Training your customer service employees is essential to running a successful company. If you don’t provide sufficient training, you simply cannot expect your employees to live up to your standards and expectations. Just as it is your employees’ job to carry out your company’s mission, it is your job to supply them with the training and resources needed to do that.

Organizing and carrying out a successful training program is often a case of “easier said than done.” Knowing what to include and what to leave out of orientation and training can be tricky. One way to optimize your training program is to gather ideas from your current employees – the people who’ve already participated in, and hopefully benefited from, the training. After all, they know first-hand what was useful and what was irrelevant.

Here are a few ways you can get ideas from your employees and use those ideas to enhance your current training programs.

Collect Feedback

At the end of every employee orientation session, collect feedback from your new hires while the program is still fresh in their minds. Ask a combination of open-ended and specific questions to get a comprehensive overview of the program, as well as ideas for improvement. Since it can be intimidating for new employees to give honest feedback so early on, you may want to keep this process anonymous. In addition to getting feedback at the end of orientation, go back and talk to new hires again after a few months to see how they feel about things after they’ve had time to get their feet wet.

Have A Meeting

Don’t stop after you’ve collected feedback from new hires – your seasoned employees will have plenty to say too. The employees that have been with you the longest have seen it all and are probably just waiting for someone to ask for their opinion.

Ask everyone to help you to identify your training program’s strengths and weaknesses. Get them to share stories about when the training came in handy and where the training missed its mark. Asking your employees what they think will show them you care – and the more you care about them, the more they’ll care about your customers. Everyone has an opinion – and most of us like to share our opinions. Your employees are no different. Tell them you intend to use their feedback to make improvements – and then listen to what they say and use the information to make the training programs better.

Encourage Participation

Make sure your employees know you want to hear what they have to say. There are plenty of ways to encourage your employees to share their ideas for improving the company’s training programs:

Have an “open door” policy
Post a suggestion box
Casually chat with employees when you pass them in the halls
Host occasional brainstorming sessions outside the office
Randomly give out prizes

Implement What You Learn

All the valuable insight you collect is worthless if you don’t analyze it and use it to your advantage. If the amount of feedback is overwhelming, assign a group of managers to review it and put together a plan of action.

Your employees are an integral part of your company’s success, and they deserve to be trained to succeed.

How to Get Customer Service Training Ideas From Your Current Employees