Why Your Client Relations Team Keeps Disappointing Even After Endless Training
Not long ago, I was stuck in yet another mind-numbing customer service conference in Perth, enduring to some expert drone on about the value of “surpassing customer requirements.” Typical talk, same tired buzzwords, same absolute gap from reality.
I suddenly realised: we’re approaching customer service training completely backwards.
Most workshops commence with the assumption that bad customer service is a knowledge problem. Simply when we could train our people the correct approaches, everything would magically improve.
Here’s the thing: with nearly two decades training with businesses across multiple states, I can tell you that techniques isn’t the challenge. The problem is that we’re demanding employees to provide psychological work without recognising the cost it takes on their emotional state.
Allow me to clarify.
Client relations is basically psychological work. You’re not just solving technical problems or processing transactions. You’re taking on other people’s anger, controlling their stress, and magically preserving your own psychological stability while doing it.
Conventional training entirely overlooks this aspect.
Rather, it concentrates on basic exchanges: how to address customers, how to use positive language, how to stick to company procedures. All important things, but it’s like training someone to drive by only explaining the theory without ever letting them touch the water.
Here’s a classic example. A while back, I was working with a large telecommunications company in Adelaide. Their service quality numbers were abysmal, and executives was baffled. They’d invested massive amounts in thorough education courses. Their staff could recite company policies flawlessly, knew all the correct scripts, and performed excellently on simulation scenarios.
But once they got on the calls with real customers, everything fell apart.
The reason? Because genuine customer interactions are messy, charged, and packed of factors that won’t be covered in a procedure document.
Once someone calls screaming because their internet’s been broken for 72 hours and they’ve missed vital work calls, they’re not concerned in your upbeat welcome. They demand genuine acknowledgment of their anger and instant solutions to fix their situation.
Most client relations training teaches people to stick to procedures even when those protocols are entirely unsuitable for the context. It causes fake conversations that anger customers even more and leave team members experiencing helpless.
For this Adelaide organisation, we scrapped the majority of their current training course and commenced over with what I call “Psychological Truth Training.”
Before training responses, we showed psychological coping skills. Rather than focusing on company policies, we focused on understanding client feelings and responding suitably.
Essentially, we taught staff to identify when they were internalising a customer’s anger and how to emotionally shield themselves without appearing cold.
The results were instant and remarkable. Client happiness ratings rose by over 40% in eight weeks. But additionally significantly, staff satisfaction got better remarkably. People genuinely began liking their jobs again.
Something else major issue I see constantly: workshops that handle each customers as if they’re sensible individuals who just require better communication.
That’s wrong.
Following extensive time in this industry, I can tell you that approximately a significant portion of customer interactions involve people who are basically unreasonable. They’re not upset because of a valid concern. They’re having a bad time, they’re coping with private problems, or in some cases, they’re just unpleasant humans who enjoy causing others experience uncomfortable.
Traditional customer service training won’t ready people for these situations. Instead, it maintains the myth that with adequate understanding and skill, every client can be converted into a pleased customer.
That puts enormous burden on customer service teams and sets them up for disappointment. When they are unable to solve an interaction with an difficult client, they blame themselves rather than realising that some situations are simply unfixable.
A single company I worked with in Darwin had implemented a policy that customer service staff were not allowed to end a call until the customer was “entirely pleased.” Seems reasonable in concept, but in practice, it meant that people were regularly stuck in lengthy calls with people who had no intention of becoming satisfied regardless of what was provided.
It created a environment of stress and inadequacy among support staff. Employee satisfaction was astronomical, and the few people who stayed were burned out and resentful.
I changed their policy to include clear protocols for when it was okay to courteously end an pointless call. That meant showing employees how to identify the indicators of an difficult person and providing them with language to professionally withdraw when appropriate.
Service quality actually got better because employees were allowed to dedicate more productive time with customers who genuinely required help, rather than being tied up with individuals who were just looking to complain.
At this point, let’s talk about the major problem: output measurements and their impact on client relations quality.
Nearly all companies assess customer service performance using measurements like contact numbers, standard conversation time, and closure percentages. These metrics directly conflict with delivering quality customer service.
Once you instruct customer service people that they have to process specific quantities of calls per day, you’re essentially telling them to hurry customers off the line as quickly as possible.
This results in a essential conflict: you need quality service, but you’re rewarding rapid processing over quality.
I worked with a significant financial institution in Sydney where customer service representatives were mandated to handle interactions within an typical of 4 minutes. 240 seconds! Try describing a complicated account situation and offering a complete solution in 240 seconds.
Can’t be done.
Consequently was that people would alternatively rush through conversations missing adequately understanding the issue, or they’d pass clients to several other departments to escape long conversations.
Service quality was terrible, and representative morale was worse still.
We partnered with leadership to modify their performance system to emphasise on customer satisfaction and first-call success rather than quickness. Certainly, this meant fewer contacts per day, but customer satisfaction rose significantly, and staff pressure amounts decreased considerably.
This point here is that you won’t be able to divorce client relations quality from the business systems and measurements that control how staff operate.
After all these years of working in this space, I’m convinced that support doesn’t come from about educating staff to be interpersonal absorbers who take on constant quantities of public mistreatment while smiling.
Quality support is about creating organizations, processes, and workplaces that empower skilled, properly equipped, emotionally resilient employees to resolve genuine problems for legitimate people while preserving their own professional dignity and your company’s standards.
All approaches else is just wasteful theater that allows companies appear like they’re handling customer service problems without actually resolving the real problems.

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