Folks,

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this.. After having been in the Call Centre industry for almost a decade I personally have come to the conclusion that although customer service skills can be fine-tuned they are in fact inherent in an individuals personality/attitude. As such I find that particular industries attract the right people with the right attitude and therefore provide a good recruitment ground for call centres eg. Hospitality employees..

Am I alone in these thoughts?

The training industry holds these viewpoints,

Training if it is successful influences two factors, skills and knowledge. Weigh up your existing skills and knowledge, design your training to address the skill/knowledge gap, deliver the training and then conduct an evaluation to see what skills/knowledge have changed and to what degree. That's how a systematic training cycle works.
Behaviours and attitudes cannot be trained although they can be influenced slightly by training.
Personality cannot be trained at all and there is an interesting debate raging within the training fraternity over whether training can influence values/beliefs.
To answer your question, yes some people naturally have good communication skills or attentive skills or empathy etc. Some people have good learning skills and pick up training quicker.
Customer service skills have many parallels in retail, airlines and hospitality, frequently the training is similar although it has the added advantage of being able to read face to face body language.
Are you alone in these thoughts? No it is common for those outside training and HR depts to misunderstand what training can deliver and influence.