The Impact of Employee Training and Development on Customer Service

This essay explores the crucial role of employee training and development in delivering superior customer service. It defines customer service and differentiates between training and development, highlighting their individual impacts on employee skills and organizational growth. The essay details the benefits of training, such as increased job satisfaction, productivity, and employee engagement, while also addressing potential disadvantages like employee disinterest and turnover. Furthermore, it examines how employees contribute to a positive brand image through their behavior and attitudes, and concludes by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring customer service effectiveness, including customer retention, satisfaction improvement, complaint escalation rate, and average resolution time. The essay emphasizes the direct link between employee investment and enhanced customer experiences.

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How training and development of employees benefits an organization through delivering
superior customer service.
The concept that “Customer is king” has been widely accepted by many enterprises
(Team Publications, 2006, pg. 1). Customer service has always acted as a crucial tool in ensuring
that customers are satisfied and their needs are met. Customer service refers to a role within an
organization that is dedicated to assisting buyers in regarding the use or the purchasing process
of products or services. This role is mostly committed to ensuring customers are satisfied while
at the same time providing the customers with superior service.
Training and development of employees are key ingredients to ensuring that the
employees deliver superior customer service to customers. However, training and development
differ in some ways. To begin with, training refers to a learning process whereby employees get
to understand the basic skills required for a particular job (Surbhi, 2015). On the other hand,
development refers to an educational process where existing employees are trained regarding
new tasks or skills required for their overall growth. Secondly, training is conducted to improve
work performance of the workforce while development is conducted to prepare the workforce for
future challenges.
Thirdly, training is focused on advancing skills for a current job while development is
concerned with the building of knowledge, competencies, and understanding for overcoming
future challenges (Surbhi, 2015). Fourthly, training is job oriented meaning it has a limited
scope. On the other hand, development is career oriented meaning its scope is broader than that
of training. Lastly, training takes a shorter period since few skills are gained. For example,
people in training may only be taught how to handle and execute specific duties
(Differencebetween.net, 2018). On the other hand, development is a gradual process meaning its
long-term. This reason for this is because development is always about learning on how to
improve specific aspects of an organization’s operations.
Training and development include both potential benefits and disadvantages. Beginning
with the benefits, we have increased job satisfaction among employees (2020 Project
Management, 2018). Training and development allow employees to feel valued by a company.
Besides, through training and development, a supportive workplace is created hence allowing
employees to be challenged through new opportunities thus becoming more satisfied with their

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job. Secondly, we have increased productivity and quality standards. Training and development
increase efficiency which on the other hand ensures a company meets different customer needs
as well as increase its market share.
Thirdly, we have increased employee engagement. Training and development encourage
team bonding as well as employee engagement. This improves both employee satisfaction and
motivation (Qureshi, 2015). Besides, employee engagement reduces communication barriers
between coworkers. Lastly, we have consistency. Though a robust training and development
program, employees are able to acquire a consist and background knowledge. This is crucial
since it ensures employees met expectations within the company as well as promote increased
efficiencies in the operations of the company.
On the other hand, training development also includes some disadvantages or challenges.
To begin with, we have the loss of interest from the employees. At times, training and
development programs may be time-consuming and hard to comprehend. Therefore, employees
may get bored and lose interest in the programs. Besides, continuous repetition of the same
theories within the training causes the employees to lose interest (WiseStep, 2018). Secondly,
employees may leave for a new job. After employees are trained and developed with the current
skills and knowledge, they may run to another organization that offers a better salary hence
leaving the previous organization without offering any productivity (WiseStep, 2018).
Thirdly, objectives tend to be set by the trainers rather than the employees. This makes it
difficult for the employees to flow with the directions of the trainers since they may have
opposing opinions. Besides, lack of engaging the employees in different operations within the
organization may result in the absence of motivation which translates to reduced productivity.
Lastly, we have the failure of follow-up regarding a training course (Morrison, 2009). For
example, after employees are trained, they may forget what they have learned if there is no
follow up hence making the training or development ineffective.
Employees also contribute a lot to the development of the brand image of an
organization. To begin with, employees can internalize the brand’s desired attribute. This allows
them to be able to naturally express the attributes in their behavior (Gelb and Rangarajan, 2014,
pg. 98). Since customers delight in response, employees can be able to meet customer
expectations; however, by standardizing their responses, inefficiencies can be inevitable.

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Secondly, we have positive emotions/attitude. By having a positive attitude, employees are able
to display positive feelings while interacting with customers. This positively affects the brand
image of an organization hence attracting more customers and reputation.
Lastly, employees can defend a brand. By acting as brand ambassadors, employees may
be in a better position to evoke the positiveness of brand (Gelb and Rangarajan, 2014, pg. 99).
For example, an employee can be able to tell friends, neighbors or family how things are like
when there is a negative press coverage on a product or service. This is crucial to the brand
image of an organization.
In conclusion, in an organization, the level of customer service can be measured by
different performance indicators. To begin with, we have customer retention. If an organization
is able to provide a service that makes the customers happy, the customers are more likely to
stick around the organization (Stillwagon, 2015). Secondly, we satisfaction improvement. By
tracking customer changes over time, an organization is able to determine whether satisfaction
has either gone down or risen. Therefore, the organization will be able to identify whether the
customer satisfaction needs a change.
Thirdly, we have complaint escalation rate. A high number of complaints is a clear
indication of a problem. Besides, a high number of customer complaints may result in a decrease
in customer loyalty or growth. Lastly, we have the average resolution time. A crucial aspect of
customer service is being able to resolve issues on time (Stillwagon, 2015). Therefore, if an
organization is able to keep the resolution time as low as possible, this can be an indication that
there is excellent customer service.

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References
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