It's not as difficult a formula as you learned in trigonometry class, but there are definitely a number of steps to go through to build a satisfied customer base. Beyond the basics ? having a good product or service to begin with, being honest and dependable in all your dealings, having employees with character and people skills ? it comes down to good training, the type that is ongoing and covers all the bases. A corporate training library could be just the missing ingredient that your business needs to give your employees the edge in an ever more competitive marketplace.

If you have the time and the talent, you can develop your own corporate training library. Although the terminology suggests a room with a card catalog and a librarian, the fact is that most of today's corporate training libraries are ?virtual? in nature and are accessed from a computer over the company network. And, on second thought, there is no reason that you couldn't dedicate a room or office, if one is available, to being a library or ?learning lounge.? Whether virtual, a real room or some combination of the two, the most important thing, of course, is what the library contains.

The real deal

A network-based, computer-accessible corporate training library can make use of many kinds of documents and files. You can have text documents of various kinds, detailing the company products and services, and those documents can easily have hyperlinks embedded to take you (via your web browser) to additional resources. Both online and network-resident resources can be videos, audio/video clips, slideshows, presentations and marketing materials. Printed items can be turned into the popular PDF (Portable Document Format) for reading on-screen or printing hard copy.

Generally speaking, the topics you want to cover are the same ones your competitors do ? how to keep the customers satisfied so they return again, as well as recommend your company to others. A key aim of customer service training is to learn how to listen, to understand what it is the customers are telling you, in words, action or inaction, so that you can improve the experience for them now, and for others in the future.

Help on the way

It may be that it makes more economic sense for you to obtain your corporate training library from one of the many companies that specialize in employee training programs. There is a great deal of material that is common to all firms, and that can be successfully deployed for training your own employees. Some training firms have various ways of presenting the same material, allowing you to use videos, hyperlinked pages and PowerPoint presentations depending on your own needs.

More exciting still are the ways in which training materials can be customized for your particular company. The most effective training library, of course, is one that gets used, and you can increase the odds of that by making sure that the training is relevant to your situation, communicates effectively with your employees and encourages them to apply themselves in an ongoing manner. You can help the process by keeping it fresh and exciting, and educating your workforce as to the interconnectedness among quality product and service, informed and helpful employees and satisfied customers.

Training about the training

If you want your training library to be used, it needs to be accessible to various employees in various ways, and at all times, too. It is important to train your employees about using the training library ? and, yes, that really does mean offering ?training about training.? You want to show your employees that the training materials are accessible in a variety of ways, from web browsers to hard copy, from DVD-based presentations to mp3 audio files (and ?podcasts?) that can be downloaded to an iPod.

Making the training available is the next most important thing to making it effective. Its effectiveness will be based on how well it helps your employees learn to understand and practice good customer service, specifically attuned to the nature of your particular business. Again, this can be accomplished on your own, or you can avail yourself of the assistance of professional training companies. The main thing is that you and your employees make customer service knowledge as important as product knowledge, and communicate this to your customers in word and deed.

Whichever route you take to establishing (and using) a corporate training library, remember that your own, specific experience and expertise are just as important as the general lessons that all businesses need to learn. There is that foundation of common knowledge, and then there are the unique experiences that you and your employees have accrued over time. Both the general and the specific are essential to the creation of a comprehensive corporate training library, and it is through ongoing refinement and improvement that it will remain relevant (and essential) to your ongoing success.