Employment Testing (Psychometric Testing) Insights - Customer Service Training a Bad Investment?

Here's a question for you. Is customer servicemay be perceived as uncaring or unresponsive
training a bad investment?even though they are saying the right things. If
For the sake of discussion, let's say that two newthey have too much sensitivity, customer
hires go through the exact same customercriticism and anger can easily be taken personally
service training program. They learn what theyand they'll just quit because they hate their job.
should say to difficult customers in differentThen you'll get to start the employee recruitment
situations. Unfortunately, HOW they say thingsand training process all over again.
can be as important, if not MORE important, thanThe presence or absence of key, job related
what they say. Can they take the pressure? Cantraits can make a huge difference in helping you
they take the heat when customers push theirknow whether or not the people you hire and
buttons? What good is customer service training iftrain have what it takes to do the job right on a
your employees do what they are supposed toconsistent basis. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and
do in a way that makes things worse instead ofyou will find out eventually that you hired the
better?wrong person, but trial and error is expensive.
My background in the field of employment testingThe answer to the question about whether or not
and psychometric testing has taught me to lookcustomer service training is a bad investment
for specific attitudes and behavioral traits independs on whether or not the customer service
advance of hiring decisions that indicate therepresentative you hire is the right person for the
degree to which new hires are likely to performjob. If you hire right the first time, then
the skills they've been taught in an effective way.investments made in training them are likely to be
For example, If someone has an abundance ofgood ones. If you hire the wrong person, then
assertiveness, customers may perceive them asinvestments in training them could be unwise.
being pushy. If their tension level is too low, they