Case Study - The Customer Service Training Program Pgs. 172-174 Intense competition among retailers has made customer service top priority. At many stores today, employees welcome customers as they enter the sore with cheery greetings and sales staff must have good communication and interpersonal skills to provide customers with excellent service. They also need to be courteous, polite, friendly, and helpful. A large retail clothing store decided that it needed to improve its customer service to be more competitive, since its customer satisfaction ratings had been declining over the last year and were lower than those of its competitors. It wanted employees to be more active and involved with customer so that they could provide excellent customer satisfaction ratings. The company designed new customer service training program to train employees to greet customers, offer assistance, help them find what they are looking for, resolve customer complaints and problems, and provide courteous, helpful, and friendly service. An important objective of the program was to provide employees with better interpersonal and communication skills so that they would be able to spend more time interacting with customers and ensure that every customer leaves the store satisfied with his/her shopping experience. The training program, which was designed in-house and delivered by the company's training staff, began with a lecture in which the trainer described the importance of customer service and the objectives of the training program. Trainees were instructed on the importance of good customer service and how they should behave when they are interacting with customers Following the lecture, a video was shown that consisted of different scenarios in which employees were shown interacting with customers. In one scenario, a customer could not find what he was looking for and asked the employee for assistance. The employee was not friendly and told the customer to try looking in another aisle. In another incident, a customer complained to an employee about something she had purchased that was less expensive at another store. She demanded a price reduction or her money back. The customer began raising her voice and the employee yelled at the customer and told her to leave the store. Similar incidents of poor customer service were also shown in the video After the video, the trainer asked the trainees what was wrong with each scenario and how the employee should have behaved to provide better customer service. At the end of the discussion, the trainer provided a brief lecture outlining the key points shown in the video. This was followed by a video that showed scenarios of empllo9yees providing good customer service. A brief discussion and lecture followed in which the trainees were asked to describe what the employee did in each situation to provide good service. The trainer concluded the session by highlighting the key customer service behaviours. Trainees then hat to take a test on their knowledge of customer service. The test consisted of multiple-choice questions that asked trainees to choose the most appropriate behaviour in different situations with customers. Most of the trainees did very well on the test and received a customer-service qualification certificate upon completion of the training program. Trainees reacted positively to the training program, which was considered to be a success However, back difficulty brief discussion and lecture followed in which the trainees were asked to describe what the employee did in each situation to provide good service. The trainer concluded the session by highlighting the key customer service behaviours. Trainees then hat to take a test on their knowledge of customer service. The test consisted of multiple-choice questions that asked trainees to choose the most appropriate behaviour in different situations with customers. Most of the trainees did very well on the test and received a customer service qualification certificate upon completion of the training program. Trainees reacted positively to the training program, which was considered to be a success. However, back on the job some employees had difficulty interacting and communicating with customers. For example, in one incident a customer demanded his money back for a pair of pants that had shrunk after cleaning. He blamed the employee for the store's poor quality and called the employee and idiot. The employee didn't know what to do and just walked away in tears. In another incident, a customer came into the store to pick up a shirt that he had asked an employee to hold for him. The item had been sold and it was the last one in the store. The employee apologized, saying that it had been sold to someone else by accident. However, the customer insisted that the employee call the customer who had bought the shirt and have him return it. The employee said she could not do that and told the customer how sorry she was. The customer refused to leave there unless the employee called the person who bought the shirt. The employee threatened to call security if the customer did not leave the store. He finally left buy not before causing a big scene in the store in front of many other customers. Later that day, the employee quit. One month after the training program there was no improvement to customer satisfaction ratings, and four of the sales staff who had attended the training program had quit. Management began to wonder if the training program was effective. They were not sure whether more time was needed to see the effects of the training on customer satisfaction scores or whether the training program was a failure.

5. What does this case say about instructional methods and the effectiveness of training programs? What does it say about choosing instructional methods?