Customer service is the company’s opportunity to engage and interact with customers. Whether it is the in-store service or after-sales service, all of it combines to make the experience. When customers get good service it automatically speaks about your brand value and they tell about your brand to their friends and family. And there’s nothing better than positive word-of-mouth publicity.
Customer service training is a training in which employees learn about the various ways to handle customers and improve customer satisfaction and support. It is true that for an organization or brand its customers are the best growth opportunity. If you want to keep them happy then customer service training should be mandatory.
Why is customer support training important?
Customer experience is one of the fewer things that every brand wants to enhance. The way your customers value your brand or organization depicts how important you consider them and to what extent your team goes to ensure highest level of customer satisfaction is attained.
Customer service training is also important because it helps in customer retention. If a potential customer wants to know about your products or services and gets in touch with your team, a general email will not solve the purpose. If your customer support team shows interest and helps them understand your products and services, it’ll have a positive impact. The customer will be impressed, might become a loyalist to the brand and will also share about you with friends and family or social media.
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Types of customer service training
Customer service training can be applied to different situations. Some of the most common ones are –
- New hire customer service training
When a new employee is hired to the customer support team, it is the responsibility of the organization to provide the best customer support training.
- Acquainting the team
To resolve customers’ problems and help them, the team needs to be on the same page and work in collaboration.
- Establishing expectations
New hires should know what is expected of them during the initial phase. With this training, any doubts can be removed and the responsibilities can be understood in a better way.
- Setting up tools
The new hires get to know about the various tools, software, and digital support that’ll enable them to help the customers better.
- Introducing the product or service
For the customer support team to offer the best services they need to know the company’s products and services better than anyone. Set aside time that’s dedicated to product or service training.
- Quarterly or yearly training
Customer training shouldn’t be a one-time affair. You need to keep reinforcing the practice to make sure that the team is updated and can help foster strong relations with customers. The training needs to look at two aspects – team building and skills check-in.
- Emergency or time-sensitive customer training
Sometimes customer training cannot be planned. For example, if there has been a product recall, a major rebranding, or a national advertising campaign, in all these situations an emergency customer service training will be helpful.
Elements of basic customer service training
If you want to implement a targeted customer service training program for your customer service team, then these are the aspects it must have –
- Personal skills - Positivity, empathy, clarity, etc.
- Product or technical skills -This includes assigning a mentor, holding demonstration sessions, and creating a knowledge base.
- Crisis or customer management skills -This includes enacting role plays for difficult situations, and teaching the last method –Listen, Acknowledge, Solve, and Thank.
- Team building skills – encourage meditation to clear headspace, inspire healthy competition, take team outings,
- Customer advocacy and success skills – teach a new language, encourage to exceed expectations, and use feedback.
With the right customer service training, you can enhance your brand value and reach an apex position.
