Success is based on building good relationships with your customers. Your technicians are the instrument, but also the face of your company. While they likely take a practical approach to restoration and cleanup, they also need good communication and customer service skills to interact with your customers. Developing a restoration training plan is the easiest way to develop their skills.

Why You Should Train Your Team

Restoration training will lead to fewer complaints and build better customer relationships. A satisfied customer is more likely to leave you a positive review and refer you to friends and family. This leads to more jobs and increased revenue.

Training can also boost employee confidence and customer satisfaction. Over time this leads to happier employees. Your employees become more invested in the business, improving productivity and decreasing turnover.

Creating a Restoration Training Plan

Before you can train your staff, you need to know your weaknesses. Review recent customer complaints and make notes about what type of improvements need to be made. Call a few recent customers and ask them about their experience. Let them know you’d like their honest feedback so you can improve your service.

Once you know your weak points, devise a restoration training plan for your employees. Every training plan will differ slightly, but you should focus on communication and customer service skills. Depending on your specific restoration industry or the growth plan for your company, you may also want to include technical education as well.

Training is about helping employees to do better, not about reprimanding them for past mistakes. While you can use past problems as training examples, present these issues in a positive way. Make your training as much about personal enrichment as about improving the business.

Don’t Waste Their Time

Identify specific areas where improvement is needed and focus only on skills that will help employees improve.

Use Practical Examples

Teach them tangible skills they can start using right away. Positive results will give them a sense of accomplishment and reinforce the value of restoration training.

Avoid Being Patronizing

A motivational and positive message shows you appreciate your employees and will help keep them invested in the process.

Choosing the Right Trainer

Choosing the right trainer is important to getting your employees to accept the message. The trainer set the tone, so your staff needs to be comfortable with that person. Depending on the exact customer service skills, you may even choose a few trainers.

While you may want to do some of the training yourself, consider having one of your technicians present some of the material as well. Your team may be more receptive to the material if it comes from a peer instead of the boss.

Block out time during your regular business schedule for the training. Whether it’s an hour every other day for a few weeks or a day-long training session, a dedicated training time ensures your team can focus. It also shows you value their time and attention.

Depending on what changes you need to make, you might even consider bringing in an outside trainer. If you go this route, make sure you sit in on those sessions yourself. This shows your dedication to learning as well, increasing the chances your staff will take the message to heart.

You may also consider sending your team to a training seminar or conference. While these usually do have a higher cost, they are effective tools for both teaching and showing that you value your employees’ growth.

Feedback and Follow Through

After the training, get feedback from both your employees and your trainers. Encourage everyone to speak openly about their experiences and listen with an open mind. This ensures they learned the intended communication skills and sets the stage for them to communicate more openly with you in the future.

Follow up with your staff a few weeks after the training for a second round of feedback to identify areas that may require additional training. Keep track of revenue growth and performance issues as well and share wins with your team to reinforce the training.

As you bring on new team members, make sure they receive communication and customer service training as well. Look at the strengths of other employees and ask them to work with your new hire on them.

Keep Your Well-Trained Team Busy

While restoration training will arm your team for success, it’s still hard to predict when you’ll get disaster mitigation and restoration calls. Keep your well-trained team busy with our exclusive mitigation and cleanup leads. While other lead generation companies send their leads to several partners, all of our leads are sent to just one partner.

We are always looking for quality partners for our water damage, fire restoration, plumbing, mold remediation, and biohazard cleanup leads. Our ideal candidates already have a successful business but are looking for a few more quality leads each week in order to help grow their company. Call 1-888-594-8381 to secure your area today.