Customer Service Training refers to teaching employees the knowledge, skills and competencies required to increase customer satisfaction. Any employee who interacts with the customer is a candidate for customer service training

Training typically includes greeting the customer, questioning to understand the customer’s need or problem, listening, confirming understanding, responding with value, using positive language, eliminating jargon, concluding the phone or face-to-face interaction, dealing with angry customers, and the importance of body language and tone of voice.

According to Research done by Microsoft, 95% of consumers said that customer service is important to them when choosing and remaining loyal to a brand. 60% of customers stop doing business with a company after one poor experience.

In another study done by PWC, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer service experience. 

10 Reasons Your Staff Can Benefit From Customer Service Training

1.Professionalism

Employees who are properly trained and demonstrate professional customer service skills, can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. This helps the business retain customers and improve profits. It costs less to retain loyal customers than to acquire new ones.

In addition, satisfied customers are more open to additional sales messages and are likely to refer others to that business.

2.Good Listening Skills

Good listening skill is something that is rare and very much needed in all fields of work. Customer Service Training will train staff to be a good listener which will benefit the staff on their personal level. Good listening skills and questioning techniques can shorten the interaction time with customers.

This allows an organisation to serve more customers in less time, possibly with fewer staff. However, consumers are intelligent and do not want to feel rushed, when they have questions. The Harvard Business Review recommends that you listen in such a way that you are able to ask relevant questions.

So be proactive and make sure every consumer feels they are being heard and not just “listened” to.

3.Knowledge 

Training all employees using consistent customer service skills, allows them to have a common process and language when assisting customers. From Customer Service Training, staff will benefit in getting all the knowledge about handling every type of situation with customers.

Staff will know exactly what they need to say and how they need to satisfy the customer with exactly what the customer wants to listen. This allows the business to brand their interaction of excellent service to the customer, which adds value to the business.

4.Value 

When employees feel valued, they value their customers. This could be a result of effective customer service skills training, which not only benefits the employee, but will enhance the relationships with the customers.

Customer Service Staff are the people who are in direct contact with your customer. So it is very important to invest in them and value them so that they can spread the same. These important factors can help to increase employee loyalty, reduce employee turnover, and lower productivity costs.

5.Respect 

In the film The Green Mile, Tom Hanks’ character is a death-row prison guard, charged with guarding several men during their final days before being led to execution. The men he guards commit heinous crimes. You could certainly make the argument that none of them deserved to be treated respectfully and yet he treats them with dignity and respect. It may be the only time in their lives when they have been treated that way

Customer Service Training benefits the staff by teaching them to maintain dignity and respect in every situation even when you are losing your patience. Your end-user or other customers may be acting poorly, but you can choose to maintain your dignity and self-respect.

Remember to use your manners, keep your voice calm and dont take the other person’s bad behaviour personally. It’s about holding yourself to a higher standard.

6.Confidence 

Training builds confidence. You can spot a front line team member who hasn’t been trained from the parking lot. They avoid eye contact, they make excuses and they don’t engage with enthusiasm.

Confident employees make better decisions and are more outgoing as well as they are more likely to give that little discretionary effort when it comes to serving customers. 

7.Competence 

Training builds competence. Training tells employees how to do things and ensures they do them in the right way. This may seem very basic but most service miscues either come down to a lack of training or lack of follow through.

Either team members didn’t know how to do something properly or they chose not to do it in the intended manner. Competence is not only a catalyst for quality but for consistency and for speed of service. 

8.Engagement 

Staff can benefit from customer service training because it builds engagement. Organisations that create a culture of engagement provide great training. Training is a promise you make to candidates when you select them to join your team.

New employees expect some things of you as a leader. They expect you to on board them well, provide them with the skills and training, and refresh those skills regularly. When employees feel like training is a priority, it increases their confidence in the overall organisation.

9.Behaviour 

Customer service training builds behaviours. Training can codify the behaviours that you are looking for. When you are aligned with the purpose of their work and they understand the ‘why’ behind those daily tasks then training can translate that ‘why’ into ‘how’.

The sum of your overall brand and your customer’s perception will always be directly related to the behaviours of your team. You can dial those in with proper training and corresponding recognition events.

10.Empathy 

Have you ever been on the phone with customer service and wanted to scream ‘Put Yourself In My Position!’? You were asking the other person for empathy in customer service. When you empathize with another person, you try to imagine how you would feel if you were them. 

Empathy is a powerful tool which your staff can benefit from customer service training. It is something for changing relationships for the better, even short-term relationships such as when you are dealing with upset, embarrassed, or angry end-users or other customers. Customer service is more than just solving technical problems. It’s also about building good relationships with customers and coworkers, even very short-term relationships. 

