CS Training in Government Organizations

I’m a subscriber to BidSync, which is a service for people who want to bid on government contracts. I often see RFPs posted for customer service training, and that is certainly terrific. My concern is that tradition classroom training alone doesn’t “stick.”

We all know that every group of people who attend training is divided into three personalities – the ones that can’t wait to go and try something new; the ones that may not really want to go, but are keeping an open mind; and the ones that really don’t want to be there at all. So at best, we have a shot at a few hours of saying something that may or may not “stick.”

For those of you looking for trainings, keep in mind that trainings are most effective if they are divided into this ratio 25:25:50. The first 25% of time dedicated to any new skill should happen before a person ever enters the classroom. This could be reading a white paper on the subject or conducting some reasearch or completing a related project. The next 25% is the actually classroom time. In the case of customer service skills classes, the ones I teach are most often half day. That’s 3.5 hours to help someone with skill development. It’s not much time. and there is little one-one attention.

The next 50% is key -it’s the following. Weekly/monthly email tips, brown bag lunches – you can get creative here – this is where you make the learning “stick.”

Have you all had the opportunity to do trainings in this way? What were your experiences?