 support for customers who call in or are contacted. This will require a caliber of sophistication in the customer service management systems area far above what most systems are capable of delivering today. Without the appropriate tools and the complete integration of the information required, the customer service group will not be able to perform up to the new standards. Chapter 22 Caliber of Personnel In addition to upgrading the level of sophistication in the customer services support software, the organization will also have to seriously upgrade the level of professionalism found within the ranks of the customer service staff. Training and Expertise Most organizations have already realized that providing serious training for customer service organizations is critical, but most of this training involves the mechanics of learning how to use the customer service software and how to execute corporate policy decisions. The new age customer service rep will need much more training. Regular doses of training about the company's products and how they are developed, how they work, who should be using them, and how to use them, need to be provided to the reps more frequently on an increasing and continuous basis. Indeed, the modern customer service rep will probably need several days of training per month, every month of the year. Workload and Quality of Customer Experience The very nature of the customer service rep's job must also change. Rewarding people to dispatch customers quickly is no way to create lasting, positive impressions. Key performance indicators that focus on high turnover are the opposite of what you want to accomplish. What you would want, instead, are KPIs that drive toward increasing the customer's contact with the customer service rep and increasing the comfort that the customer feels when calling customer service. This means that new ways of evaluating how customer service reps perform their jobs will have to be developed. Compensation for Customer Service Obviously, a customer service rep that