In a recent survey of businesses with over 100 employees by “entrepreneurialway.net,” it was found that more than 75% of the respondents felt that customer service and quality training took them away from their day-to-day business, and was not worth the time away. 60% felt that what they learned would only marginally help them do their job better.  I find it amazing that unless the training can be seen as teaching something that will make them money, or make their job substantially easier with little change required, it is viewed as a waste of time and money.  This is why, when implementing a mutual benefit strategy, it cannot be done with training alone.

When a company works within a “mutual benefit” strategy, training is always done with an overview of how “what’s being taught” will benefit the attendees, the company and their customers.  This will eliminate the “not my problem” stare.  This is the look you get when an employee has to sit through a training that they feel doesn’t make their job substantially better or get them more money.  There are many reasons for this disease in corporate America, however, it happens just as much in small business.

When training is done within a “mutual benefit” infrastructure, your employees will understand the value of how it affects them and the whole of what you are teaching.  Your vendors will make their training pertinent to the benefits you offer your customers and your employees.  Why so much time on training?  Well, if you want to improve the quality of service, your employees must be the best trained.

The other side of “quality of service” is attitude.  When your company implements a “mutual benefit” strategy, your employees will understand the value of providing the best quality of service possible.  Another benefit of this strategy is that your operations employees will realize that even if they don’t have face to face customer activities, they realize how their quality of service affects the companies clients, employees and vendors.