5 Qualities of Great Customer Service Managers

Those who manage customer-facing teams need a broad range, not only quality but skills. They need to be great at motivating, coaching, and managing their teams. They have to be ready to jump into the fray to handle the issues that their teams can’t solve and to work with the customers that their team’s can’t satisfy.

1.Customer-Centric Attitude

Ask your employees, who is the most customer-centric person in your organisation. If your employees does’t take your name then this is a very concerning problem. If the manager doesn’t put their customers at the center of everything they do then your team won’t either.

2.Powerful Communicator

Nothing is more important to a customer service than communication. For managers, communication skills are the bedrock upon which their relationships with their team’s, their persuasiveness with their superiors and their interactions with customers are based.

Managers need to be able to communicate effectively with their teams to tailor their communication to different personalities and communication styles. Managers must have the ability to influence the stakeholders above them in the organisation if they want to ensure their team has adequate resources and can operate with the breathing space needed to manage instead of a checklist.

Managers are often called in to handle the most difficult customer service situations when their frontline teams can’t. So they need powerful communication skills to navigate these challenging situations.

3.Empathy To Burn

Communication might be the most important skill in customer service but empathy is the most important war. Great managers have it by the bucketful. Besides the empathy needed to solve the difficult customer service situations that managers are often called on to resolve. Empathy is crucial to managing teams.

Great managers are able to empathise with the challenges their teams face on the frontline. I understand how hard it is to recover when a customer yells and how frustrating it is to be shackled by outdated and illogical policies. But you can handle all of these things with empathy.

4.Master Of Priorities

A good manager knows how to help their team focus its energy and balance their team’s time spent delivering customer experiences with the time spent reacting to the customer service issues.

Many businesses struggle with this balance and great customer service managers have the prioritisation skills and organisational skills to make sure that the importance isn’t completely subsumed by the urgent. 

Make sure the fires of the day don’t engulf the team’s entire focus .

5.Motivator 

Good managers know how to motivate themselves and motivate their teams. They know how to create a culture that doesn’t wait for things to happen but they proactively make it happen. They know how to instill this ethic in their teams.

Great managers try harder themselves and inspire their teams to always be looking for how they can make a difference for their customers, their colleagues and their organisation.

Common Mistakes To Avoid In Customer Service

• Poor Customer Service Training

Companies can avoid many problems by ensuring their customer service team is well-trained and well equipped to get the job done. If their customer service agents don’t have in-demand skills and product knowledge, chances are they won’t get the job done correctly or in a way that’s efficient and quick.

• Avoiding Communication Channels

Traditionally we think that customer service interactions happen in person on the phone or through email. Nowadays there are a lot more resources and tools for customers to reach companies online. 

Big mistake companies make is not paying attention to important channels. Such as messages they get through social media, contact forms on a website and even responses to the marketing emails or their newsletters. 

In order to prevent this issue, simplye broaden your area of communication. Make sure that you are monitoring all of your communication channels and not only the most traditional ones.

• Not Personalizing Your Service 

People like to feel that they are important and valued when they are interacting with companies. If they feel like they are being treated like another number or another client, they are unlikely to feel connected with the company.

Then the business fails to personalize their service, the customer doesn’t feel valued. So make sure to personalize the way you interact with your customers in a way that;s appropriate for your audience.

For example- For an online example, you may keep a record of a customer’s purchase history and their past enquiries to provide them with a better experience when they reach out to you again in the future.

• Forgetting The Post-Purchase Experience

Avoid dedicating all of your efforts only to making the sales. The post-purchasing experience is also really important in how your customer will perceive you. This includes knowing how to deal with questions and complaints after the sale is over.

For example- Providing instructions on ‘How To Use A Product’, ‘Solving Technical Issues’, ‘Answering Inquiries About Refunds And Exchanges’ and ‘Recommending New Purchases’.

When you provide a post-purchase experience the chances of making these sales from old customers is a lot higher.

• Not Taking Action On Customer Feedback

Customer Feedback gives you good insight into what’s working well and where there are opportunities for improvement. Simply collecting without taking actions, won’t get you any result.

You need to regularly check and analyze the responses and take actions to improve your services. To do this, it’s important you have a way for customers to provide suggestions and opinions about your customer service.

Positive reviews will actually show what’s working and where you are doing a great job. If you get negative feedback, see that as an opportunity to grow and improve. No customer service is 100% perfect. Your goal is to provide high quality service and strive to keep improving.