Chapter 10
The Follow-Up Coach
What’s in This Chapter
• Develop a communication plan for the workshop(s)
• Harness managers’ critical access to learners
• Connect service standards and organizational metrics
• Focus on action plans created in the workshops
• Align workshops with additional learning opportunities
• Create an environment of encouragement
Although the term follow-up seems to imply that it happens after the workshops, it actually needs to be planned and developed before. And you may need to recalibrate your definitions of when a workshop starts and ends. To be most effective, a workshop starts well before the participants arrive and continues well after they leave the training room. Don’t wait until after the workshop to focus on these activities. Plan for them as you are planning for the workshop itself.
Developing the ability to provide effective customer service is a journey—not an event. Attending workshops can certainly help employees deliver better service; however, as with many skills, it is only with continued practice and sustained follow-up that behaviors are refined and results are improved. It takes time for people to process new information, break old patterns of behavior, and start applying new skills.
To achieve real behavioral change, ideas experienced in a learning environment must continue to be supported. Research on training shows that training with follow-up coaching improves performance dramatically over training alone (Olivero, Bane, and Kopelmann 1997). It is also clear that training is not a once-and-done event. This chapter provides several ideas to help you support learning, improve behavior, and achieve results by creating a communication plan, involving the participants’ managers, focusing on action planning, offering continued learning opportunities, and creating an encouraging environment that emphasizes customer service.
Create a Communication Plan
Developing a communication plan that effectively supports customer service training begins with answering a series of key questions:
• Who are the champions and sponsors of the workshop(s)?
• What messages are the participants going to receive from the champions and sponsors, and in what formats? (Email invitation? Video introduction? Personal welcome at the workshop with an explanation of how the training connects to the organization’s service focus? Messages after the workshop to encourage skills application?)
• What role will the participants’ managers have in establishing learning expectations both before and after the event?
• Will there be a branding campaign to support the customer service training, such as newsletter articles and wall posters with photos of participants and quotes on how they are applying the service skills?
• Can a blog be created expressly for employees to share service successes and challenges they can use assistance with?
• What other communication channels already exist and are available to you, such as weekly staff meetings or daily tailgate meetings? Harness them!
Use the answers to these questions to establish a written communication plan that defines what messages will be distributed, by whom, through what channels, and when. And don’t be surprised that you may be the one actually drafting many of the messages.
In short, keep a focus on the topic! Here are some ideas to get you started:
• Communicate—before. Ghost-write a pre-workshop email for managers to send to employee participants under their own signature line—not yours. Include the basic logistics of time and location and also establish what they can expect in the workshop. You know best what the workshop addresses, so explain the skills it focuses on, provide the learning objectives, pose a relevant question or challenge, and invite participants to bring work examples to draw from during the workshop. Create enthusiasm for the event. Time the email for delivery seven to 10 days before the workshop begins for maximum impact and effectiveness.
• Communicate—after. Don’t leave it to the participants’ managers to initiate the post-workshop communications. They may have good intentions to do it but too often don’t. So ghost-write another message for them. In fact, you can write it before the workshop, but send it to the managers when you want them to distribute it. This time, you will want to establish expectations of what workshop participants should be doing with the skills they learned in the workshop. Include specific examples, align the examples with a relevant service standard or performance metric, and write in a supportive tone. You might even pose another relevant question or challenge for the team to discuss in their next staff meeting. Make the workshop part of a continuum of growth and development—not a four-, eight-, or sixteen-hour paid vacation.
• Keep it up. There should be an ongoing communication plan to support customer service. Touch base with your participants on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Plan a special focus during the first week of October, which is National Customer Service Week. Tie messaging to other initiatives in the organization so it becomes part of the culture, not just one more thing to focus on.
Involve Managers in the Transfer of Learning
Who do you believe has the greatest effect on workshop participants’ ability to use their new skills in the workplace? The participants themselves? You as the trainer? Or, perhaps, the participants’ managers, who directly influence participants’ priorities, manage their workload, establish expectations, and incentivize employee behavior (either intentionally or by default)? Certainly, self-directed participants and skilled trainers are important to the transfer of learning. But it may surprise you to learn that research shows that what a manager does before training is the single most critical factor in successful application of learning on the job, and what a manager does after training is the third most critical factor, according to Broad and Newstrom in their book Transfer of Training (Broad and Newstrom 1992). Clearly, managers play a vital role in ensuring that learners develop their customer service skills—both before and after the training event.
Before the Workshop
Here are ideas to implement with managers even before the workshop begins:
• Consult managers (and their appropriate direct reports) during the needs analysis phase of design.
• Invite managers to preview workshop content (possibly even attend a pilot session).
• Ask managers to vet the list of workshop attendees to ensure everyone registered meets the target participant profile.
• Coordinate with managers to provide on-the-job time for participants to complete any pre-work and be sure to draw a direct connection between pre-work you integrate and its value to the learning experience for both the managers and the participants.
• Highlight for managers how workshop content aligns with the organization’s performance improvement tools (employee evaluations) and share examples of how they can set performance goals for participants that align with both the tools and the workshop.
• Ask managers to collaborate with participants to establish specific learning goals prior to attending the workshop.
After the Workshop
To help learners integrate the customer service skills developed through training, encourage managers to get involved in these meaningful ways after the workshop:
• Ask managers to schedule a brief conversation with participants about the workshop, what they took away, and their specific plan to implement what they learned and practiced in the workshop.
• Request that managers set aside time in participants’ work schedules in the days and weeks following the workshop to focus on implementing their workshop action plans.
• Provide managers with a checklist of behaviors to watch for and samples of appropriate feedback (both encouraging and redirecting) to offer participants.
• Encourage managers to be enthusiastic about new approaches and strategies from the workshop.
