Customer Service Training: The Manager’s Role

The most inte­gral role as a cus­tomer ser­vice man­ager is to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of con­tin­u­ous learn­ing and improve­ment. Employ­ees fol­low management’s lead, and when it comes to train­ing it is impor­tant to posi­tion edu­ca­tion as more than cor­rec­tive action. Empha­size that agents will not only have the oppor­tu­nity to increase their knowl­edge and improve the cus­tomer ser­vice skills they already have, but will also be able to dis­cuss issues openly and learn from peer experience.

Cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing gives agents the skills and knowl­edge needed to per­form their jobs well. How­ever, some­times employ­ees need addi­tional assis­tance with skill adop­tion. It has been proven that long term behav­ioral change in your staff will only hap­pen as a result of qual­ity train­ing and effec­tive coaching.

T + C = S (Train­ing + Coach­ing = Success)

The dan­ger of not coach­ing is that employ­ees may be capa­ble of per­form­ing well – but won’t. Why is this? If cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing is not fol­lowed by coach­ing, it sends the mes­sage that man­age­ment doesn’t care. If man­age­ment doesn’t care – why should the employee? A manager’s role in train­ing is to cre­ate a pos­i­tive atmos­phere before and after training.

Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing is for Everyone

One of the eas­i­est ways to show that cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing is essen­tial to com­pany suc­cess is to attend the classes with your staff. Not con­vinced? Here are three good rea­sons to change your mind:

1. How will you know which cus­tomer ser­vice skills to rein­force if you don’t know what your agents are learn­ing, or if you don’t know how to use those skills yourself?
2. Not only does your par­tic­i­pa­tion allow you to under­stand exactly what agents are doing in the train­ing ses­sion, it also sends a pow­er­ful mes­sage that you’re com­mit­ted to learn­ing and improve­ment at all lev­els of your department.
3. When your staff sees you in the train­ing room, learn­ing along­side them, they’ll real­ize that the class isn’t just a feel-good event or a waste of time. “If man­age­ment shows up,” the think­ing goes, “they must be seri­ous about this.”

Attend­ing cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing with your team is a great way to break down bar­ri­ers between man­age­ment and agents, and it goes a long way toward mak­ing front-line employ­ees feel like part of the com­pany. Build­ing rap­port this way will also make employ­ees more recep­tive to coach­ing and the like­li­hood of sus­tained improve­ment will increase.

Cus­tomer Ser­vice train­ing is an invest­ment. When done well and fol­lowed up with effec­tive coach­ing, the invest­ment pays off many times over. Unsure of which deliv­ery method will be most ben­e­fi­cial to your employ­ees? Read this blog post: Cus­tom Train­ing for Cus­tomer Ser­vice: Yay or Nay?