Q: How do you justify employee development when you’re trying to contain costs?

A: For many companies, training poses this conundrum.  As a result, when it’s time to cut budgets, training is one of the first things to go.  On the surface, this seems to make sense, which is why so many companies decide to forego training, but if you step back and look at it another way, the decision doesn’t seem as sound.  After all, how can any company successfully manage costs without well-trained employees? 

Best-in-class organizations provide, on average, 62 hours of training per contact center employee per year.  The reason is simple:  The investment pays off – especially in terms of growth.  There is a direct relationship between financial performance and training investment.  In fact, according to the Business Review, companies that invested an average of $1,595 per employee in training also experienced 24 percent higher gross profit margins.

On one hand, you could argue that companies that make more spend more.  On the other, business growth comes from selling new products or reaching new customers.  In either case, contact center employees need new skills to support this growth.  If customer service can’t keep up with product and customer changes, the business won’t keep its customers and won’t sustain its growth.

In general, companies that commit to regular training report a number of important benefits, both within the contact center and without:

Nobody stays on top without training.  It’s like a championship basketball team that doesn’t practice.  After a while, the team will stop winning.