Arab Open University B203B Essay: Training and Customer Service

This essay examines the crucial role of training and development in achieving superior customer service, focusing on the Arab Open University's B203B course. It begins by defining customer service and distinguishing between training and development. The essay then delves into the benefits of training programs, such as improved employee skills, enhanced customer satisfaction, and increased customer loyalty. It also addresses potential disadvantages, such as the costs associated with development. Furthermore, the essay explores how employees contribute to a company's brand image and identifies key performance indicators (KPIs) used to measure customer service levels. The essay provides relevant examples and emphasizes the importance of investing in customer service training programs. The essay concludes by highlighting how proper training can lead to a more successful organization and create a positive customer experience.

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Training and development affecting the customer services...................................................................2
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................4
References.............................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
The essay discusses the importance of training and development in achieving good customer
services. Training and development in regards to improve the customer service is an
important act to be considered while creating successful business. Providing training for
customer service allow employees to understand the impact of their roles in organisation. An
organisation that invest in training programs related to customers care to deal with customers.
It sets a level of competencies to deal with the customers according to the dynamic business
environment and changing buying behaviour of customers (Agnihotri et al., 2016).
Training and development affecting the customer services
Customer service is the method of ensuring that the customers are satisfied with the service
and product. It takes place while performing transaction of sale and returning the item.
Training and development covers a program that assist an employee to learn specific
knowledge or talent, which can improve future performance. Appropriate training help in
retaining the right person and achieve the organisational objectives. To achieve superior
customer service, an organisation conducts a training program (Falola, Osibanjo, and Ojo,
2014). The training program focuses on needs and expectations of the customer then
determine the final objective, educate the staff of real life situations, teaching active listening
skills, and focus on positive language. By training employees for customer services, an
employee can adopt new skills such as improving communication, problem solving, active
listening, and organisational skills. Training gives a set of competencies that provides a view
to undertake a standard process to deal with customers and develop a team spirit. Training
and development is an inseparable part of human resource management (Wong et al., 2015).
Training is a program that aims to develop knowledge and talent in an employee as per the
requirement of work. On the other hand, development is organised activity and self-

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assessment through which manpower of enterprise grow and learn. Training employees
include technical knowledge and skills that the job relates and stress is on improving the
abilities. It is a learning process through employee get a chance to develop skills and
competency as required by job. On the other hand, development is an educational process that
considers overall growth of employees. The process of development is long-term, futuristic,
career oriented, and it prepare employee for future challenges. The training for the people at
the top-level management can be considered as development concisely known as executive
development. It is an on-going systematic process through which managerial staff learns to
improve the concepts and theoretical knowledge (Wong et al., 2015).
Various training methods result in higher productivity in terms of both quantitatively and
qualitatively. Moreover, training helps in developing number of skills and is specifically
designed for a job position (Wakely, 2018). It provide professionals with skills and tools that
take into account. If training focuses on position then development emphasis on building
successful professional career. Training benefits to achieve increased customer satisfaction,
retention, and loyalty, improve customer service skills, reduced employee turnover,
acquisition of new customers. For example- in training, a employee is taught of ethical
procedures which he need to follow while dealing with customers. Training is a short-term
process that can help to adapt the changing trends of the customer that can lead to increased
productivity. Improved training process for customer services can lead to solve problem,
communication, and product improvements (Stillwagon, 2015). It helps to create a
framework to delegate good customer skills that a company can integrate and combine types
of training programs such as classroom-style training, automated training, and one-on-one
training. As the development is a time taking process that increases the cost of company,
therefore company tries to skip and manage with the little resources that affects the customer

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services. Once the employees are trained, they feel confident and this confidence will lower
the employee turnover (Orel, and Kara, 2014).
Lack of training leads to frustration due to misunderstanding of requirements of customers.
Once, staff gets an efficient training they started sharing a common bond. Improper training
creates dissatisfaction and on the same side, proper training should create a high level of
quality assurance to make sure that productivity levels creates and enforces each new worker
to maximise the efforts towards building and developing behaviour that can attract
customers. Training and development enables to improve customer service skills and increase
customer satisfaction (Wakely, 2018). Just as employees who gets rewards for contributing of
building brand image, customer experiences are given equal importance while developing
any goods or training programs. Currently, everyone considers review and feedback that an
organisation`s website gets. The first impression of potential customers is affected by how
they are treated by employee`s behaviour (Markowitz, 2014). Although customer retention
and customer feedback are the main key performance indicators. Another way that considers
the factor in customer retention is track the changes in customer satisfaction over time. For
example- After proper treatment of customers and responding them properly, a company can
achieve high level of customer satisfaction. The customer base of the company shall increase.
Undoubtedly, once a customer is happy, it is quite probable that customer would like to
execute more transactions, which would bring a fair amount of customers on a regular basis.
When a customer is satisfied from a service, he will a step further and recommend the
company to others. The company`s Net Promoter Score or rate of people that would
recommend the company to other people. For example- customers who like a particular
brand would not choose the other competitors for even a single interaction. Another way can
be that how fast the organisations resolve the customer problems this will lead to happiness to

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customers, which is good sign. Efficient services on the part of employees can contribute to
create brand attributes (Sung, and Choi, 2014).
Conclusion
Customer service is a centre-stage that lead and drive the organisation to become successful.
Every interaction with the customer can affect the business operation of bottom-line.
Therefore, it is important to invest in customer service training programs that not only add
value for the customers but also assists in self-development. Moreover, an organisation
considers a integration of different types of training methods that encourages good services to
customers. the essay brings out how unavailability of proper training can lead to dissatisfied
customers which further affects the brand image.

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References
Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M. Y. and Krush, M. T. (2016) Social media: Influencing
customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, pp. 172-180.
Falola, H.O., Osibanjo, A.O. and Ojo, I.S., (2014) Effectiveness of training and development
on employees' performance and organisation competitiveness in the nigerian banking
industry. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of braşov, 7(1), p. 161.
Markowitz, E. (2014) 5 Ways To Improve Your Company’s Image: Organizations must
strike the right balance in using all the tools at their disposal to create a positive corporate
image. Available on: https://www.channelfutures.com/best-practices/5-ways-improve-your-
company-s-image [Accessed on 21/11/18]
Orel, F.D. and Kara, A., (2014) Supermarket self-checkout service quality, customer
satisfaction, and loyalty: Empirical evidence from an emerging market. Journal of Retailing
and Consumer Services, 21(2), pp. 118-129.
Stillwagon, A. (2015) 14 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Measure Customer Service.
Available on: https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/03/how-to-measure-customer-service.html
[Accessed on: 21/11/18]
Sung, S.Y. and Choi, J.N., (2014) Do organizations spend wisely on employees? Effects of
training and development investments on learning and innovation in organizations. Journal of
organizational behavior, 35(3), pp. 393-412.
Wakely, C. (2018) 5 Ways HR Can Build Your Organization's Brand: Build Brand
Recognition from the Inside – Out. Available on: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/hr-
building-brand-1917670 [Accessed on 21/11/18]

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Wong, C.W., Lai, K.H., Cheng, T.C.E. and Lun, Y.V., (2015) The role of IT-enabled
collaborative decision making in inter-organizational information integration to improve
customer service performance. International Journal of Production Economics, 159, pp. 56-
65.