at hand to demonstrate a skill or principle – to train your staff in some small yet powerful way. They’re one of the best, most effective ways I can think of to support your staff in developing top-notch ‘soft skills’ so they can create the kinds of customer experiences that yield profits.
Here are six quick tips to illustrate how you can effectively use Teachable Moments:
1) When you hear team members talk about their experiences as customers…
…ask them how they felt during and after they purchased the product or service. Was the experience positive or negative? Was the service provider attentive, friendly and res
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