Customer Service Training: It’s a Good Thing

0
46

Share on LinkedIn

When you hire someone into customer support or purchase a new customer service software application, is training one of the first things on your mind?

It should be. Studies have shown just how much impact the proper training can have on the customer experience and on retention – both employee and customer. And not just the “how-to” tutorial with your new software. Your employees need to know exactly how you expect them to interact with your customers. Don’t assume that this will just come naturally.

For this to work, management needs to be on-board with it and everyone needs to see training as an investment, not something to get over and done with so the newbie can get right to answering calls, chats, or emails. A learning culture must be present. And as with all activities for your business, before you begin training decide what your requirements are.

How do you want them to answer the phone? Have you shown them some ways to cope with angry or upset customers? Did you make sure they learned all about your products? Do they know what needs to be documented and how to classify issues for tracking and trending? Guidelines about product replacement and returns?

Granted, the smaller your company is the less time you will feel you have for training and that you can’t offer the type of training a large call center can. But training cannot be skipped on that account. It’s your business. Make sure everyone in the company knows what to do to keep it going.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jody Pellerin
Jody Pellerin is the Director of Marketing for PhaseWare, Inc. a provider of customer service and support software. PhaseWare helps companies optimize customer service and support with powerful, affordable solutions for incident management, knowledge management, SLA management, and more. Pellerin has authored several white papers and case studies about customer service and support practices including using live chat, optimizing multichannel support, and a guide for on-premise versus on-demand software.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here