I Know Why Your Customer Service SUCKS

That's because I left my high-paying executive job, worked five low-wage frontline jobs, and experienced the problem firsthand. Here's what I learned about fixing it.

- SCOTT GILBEY

IF you've ever worked a minimum wage job, you've surely watched a lot of training videos. Narrated training videos are a key component of Learning Management Systems, or LMS, and they're how you learn your job.

I am now ashamed to admit this, but I made a lot of those videos. I spent years in the executive suite of an international company, working as a global senior vice president of customer experience, where I directed and produced many training videos. I thought they were smart and helpful. I assumed they increased efficiency.

And then I left my well-paying job and became a frontline worker making $16 an hour at a big-box retailer in Florida. I spent my first two weeks watching LMS videos, which trained me on the art of customer service and how my store functioned, and then I was thrust out into the store itself. That's when I realized: Most of this stuff didn't help me at all. The videos got me "lawyered up" with cautions and "branded up" with soothing marketing messages, but they left me incapable of doing anything useful on the job.

All I kept hearing from customers was, Where's my order? I need a refund! What do you mean you don't know?

After 10 weeks, I decided to cut the phrase "In Training" from my name badge. It was starting to feel embarrassing. For how long could I possibly be in training? I showed this to my coworker Jim-a guy I had met while hunched over a shared laptop in the corner of a manager's office, watching yet another LMS video together-but Jim laughed and said I was crazy.

"I'm staying 'in training' forever," he told me. "That way, I don't have to explain to customers why I don't know what I'm doing."