THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF CUSTOMER SERVICE TRAINING

Every business — be it a multi-billion-dollar enterprise or a small café in a popular tourist destination must focus on customer service and customer experience. Customer experience is part of a bigger sub-set that incorporates customer service in it and is instrumental in determining the growth and success of a business. In a world that’s increasingly focused on social media interactions; a reputation built over years can be tarnished in just one fleeting moment. Thus, it becomes critical for organizations to create an efficient and effective customer service team that responds to customer requests properly and resolves customer complaints with ease.

Investing In Customer Service Training

Here are some interesting stats from the world of customer service and customer experience.

• Companies annually lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service. — New Voice Media
• A customer is 4x more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service-related, versus price or product-related. — Bain & Co.
• Consumers are 2x more likely to share their bad customer service experiences than they are to talk about positive experiences. — American Express
• Customer churn is attributed to the poor quality of customer service. — Accenture
• 73% of customers leave because they are dissatisfied with customer service, but companies think just 21% leave for this reason. — Oracle
• Over 35% of customers expect to be able to contact the same customer service representative on any channel. — Zendesk

These stats clearly demonstrate the value that consumers place on the customer service that they receive in determining the overall customer experience. Zendesk has an interesting research report on the impact of customer service on customer lifetime value and associated sales, which gives us greater insight into the value of investing in customer service training.

As organizations grow, business-models change, and begin serving customers across the world, the focus on creating the ‘perfect’ customer experience assumes great significance. In the world of retail or dining — ambience, quality of the product, personalized service, valet assistance, and pricing of the product are key parameters that determine the customer experience. The fascinating world of hi-tech products and service delivery is not very different. One may not actually meet the client or end-user directly. But organizations would still have to guide the buyer/end-user over phone or Skype-chat. This is the reason why more and more organizations are realizing the importance of customer service training and are investing heavily in training their employees.

Best Practices in Customer Service Training

Know your product/service inside-out, so you can help your customer service team respond to the queries raised by existing and prospective customers. Everyone might be not lucky enough to get a strong team to start operations. Hence it is important to create a strong culture of learning that helps train new-hires to become proficient in customer service. Let us examine some of the other best practices in greater detail.

Learn what your Customers Want

It is important to understand what customers expect out of your product and service. Once you have this in place then you will be able to chalk out and structure an effective customer service training program for your team.

Focused Training Delivers Results

Generic training no longer holds good. For every role and every product/service that your team handles; design and deliver relevant training content. Unless the training is customized as per needs no amount of training will help beyond a specific point.

No On-the-Job Training

Old-school business leaders often believe in the adage of ‘throw them to the wolves and let them learn’. In other words, get a bunch of freshly minted graduates and let them learn the ropes on the job. This can backfire in customer service. One wrong handling of a customer-request may result in irreparable damage. So, train your staff effectively before you let them handle customer service requests.

Use Bite-Sized Learning

We have mentioned this several times and continue to believe in the value that bite-sized learning delivers. It is easier to build and deploy and offers greater retention of learning. Structure your customer service training into easily accessible learning nuggets for maximum impact. Also remember to offer spaced learning by repeating the learning nuggets at regular intervals to refresh the memory of your learners. The other crucial point to remember is to keep your training content updated based on changes to the product/service and data on changing preferences of your customers.

What Not to DO?

Never create your content in silos. Keep all stakeholders involved and get feedback to help design relevant training content. Keep your team motivated and take a personal interest in their growth. Remember happy employees drive organizational growth and change. Do not schedule training sessions on a Friday or weekends it drives out any interest that learners may have.

Do you have any points to add or share on customer service training? Share your suggestions in the ‘Comments’ section.

Partner With Origin

Are you looking for a trusted partner to create customer service training programs for your organization? Partner with Origin Learning and let us help you create effective and result-driven eLearning solutions. Write to us at info@originlearning.com with your requirements.