Does your staff training deliver superior value to your customers?

If I were to ask you the real reason organizations invest in staff development, what would you say? Most answers would be linked to improving the employee skillset and overall culture.

On the surface, this seems like an admirable objective. However, I’d suggest this is not the reality.

In a recent report on U.S. companies that spent US$1 trillion just in leadership development (much more spent on other employee training) over the past 10 years, the number of dissatisfied employees has not changed and remains around 70 per cent. Gallup’s annual measure of employee satisfaction has been between 25 per cent and 33 per cent for decades.

This means despite an enormous investment to improve leadership and culture, the payback and impact on employee satisfaction is not there. The question is why?

In my work with various organizations there is a foundational point I continually reinforce: any internal staff development work is not simply for the benefit of the individual trainee or the overall culture. If your staff development work is not ultimately anchored in the delivery of superior value to your customers, then your focus is incorrect.

The only way to stay in business is by finding and keeping customers. If your entire focus is not on this goal, what are you doing?

When I work with a client, I am deliberate that the work is focused on helping the organization deliver superior value for its customers. This must be the focus or the opportunity to gain profitable revenue will also never be realized.

For example, when I conduct customer service training, I open with a slide that reads: “Welcome to financial management 101.”

As in: the level of customer service delivered directly impacts whether you gain or keep a customer, which directly impacts your revenue, profitability and growth. If you don’t have revenue, you won’t have a company.

You don’t need accountants to create financial statements, because there is no revenue to count. You don’t need an IT department to support the computer network, because there will be no staff requiring support.

While this may seem harsh, it is reality. And the mindset of co-ordinating activities to deliver value to a customer is rarely, if ever, explicitly stated in any training and development activities.

I challenge all senior leaders to take the following three steps in this fiscal year.

First, evaluate your definition of a win for your customers. You need to know how your customer uses your product and how they determine the value they received.

(A recently retired senior executive from a large auto paint manufacturer told me he had instituted a program where his team would go to autobody shops across the country to watch how its paint was used and what problems the technicians experienced with it. Just as important was learning what the technicians liked about the paint, so the company knew what not to change.)

Second, review your training and development activities planned for this year.

Are the learning outcomes focused and mention the need to increase value for your customers? Are you helping them get better at the correct activities to consistently deliver the value your customers need?

Third, reinforce this customer-centric and value-focused mindset throughout your organization. Use language that supports this fundamental aspect of your business in all correspondence.

Ensure training, even when delivered by an external resource, uses your key language to truly build this foundation.

When you build up the language standard, everyone will be on the same page and understand what is being said. Customers will learn your “language” and ideally, adopt it when they communicate with you.

As with any major training initiative, employee effort and discipline are required to achieve positive results. Actions must be monitored for consistency and adjusted when necessary. The staff training in top-performing organizations always ties into a focus on delivering superior value to customers. This is achieved by establishing and reinforcing the foundational standards important to your customers.

Tim’s bits: You will experience sporadic success if your winning game plan only focuses on the outcome such as gaining a sale. The process that I have described and used delivers superior impact through well-trained employees. Applying this approach should have customers choose you because of the value they receive and no one else delivers.

Tim Kist is a certified management consultant, authorized by law, and a Fellow of the Institute of Certified Management Consultants of Manitoba.

tim@tk3consulting.ca