Teaching them just…Service and then…

Teaching them just …just like we learn

Some think that teaching is easy. Why it’s just a matter of telling the trainee what they don’t already know. But effective teaching is much more than reciting what they need to know and then calling it good.

First it largely involves understanding human nature. And that requires acknowledging that until any of us understand why something needs to be done in a particular way, we’re prone to pretty much ignore whatever it is we’re being taught – even if that trainer just told us that it was “really important”.

So step one in training that new operator is explaining that if dishes are properly pre-scraped, they won’t have to empty and clean that wash tank as often. Or why properly loading that laundry wash wheel will mean getting more linens cleaner faster and having fewer rewashes. In summary it’ll make their lives easier!

And that last point really can’t be overstated since we’re all a lot more likely to do pretty much anything well after we both see it in our interest and understand the “why”.

With those basics covered then we have to demonstrate the task by doing it slowly – while we explain exactly what we’re doing as we go. And then we let the trainee do it and offer both encouragement and any critique that’s needed.

And once may not enough so be prepared to (patiently) demonstrate the step again and then give it another try with the operator.

 

Service and then…There’s what’s real

A lot of businesses love to tout their great customer service. But all too often it’s just a slogan with little action to actually back it up. Maybe what we all ought to focus on is something a bit less broad. Maybe that more narrow idea is just really good basic customer service.

The hard truth is a lot of businesses would benefit by just doing what they said they’d do.

That can start with just making it as easy as possible for our customers to contact us. And that’s as simple as answering that call immediately rather than letting it go to voice mail for attention later in the day. Or perhaps we should address that text about some minor issue immediately, not later.

In the end what basic customer service comes down to is pretty much the golden rule of “Do unto others as you’d like to be done unto you”.

Not to overstate the obvious that means showing up to fix that leak as we promised…dealing with that yellowing condition that they’d asked us to remedy. What a lot of businesses need is fewer fluffy slogans and more basic delivery of the reasons customers bought in the first place.