I wrote about a frustrating experience with poor customer service (“It’s a training problem”) and was surprised how many people told me that I should have “outed” the company and that the Internet is the ultimate revenge. I was mindful of this when I read on the front page of the Boston Globe about how a “worried passenger” on a Peter Pan bus from Boston to New York videotaped the driver and posted it on YouTube.
The driver was breaking at least two company rules: using his cellphone and taking his hands off the steering wheel to tear tickets. The passenger called the bus company while on the bus, concerned about safety, and also tried to report it after the trip. Company officials are reportedly concerned not only about the safety issues on the bus but that the complaint did not reach them until the YouTube link was sent to them.
There can be a large gap between training and performance. One assumes that all companies teach policies, but determining that training was effective is hard, level 3 and 4 evaluations notwithstanding.
Enter irate – or scared – customers using social media: the ultimate revenge, as I was told. Not only is the training problem made apparent, but the person reporting the problem can get his or her proverbial 15 minutes of fame.
Is a performance problem really a training problem? I’ve taken mandatory compliance training both in the classroom and online and they tend to be dull and do little to enforce the importance of what is being taught. In general, I only referred back to the course material when I needed it: on-the-job training essentially. Perhaps the only benefit of my training was to teach me where to find information when I needed it.
With inspiration from my 10-year old daughter’s homework to locate and circle the twenty misspelled words in a page of text and spell them correctly, I redesigned how bus drivers are taught company policies. I decided to avoid on-the-job learning, especially delivered by mobile devices, since mobile device use is part of the problem.
Here is how my training would go. First, teach the rules. Then show video clips and challenge students to find the violated rules and identify what should have been done differently. Conclude the training by arming students with video cameras and sending them on bus rides. If any violations are detected, how much better if a trainee finds problems because then the driver and the trainee both learn in the process. As an added benefit, fresh videos are produced for the course. I can see Peter Pan’s training director winning awards for this – much more pleasant for all than having the company “outed”.