The Actual Reason Your Customer Service Training Falls Short: A Brutal Assessment

Forget everything you’ve been told about customer care training. Following two decades in this business, I can tell you that 85% of what passes for staff training in this space is total nonsense.

Let me be brutally honest: your staff already know they should be friendly to customers. They know they should smile, say please and thank you, and resolve complaints promptly. What’s missing is how to manage the mental strain that comes with interacting with problem clients repeatedly.

A few years ago, I was consulting with a major telco company here in Sydney. Their client happiness scores were awful, and management kept pouring money at conventional training programs. You know the type – role playing about saying hello, memorising company policies, and endless sessions about “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.”

Total rubbish.

The real issue wasn’t that employees didn’t know how to be courteous. The problem was that they were burned out from taking on everyone else’s anger without any strategies to guard their own mental health. Here’s the thing: when someone calls to vent about their internet being down for the fourth time this month, they’re not just upset about the service problem. They’re seething because they feel ignored, and your staff member becomes the recipient of all that accumulated feeling.

Most training programs completely ignore this psychological reality. Instead, they focus on surface-level techniques that sound good in principle but fall apart the moment someone starts shouting at your staff.

This is what really helps: teaching your people emotional regulation techniques before you even touch on customer interaction skills. I’m talking about relaxation techniques, boundary setting, and most importantly, authorisation to disengage when things get heated.

In that situation, we implemented what I call “Mental Shields” training. Instead of focusing on scripts, we taught staff how to identify when they were taking on a customer’s emotional state and how to psychologically step back without seeming cold.

The changes were incredible. Customer satisfaction scores improved by 40% in three months, but more importantly, employee retention fell by 50%. Apparently when your team feel protected to deal with problem interactions, they genuinely enjoy helping customers resolve their problems.

Additionally that drives me mad: the focus with fake positivity. You know what I’m talking about – those training sessions where they tell employees to “always display a positive attitude” regardless of the situation.

Complete nonsense.

People can feel forced enthusiasm from a mile away. What they actually want is authentic attention for their problem. Sometimes that means acknowledging that yes, their problem really does suck, and you’re going to do everything possible to assist them sort it out.

I recall working with a major store in Melbourne where executives had insisted on that all service calls had to begin with “Hello, thank you for choosing [Company Name], how can I make your day amazing?”

Actually.

Can you imagine: you call because your expensive device failed two days after the warranty ran out, and some poor customer service rep has to act like they can make your day “wonderful.” That’s offensive.

We scrapped that policy and replaced it with straightforward honesty training. Train your team to actually listen to what the customer is telling them, validate their problem, and then concentrate on practical solutions.

Customer satisfaction improved right away.

Following years in the industry of training in this area, I’m sure that the most significant challenge with support training isn’t the education itself – it’s the unattainable demands we place on front-line teams and the complete absence of organisational support to address the underlying issues of poor customer experiences.

Fix those problems first, and your support training will actually have a chance to work.

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