The Real Reason Your Customer Service Training Isn’t Working: A Brutal Assessment

Forget everything you’ve been told about client service training. After eighteen years in this industry, I can tell you that most of what passes for employee education in this space is total nonsense.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your employees already know they should be friendly to customers. They understand they should smile, say please and thank you, and fix complaints efficiently. What they don’t know is how to manage the emotional labour that comes with working with difficult people day after day.

A few years ago, I was working with a major telco company here in Sydney. Their customer satisfaction scores were dreadful, and leadership kept pumping money at traditional training programs. You know the type – role playing about greeting customers, memorising company guidelines, and endless workshops about “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.”

Complete waste of time.

The actual problem wasn’t that staff didn’t know how to be courteous. The problem was that they were exhausted from absorbing everyone else’s anger without any methods to guard their own wellbeing. Here’s the thing: when someone calls to rage about their internet being down for the third time this month, they’re not just upset about the service problem. They’re seething because they feel powerless, and your team member becomes the focus of all that accumulated emotion.

Most training programs entirely miss this mental aspect. Instead, they focus on surface-level approaches that sound good in concept but fail the moment someone starts shouting at your people.

Here’s what actually works: teaching your staff emotional regulation strategies before you even mention client relations techniques. I’m talking about relaxation techniques, emotional barriers, and most importantly, clearance to take breaks when things get too intense.

At that Sydney telco, we implemented what I call “Psychological Protection” training. Before focusing on scripts, we taught team members how to spot when they were taking on a customer’s emotional state and how to mentally distance themselves without seeming disconnected.

The results were incredible. Client feedback scores increased by 40% in three months, but more importantly, employee retention decreased by 50%. Turns out when your staff feel supported to manage challenging customers, they actually appreciate helping customers solve their problems.

Additionally that annoys me: the obsession with fake positivity. You know what I’m talking about – those training sessions where they tell employees to “always display a cheerful demeanor” regardless of the circumstances.

Total garbage.

People can sense fake positivity from a mile away. What they truly want is authentic concern for their situation. Sometimes that means acknowledging that yes, their situation genuinely is awful, and you’re going to do whatever it takes to assist them resolve it.

I remember working with a large retail chain in Melbourne where leadership had mandated that each customer interactions had to open with “Hello, thank you for choosing [Company Name], how can I make your day wonderful?”

Actually.

Think about it: you call because your pricey device broke down three days after the guarantee expired, and some unfortunate customer service rep has to fake they can make your day “wonderful.” It’s insulting.

We eliminated that script and changed it with basic authenticity training. Train your staff to really pay attention to what the client is saying, acknowledge their frustration, and then concentrate on actual help.

Customer satisfaction went up right away.

With decades of experience of training in this field, I’m sure that the biggest issue with customer service training isn’t the training itself – it’s the impossible expectations we put on customer-facing staff and the absolute absence of organisational support to resolve the root causes of bad customer service.

Fix those problems first, and your customer service training will really have a possibility to work.

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