Top 3 IT Customer Service Training Trends You Need to Know

In the IT sphere, trends evolve faster than most peo­ple can keep up with. It seems like just when you pur­chase a new tech­nol­ogy, the lat­est upgrade is already on the mar­ket. Though it can be mad­den­ing, the pace at which tech­nol­ogy evolves ensures that we com­mu­ni­cate faster, on more plat­forms, and have more agile networks.

If you man­age IT cus­tomer ser­vice, the speed that tech­nol­ogy shifts is no excep­tion, and to serve your highly-savvy cus­tomer base, you need to be proac­tive, and most impor­tantly, you need to build and train your IT staff to pro­vide world-class cus­tomer ser­vice through var­i­ous plat­forms. Below we have the top three IT cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing trends to be aware of so you can stay ahead of the curve.

IT Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing Trend #1: Imple­ment multi-channel support

If your cus­tomers are seek­ing cus­tomer sup­port for a soft­ware appli­ca­tion, cloud-based pro­gram, or piece of hard­ware, their pref­er­ence is to get help where they’re already work­ing – on their com­puter, where they can eas­ily go to your web­site or search online. Pick­ing up the phone to call IT cus­tomer sup­port is both cum­ber­some and time-consuming. Do you have a multi-channel cus­tomer sup­port sys­tem in place, and is your team trained on how to offer IT sup­port through these var­i­ous plat­forms? A study by For­rester found that in the past three years, there has been a 12% rise in web self-service, a 24% increase in live chat, and a 25% increase in com­mu­nity forum usage. How is your orga­ni­za­tion respond­ing to these trends?

IT Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing Trend #2: Adopt mobile solu­tions and train your team accordingly

Cus­tomers rely on their mobile devices for almost every­thing it seems – shop­ping, nav­i­ga­tion, social media, photo tak­ing and shar­ing, music, news, tex­ting – oh, yes, and talk­ing. Com­pa­nies respond by devel­op­ing robust mar­ket­ing, sales, and eCom­merce strate­gies that are mobile, but many are still equip­ping cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ments and train­ing teams to han­dle IT sup­port through mobile appli­ca­tions. Expect the mobile IT sup­port trend to increase over the next few years, and stay ahead of your com­pe­ti­tion by build­ing, staffing, and train­ing your team accord­ingly. A mobile IT cus­tomer ser­vice strat­egy involves equip­ping a team that can trou­bleshoot, think nim­bly, and clearly com­mu­ni­cate to your cus­tomers how to work through IT issues – all on a mobile plat­form. Not only does your mobile team need to have solid IT cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing, but they need to under­stand how to trans­late their knowl­edge to cus­tomers via lim­ited snip­pets of infor­ma­tion, which your cus­tomers will prob­a­bly access through an app or through your company’s online mobile website.

IT Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing Trend #3: On every multi-channel plat­form, know your customer

If your cus­tomer accesses help through his or her mobile device, online, or through your call cen­ter, will your IT cus­tomer ser­vice agents be able to access the customer’s full-history, or will they be start­ing with a blank slate every time? Your cus­tomer needs to feel like he or she is call­ing one com­pany, not mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies that have access to bits and pieces of the person’s record and his­tory. When you train your agents, are you mak­ing sure that the first thing they do is read through a customer’s pre­vi­ous inter­ac­tions, under­stand the prod­uct or ser­vice the cus­tomer has pur­chased, and then be able to respond accord­ingly? What good is it to have a multi-channel IT cus­tomer ser­vice pro­gram in place if your indi­vid­ual agents are work­ing in silos? A bur­geon­ing trend in IT cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing is to for­mal­ize the busi­ness pro­ce­dures and com­pany struc­ture so that every agent in every cus­tomer sup­port touch­point has full access to cus­tomers’ records.

Lead the way with your IT cus­tomer ser­vice program

Build­ing a multi-channel IT cus­tomer ser­vice pro­gram, and train­ing your agents to deliver supe­rior cus­tomer ser­vice across every touch­point, will help your com­pany improve its rep­u­ta­tion and brand. For tech­ni­cal prod­ucts and ser­vices – more so than with non-technical prod­ucts – cus­tomers are pur­chas­ing cus­tomer sup­port as much as they are pur­chas­ing the prod­uct or ser­vice itself. In 2013 and beyond, make sure your team is up-to-speed on the trends so that your cus­tomers will be able to receive the type of ser­vice they expect from a tech company.