What value do you put on training? What value do you put on Customer Service? What value do you put on Customer Service training?
It is not easy to put a value on such activities, so how can you calculate the increased value (or not) of trying to make it better?

Would you have got a better Return on Investment in training (ROI) if you had invested in more people, or more equipment, or more training? Not easy to answer if you haven't got a baseline to work from in the first place.

Such questions were being asked by the Customer Service team of Surrey Police without getting the kind of answers that helped justify investment.

Karen Morris, Customer Service Manager for Surrey Police's Operational Communications department, explains: "We handle over a million and a half calls every year and are measured on how well we deal with those calls. We are always looking at ways of improving the service we offer and wanted to find a way of putting some objective measures in place so we could put a value on our work. This would then give us the ability to target specific areas for improvement and justify the investment. In researching how we could best achieve these objectives we discovered a seminar being run by 3C Associates on 'How to measure the Return on Investment in Training' . The seminar focused on how intangible benefits of training can be quantified and presented at Board level."

3C Associates based the seminar on their HATS™ (Human AsseT Statements) programme - a method of measuring a company's financial return on investment in training. The HATS™ programme identifies the measurements and metrics necessary to calculate the real value of training and the benefit that can be delivered back to the business.

Hedda Bird , Managing Director of 3C explains: "Finding practical approaches to measuring ROI on training is fast becoming the critical ' must do' for those responsible for people development. The HATS™ programme is the result of research into realistic methods of valuing the impact of training on an organisation. We have particularly focused on how intangible benefits of training can be quantified and presented at Board level."

One of the key ingredients of the HATS™ programme is the ‘Line of Sight' approach that takes Financial Performance as a primary objective and in turn examines Organisational Goals, Business Goals, Work Processes and finally identifies the Training Needs necessary to support the Business Plan.

Surrey Police now had a baseline and a monetary value with which to measure the success, or otherwise, of their service improvement programme. After each ‘improvement' that specific element of the service is re-assessed and the ‘value' recalculated. An improvement in service would see the share value increase and any deterioration reduce.

Hedda explains: 'Surrey Police is now in a position to make investment decisions based on an agreed value and justify that expenditure. In due course they will be able to objectively measure the results and gain agreement as to whether the notional share value of £1 has increased or decreased."

Karen comments: "Like most organisations we have a tight budget and want to make certain that we use it wisely and get value for money. With 3C's advice and guidance we are now in a position to make decisions based on objective measures. And of course justify those decisions as and when necessary."

Surrey Police is also able to measure the effectiveness of any specific initiative to improve performance and judge the value and ROI in training they have achieved.

The 3C approach is based on skills transfer which means that Karen is now able to use the HATS™ system with only occasional reference to 3C. As Karen observes: “The benefit of working with 3C is that I can take advantage of their wider industry experience and knowledge which helps me in the development of the metrics and measurements that are relevant to my organisation.

Hedda concludes: "For as long as ROI calculations focus on cost savings it will be very hard for Customer Service and Training Departments to win the support they need to add value. Using the HATS™ approach they can start to focus on the Returns they will make from investing in improving customer satisfaction, increasing retention and adding genuine value."

For more information contact 3C Associates on 01491 411 544 or by email.