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One of the keys to good customer service is offering front-line employees the necessary training. At many companies, customer service training is seen as a onetime event. Once the trainer leaves, the workbook is filled in, or the online course is completed, the experience fades away, with no attempt made to measure its impact. Customer service training experts say that’s a big mistake. “Most owners of growing businesses want and need to get the biggest bang for their buck on expenditures, and customer service training should be no exception,” says Drew Stevens, PhD, author of Split Second Customer Service.

How return on investment is measured will depend on what goals you set when you initiate training. In some cases, it might be improvements in sales and/or profits. In others, it might be measurable changes in employee behavior — e.g., the number of rings before a phone is answered, the amount of time spent on customer service calls, etc. — or improvements in soft skills or other intangibles.

Although it’s difficult to measure ROI with the level of accuracy achievable in some other areas of running a business, researchers continue to explore the impact of customer service training on customer loyalty, as measured by customer retention, and a company’s customer service standards. Customer satisfaction research by Richardson, Texas–based KnowledgeBase Marketing Inc. concluded that investments in customer retention (such as money spent on customer service training) provide a far greater return than investments in customer acquisition. The research also showed that, compared with other customers, long-term loyal customers:

• Buy more per year
• Buy higher-priced options
• Buy more often
• Are less price-sensitive
• Are less costly to serve
• Have a higher lifetime value