My orientation lasted 15 minutes.
I was a teenager, and this was my first day on my first job. It was a retail clothing store and I had miraculously been hired despite having no experience.
The supervisor spent 15 minutes giving me an orientation to the men's department before announcing she was going on break. She handed me the key to the dressing room and left me by myself.
Predictably, my first customer encounter ended in a service failure.
You can hear the full story if you have access to LinkedIn Learning, but the gist is I didn't yet know our products, policies, or procedures. My entire work history was just 15 minutes long, so I hadn’t even learned basic customer service skills.
That was nearly 30 years ago. According to a new report, this is still a problem today.
One of the biggest reasons we routinely get poor service from customer service employees is they've never been trained.
About the Report
The report was commissioned in June of 2019 by the microlearning company, Axonify, and a company called Ipsos provided the research.
The study surveyed 1,000 Americans who work full or part-time as frontline employees in a variety of industries including retail, contact centers, and insurance.
You can read the full report or skip to my analysis below.
New Hire Training Needs to Improve
The report called out several areas where new hire training can be improved. The first, and most obvious, is a lack of training.
Employees aren't being trained
The only formal training I received at the clothing store was a loss-prevention seminar I attended after having been on the job for about two months. Ironically, I learned that following shady-looking people around the store to prevent them from stealing was called “customer servicing.”
I never received any formal training on actual customer service or the products we sold. My boss once told me to greet everyone who came into my department, but that was about it. What I did learn came through experience.
According to the Axonify report, a lack of training is still a real problem:
31 percent of retail employees aren't trained
23 percent of contact center agents receive no training
A lack of training creates several big problems:
Revenue decreases because employees can't sell effectively.
Costs go up because untrained employees take longer to do their jobs.
Turnover goes up because a lack of training makes the job less desirable.
Employees need training if they're going to do their jobs well.
It doesn't have to be long, expensive, or complicated. You can quickly create an effective training program with a simple checklist.
There’s no time for training
Many companies fail to train employees because leaders think that training takes too much time. They envision long, boring seminars that take employees away from their jobs.
According to the Axonify report, employees want short, practical training modules:
90 percent want to be able to connect with critical information anytime, anywhere.
72 percent want training they can complete in a few minutes at work.
The best training often combines short, focused lessons with on-the-job application.
That's why my LinkedIn Learning training videos are filmed in short segments that are each just 3-5 minutes long. Each segment contains a hands-on activity, so you can watch a short lesson and then immediately apply what you learned back on the job.
Called microlearning, this technique can help you train faster and better.
Training is wasted
Think of the last time you went to a formal training class. What percentage of the content did you apply on the job?
It might have been just one or two techniques that made the class worthwhile. But this also means the rest of the class was wasted.
What if you could have learned the good stuff without having to sit through everything else?
The content we learn in a training class, but never apply on the job, is called scrap learning. Estimates of scrap learning in the typical training program range from 45 to 80 percent.
Training content often goes to waste when it's not personalized, relevant, or delivered effectively. Here are some more results from the Axonify report:
91 percent want training that's easy to complete and understand
89 percent want personalized and relevant training
87 percent want to apply training on the job
My Customer Service Tip of the Week email is an example of training that fits all these criteria. Here's how many customer service leaders use it:
Subscribers receive a weekly tip that's easy to read and understand.
Teams discuss the tip to make it personalized and relevant to their situation.
Employees immediately apply the tip on the job to sharpen their skills.
Take Action
Successful, customer-focused organizations succeed in part because they invest in training their employees. Training doesn't have to be long, complicated, or expensive. It just has to be effective.
I've compiled this list of free customer service training resources to make it easy for you to give your employees the training they need.