You've sent your team through customer service training.

People seemed to like the training. It even feels like the team has a bit more energy than before, though you can't quite say for sure.

But you face a nagging question. Did the training really work?

Those post-training surveys don't seem like enough. Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation sounds interesting, but your executives don’t care about levels. They just want results.

This guide can help you.

There's no advanced math or exotic statistics. These are straightforward techniques that will be credible with your CEO. I've repeatedly used them to demonstrate the impact of customer service training to executives.

Why evaluate customer service training?

Measuring your customer service training programs allows you to answer the tough questions you’ll inevitably get from executives.

I hear these three questions most often:

• Does the training program work?

• How can we make it even more effective?

• Are there lessons that can be applied to other programs?

You can answer them all with a straightforward evaluation plan. Here's a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Identify expectations

Start by meeting with the person who asked for the customer service training. The goal of this meeting is to learn what they expect the training to accomplish.

It’s important you do this before the training.

This allows you to focus the training on achieving their objectives. It also give you a chance to build evaluation into your overall plan.

Don’t be afraid to press for specifics.

"Improve customer service" is too vague. Improve what, exactly? From where to where?

"We received some complaints" isn't measurable enough. "We need to reduce complaints by 10%" is getting somewhere somewhere.

Here are three questions I ask during this meeting:

1. Why do you want to do this training?

2. How will you know if this project is successful?

3. What do employees need to do as a result of this training?

Those answers will provide you with the foundation of your measurement plan. They will also help you improve the training.

I was working for a parking management company when I received a call from the CEO with an urgent request to deliver customer service training at one of our locations. The three questions helped me get more information.

This conversation made the evaluation plan crystal clear.

Notice my CEO didn’t care about the usual stuff that trainers obsess over measuring:

• Pre- and post-training quizzes.

• Training satisfaction surveys.

• Number of people completing the training.

This program had one simple goal: keep the contract.

The valet team needed to bring its average mystery shopper score from 78 points to 90 in order to do that.

This short video provides more information about gathering stakeholder expectations. There’s even a sample conversation with an executive who requested interviewing skills training.

Although the topic isn’t customer service, its reflects the same approach I’d use for any training program.

Step 2: Gather data

Gather data that will help you determine whether the training program achieved its goals.

Start this process before you do any training. Getting data ahead of time gives you a baseline you can use to evaluate your results later on.

Data collection was simple for the valet parking project:

1. The mystery shopper form provided specific standards the valets needed to meet.

2. Recent mystery shopper results provided a baseline for their performance.

3. Ongoing mystery shopper results allowed us to track the team’s progress.

Bonus tip: it's easiest to use data that's already being collected for something else. This can save you time, money, and effort since the data is already there.

Here are a few places you might look:

• Customer service surveys

• Quality assurance results

• Customer complaints (by volume and type of issue)

• Performance observations (observing employees serve customers)

• KPIs such as revenue, customer retention, or productivity

Step 3: Analyze data

Once the training is complete, the next step is to use the data you collected to determine whether the training program achieved its goals.

This process was straightforward with the valet parking contract.

Mystery shopping scores immediately improved and continued to trend upward. They averaged 94 points by the 30-day deadline, which was above the 90-point target.

The hotel general manager agreed not to cancel the contract as a result. Keeping the contract was the primary objective, so my CEO considered the project a success.

Some projects require you to dig a little deeper. This short video will give you more ideas on analyzing your data:

You can often identify additional insights from analyzing your data. The valet parking evaluation revealed two important lessons that could help the rest of the business.

First, the valet’s improved performance came as a direct result of the manager sharing more frequent updates with the team about client service expectations. This became a best practice that was shared with the other locations and was emphasized in our manager training program.

Second, our client’s complaint caused the executive overseeing the account to check in with the hotel general manager more frequently.

The CEO asked his executives to spend more time with other clients and ask them for feedback about our operations. This immediately paid dividends, as several executives discovered other unhappy clients who hadn't yet voiced their concerns.

Take Action

Measuring the impact of your customer service training gets a lot easier if you plan for measurement at the start of your project. Take time to find out the goals behind the training request, and then design a plan to evaluate whether those goals have been achieved.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can access my Measuring Learning Effectiveness course to get more in-depth techniques and examples.

Training course --> Measuring Learning Effectiveness

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