The True Reason Your Customer Service Training Falls Short: A Hard Assessment
Forget everything you’ve been told about customer service training. Following two decades in this field, I can tell you that 85% of what passes for employee education in this space is total nonsense.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your employees already know they should be friendly to customers. They know they should smile, say please and thank you, and handle complaints quickly. What they don’t know is how to manage the emotional labour that comes with working with problem clients constantly.
Back in 2019, I was consulting with a major telecommunications company here in Sydney. Their service scores were terrible, and management kept pumping money at traditional training programs. You know the type – mock conversations about welcoming clients, reciting company guidelines, and endless sessions about “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.”
Complete waste of time.
The core challenge wasn’t that staff didn’t know how to be professional. The problem was that they were exhausted from absorbing everyone else’s frustration without any strategies to shield their own wellbeing. Consider this: when someone calls to complain about their internet being down for the fifth time this month, they’re not just frustrated about the connection fault. They’re furious because they feel helpless, and your team member becomes the target of all that pent-up rage.
Most training programs completely ignore this mental reality. Instead, they focus on basic approaches that sound good in theory but crumble the moment someone starts screaming at your staff.
Here’s what actually works: teaching your staff psychological protection techniques before you even mention customer interaction approaches. I’m talking about breathing exercises, psychological protection, and most importantly, clearance to take breaks when things get too intense.
With that telecommunications company, we introduced what I call “Psychological Protection” training. Rather than concentrating on procedures, we taught employees how to recognise when they were taking on a customer’s emotional state and how to emotionally distance themselves without seeming unfeeling.
The results were incredible. Service ratings scores rose by 40% in three months, but more importantly, staff turnover dropped by nearly half. Turns out when your people feel protected to handle problem interactions, they actually like helping customers fix their concerns.
Something else that frustrates me: the focus with forced cheerfulness. You know what I’m talking about – those programs where they tell people to “always maintain a cheerful demeanor” regardless of the context.
Complete nonsense.
Customers can feel fake positivity from a distance. What they really want is authentic concern for their issue. Sometimes that means recognising that yes, their problem genuinely suck, and you’re going to do everything possible to assist them fix it.
I remember working with a major retail chain in Melbourne where management had mandated that all service calls had to begin with “Good morning, thank you for choosing [Company Name], how can I make your day absolutely fantastic?”
Seriously.
Can you imagine: you call because your expensive product broke down three days after the coverage ran out, and some unlucky employee has to pretend they can make your day “amazing.” It’s ridiculous.
We eliminated that approach and substituted it with straightforward genuineness training. Teach your staff to genuinely hear to what the client is telling them, acknowledge their concern, and then work on practical solutions.
Service ratings improved instantly.
Following years in the industry of consulting in this area, I’m convinced that the biggest issue with customer service training isn’t the training itself – it’s the impossible standards we set on customer-facing teams and the complete absence of company-wide support to resolve the underlying issues of bad customer experiences.
Resolve those challenges first, and your client relations training will genuinely have a opportunity to work.
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