One of my favorite quotes by the late Zig Ziglar is – “The only thing worse than training an employee and having them leave, is to not train them, and have them stay.“
It can be expensive to attract new shoppers to your business. What is also costly is attracting new team members to join your organization. There are of course the hard costs, like placing ads on recruiting sites, the time to interview, new uniforms, nametags, etc. The most expensive part of hiring a new person is the training. Because of this, many companies often skirt around this, and hope that on-the-job-training will be sufficient. The pitfalls of this method is that your most expensive new investment will only be trained on situations that they encounter in their first few days on the job. (We have all seen those rockstars come in, who are doing so well, that we turn them loose right away) What happens when they encounter a new situation is that they will use their best judgement. In many cases, it turns out ok, but in others, it can be a very impactful learning experience. Typically the biggest impact is to your bottom line, as you are stuck paying the bill to make up for your new hire’s “learning experience”. Are you paying to repaint someone’s car because your new painter didn’t realize that wind can impact their paint sprayer? Are you buying someone a new dress because you used the wrong cleaning method? Are you paying someone’s medical bill because they had a reaction to your product?
If you spend the time to create a business, spend the effort to properly train your team. Your long term success will be greater when your team is empowered, but it is critical that they have a solid foundation. I always stress with my teams that if they feel they may be on the verge of telling a guest or shopper that they can’t do something, they need to ask themselves “What would Aaron do?”. At a minimum, if you have someone that will be working with customers, train them on customer service. We have a very affordable option, that is engaging, actionable, and memorable at the BWI Learning Center. Remember – You will either exceed a customer’s expectations, or you will fail to meet them. There is no such thing as simply meeting expectations. I know I would much rather exceed them. Click here to check out all of the available courses in the BWI learning center. I highly recommend “Exceeding Customer Expectations” for everyone in your organization. It is important for leaders to also receive training, so they can support their teams in serving your customers.
Inspired with Aaron 