News: Customer Service/Care
Sales staff to undergo 'experience-based training'
14 July 2008
Experienced-based training, featuring activities such as orienteering, is being implemented by bosses at retail giant Phones 4u in a bid to overhaul sales and customer care.
According to representatives for the firm, members of its salesforce are to be sent on the tailored training courses as part of a "service-based strategy" which will be followed up with continuous staff workshops.
"Being an independent specialist retailer, customers have a right to expect a higher degree of product knowledge," Phones 4u's operations director, Tom Shorten, remarked to Mobile Today.
"The training will be very experienced-based," he continued.
"For instance the navigation specialists may have to go orienteering using navigation phones to learn more about how they work."
It has been speculated the sales and customer care-focused training drive is a response to a six-month investigation into allegations of mis-selling being carried out by communications regulator Ofcom.
The 80-day project will see 3,200 sales consultants sent on training courses to enable them to become specialists in particular areas of expertise including navigation and imaging.
Consequently, sales staff who fail to hit 'customer excellence' targets will only receive a fraction of their commission bonus, while managers face losing up to half of theirs if a given store performs poorly. 
