Great customer service pays. It leads to customer loyalty, increased profits, and a better brand image. Customer service is not just about gifts or coupons and promotional schemes. It involves putting customers’ needs first and making them feel good after they interact with your organization. Each customer-facing employee should know how to communicate with customers, what kind of words to use, and how to solve simple problems. A study published by Harvard Business Review found that buyers who have a positive experience with a brand are likely to spend as much as 140% more than average.1
“Buyers who have a positive experience with a brand are likely to spend as much as 140% more than average – HBR"
To deliver excellent customer service you need an expertly implemented customer service-training program. Following are key steps that will guide you through a robust customer service training program implementation.
Implementing a Customer Service Training Program: Key Steps
Set Clear Expectations
Before you begin training your customer service reps, they need to understand what good customer service means. Use videos and role-plays to show them what they’re expected to do, even if it is as basic as greeting customers with a smile. Once they know what’s expected of them, they will be able to implement good customer service a lot better and will also train faster.
Provide Real-world Training
There’s only so much you can do in a training environment, as nothing beats the real thing. Put customer service reps in a real-world simulation where they can be accessed on how well they could perform. These simulations should be as close to the real deal as possible with actual characters, issues, irate customers, sticky situations etc. This method ensures that they pick up the necessary skills on how to provide good customer service, while negative feedback means they either need further training, or that particular service rep isn’t the right fit for your establishment.
Provide Good Content on Your Offerings
Make sure that customer service reps have enough information they need to do their job well. If a service rep doesn't know the product or service well enough, a customer could become frustrated and disgruntled. The effectiveness of the training depends on the service rep’s ability to stay current and informed on all the products and services offered by their organization.
Actively quiz service reps on not only new offerings, but also on basic and long-standing products and services. Provide necessary materials so that they can study up on what the business provides, such as training tutorials, presentations, webinars, videos, demos etc. Online tools should be created to allow them to learn on-the-go, while allowing you to easily update that content and push it out to service reps no matter what their location.
Make the Training Engaging
Gamify the training program by introducing badges, levels and leaderboards and offer the right incentives for performance and achievements. This technique is important for fuelling employee motivation and engagement.
Continuous Learning
Encourage customer service agents to learn additional skills related to your business and industry, so that they can improve their ability to help your customers. You can offer online training certification courses for high performers as part of the customer service training program with focus on honing specific skills.
Treat Them Right
The stage for good customer service is set by how you treat your employees. When you communicate your expectations throughout the enterprise, in everything you do, you will build a culture of engagement around customer service that will grow sales and keep your customers happy. Simply put, the people behind these processes will determine their success or failure. The quality of your customer service will never exceed the quality of the people providing it.
For instance, Publix is a grocery store chain well known for its warm and friendly employees. Remember the viral photo of the store’s employee helping to tie the shoelace of an elderly customer?2 Publix is the largest employee-owned and most profitable company in the US3. The chain treats its employees well, offering career paths and stock options, creating a feeling of engagement in the brand that opens the way for everyday excellence in customer service.
Additional Tips to Make Training More Effective
There are some key factors that directly impact the quality and effectiveness of a training program:
Hire Right
It is not just about finding good talent, but about finding the right cultural fit for your organization. There is a direct connection between hiring the right customer service people and the quality of customer service delivered.
Listen to Your Customers
To increase customer satisfaction , focus on what customers actually need rather than only on promotional activities.
Dealing with the Unhappy
Quality of service is not just about managing the happy customers. The real test is when a customer service agent manages to resolve the issue and get a smile.
Validate with Customer Surveys
A survey will gauge the overall level of customer satisfaction, and also show how you stack up against competition. The results will help fine tune internal performance parameters.
Conclusion
Your customer service team is an integral part of the customer experience. Instead of putting untrained customer service reps at customer problems and hoping for the best, you need to spend more resources on proper training. Exceptional customer service isn’t something that comes naturally to most employees. Instead, it is a skill that must be learned, and it is the responsibility of the organization to supply the kind of high-quality customer service training necessary to provide customers with positive experiences. Once you’ve implemented the training program, make sure you check back on its impact. Customer service training is ongoing and your results need to be monitored over time. If something isn't working, adjust your approach.
References:
https://hbr.org/2014/08/the-value-of-customer-experience-quantified