• Remind managers that participants will watch their behaviors and make comparisons between what managers say and do. Their modeling of the workshop skills will demonstrate the value they place on the learning.
Connect Service Standards to Organizational Metrics
When it comes to performance, employees usually focus on what gets measured. If organizations don’t measure service or if they weight productivity over service, employees won’t prioritize service either.
Organizational systems either encourage and reinforce an emphasis on service—or they don’t. To make customer service part of the organizational culture, you may need to collaborate internally to integrate service standards into performance evaluation (annual reviews). Work with organizational leaders, human resources staff, and supervisors to determine ways to incentivize employees to prioritize service—give them a reason to want to deliver quality service.
I recently encountered an employee incentive that (possibly inadvertently) enhanced the customer service experience. Sitting one row behind the first-class cabin on a Friday evening flight with only two attendants, I overheard the first-class attendant offer his help for beverage service to the main cabin attendant. They began working together swiping credit cards and serving alcoholic beverages. Thinking myself funny, I asked the first-class attendant if he was working on commission now? I wasn’t expecting his answer: “Yes. We get credits for every in-flight purchase.” Maybe he would have offered his help either way, but the service level for the main cabin certainly benefited from increased speed. How is your organization encouraging or discouraging exceptional service? Is your organization sending a clear message that it values quality customer service?
Focus on Personal Action Planning
Although there is much that you and your organizational partners can do to extend the focus on service outside of the workshop, there is also a lot the participants can do themselves. Two of the workshops (one-day and two-day) have action planning built into them. These action plans help participants set goals and identify specific actions they will take back at their jobs to apply the learning. Don’t skip over action planning activities thinking that participants can do them on their own time. Most participants, even those who want to dedicate time to action planning, won’t make time to do it after the workshop ends.
Once action plans are created, reinforce the plans by following up with email reminders, requests for specific examples of actions taken that you may share with future workshop participants, or even creating a display area or technology-enabled sharing site where post-workshop accomplishments are posted. The action plan activities in this volume’s workshops integrate accountability partners. Encourage participants to support each other as they work to improve their skills and achieve their goals.
Continue to Offer Learning Opportunities
Provide additional workshops that align with both the organization’s service standards and participants’ skill development needs to enhance service delivery. Skills to consider include active listening, phone etiquette, time management, conflict resolution, product knowledge (specifically, product benefits versus their features), and email effectiveness. Look at your service standards for ideas, ask managers for input on employees’ strengths and developmental areas, and review your needs analysis for direction.
Informal lunch-and-learn events can reinforce critical learning points, create opportunities to trouble-shoot additional participant challenges, or even pull select objectives and associated learning activities from other workshop agendas in this volume for a 60-minute event that keeps attention and focus on continuous improvement. An alternative quick-format option is a “bag-and-brag” event in which you ask participants to bring a bagged lunch and brag about how their team is implementing the learning. Follow-up sessions could be done in person or virtually through teleconferencing, webinars, and other online community tools.
Create an Open and Encouraging Environment for Quality Customer Service
Culture change can be a slow and challenging process, but it is well worth the effort because customer service is one of the most impactful aspects of an organization culture. One way to support behavior change is for employees to see and hear actions and messages from executive leadership, managers, and each other that support the ideas communicated during the training program. Consider inviting senior leaders to a lunch-and-learn to convey how critical customer service is to the mission of the organization. Or video their messages and distribute through email or a blog.
The right words at the right time can do a lot to inspire self-reflection and action or to renew a person’s focus. Actively collect meaningful messages to share from a variety of sources such as books, blogs, and websites. Here are two I saw on display in an organization recently:
• “Change is never painful; only resistance to change is painful.” —Buddha
• “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” —Colin Powell
But don’t be limited by the notoriety of who said it; great quotes come from all over. A participant in a recent workshop quoted herself in an email signature line: “Even when you’re tired, frustrated, and disappointed, getting back up and starting over is the best thing to do. Consistency is required.”
Find places to display meaningful messages that will be seen by participants and other employees. Get creative. Hallway whiteboards, conference rooms, the signature line of your email, and the footer of a handout or agenda for a lunch-and-learn can all be opportunities to encourage and affirm people.
Your willingness to remain in contact with participants after the workshop will also send a message of encouragement. Share your email address and invite continued contact. Don’t worry about being inundated with messages; in my experience, only some of your participants will reach out for clarification, questions, or feedback. Your sustained support and interest will enhance the learning experience for those who decide to connect and seek your coaching.
Key Points
• Improving customer service skills is a journey—not an event.
• Involve managers early and frequently to derive exponential gain from your investment in training events. They are critical to achieving organizational change.
• Be creative and consistent in promoting customer service as an area of attention. Maintain a focus on the topic to inspire employees to do the same.
What to Do Next
• Create your communication plan and select specific strategies to engage managers. To be most efficient, consider these two elements simultaneously. How can one support the other? Streamline efforts and lower the threshold that could otherwise prevent managers from taking action.
• Select one or two of the remaining follow-up ideas. Be realistic about what is achievable with the resources available to you, and implement the most meaningful strategies in support of your next workshop.
• Follow through on your follow-up plan. Making a plan is one thing. Taking action on it is another. Demonstrate your commitment to your participants’ behavior change by continuing on the journey with them long after the workshop is completed.
Additional Resources
Broad, M. L., and J. W. Newstrom. (1992). Transfer of Training: Action-Packed Strategies to Ensure High Payoff From Training Investment. New York: Basic Books.
Olivero, G., K. Bane, and R. Kopelmann. (1997). “Executive Coaching As a Transfer of Training Tool: Effects on Productivity in a Public Agency.” Public Personnel Management 26(4).