20 Customer Service Training Tips for IT Professionals

Customer service training, just like customer service itself, is not a simple process. There are, however, some basic customer service skills you can teach that will make a difference for your team, your customers, and your coworkers.

20 Customer Service Training Tips to Share with Your Team of IT Pros

1. Telephone Skills. Make sure your team understands the importance of good phone skills, including a positive attitude, speaking clearly to be understood, and active listening where they listen carefully to the caller and interact to ensure they understand the caller’s issue.
2. Thank You Notes. Thank you notes matter because they show appreciation to the customer and so few people bother to send them. Take a moment and send a thank you email or, better yet, an old-school hand-written thank you note.
3. Empathy. Empathy is your ability to feel what your customer is going through, or if you simply can’t relate, to try to imagine what they’re going through based on their life experiences. Customer service training must emphasize empathy for the other person.
4. Role Play. Many IT people hate role play, but it’s a powerful tool for learning what your customer is experiencing when they call and learning how to create a good experience for them. Tell your team to please take it seriously, that you wouldn’t ask them to do it if it weren’t a good use of their time.
5. Checking Your Attitude. Anyone who works in customer service has stories about tough customers who affected their attitude. Explain that your attitude is entirely under your control You can choose to be positive and uplifting or you can choose to be a downer. Choose to be positive and uplifting.
6. How to Say No. Remind your team of the importance of offering alternatives when they have to say no. They might be able to present an acceptable alternative themselves or they can escalate the issue to a manager or higher level support team.
7. Building Your Technical Competence. In the IT world, there’s no place for complacency. You’ve got to continuously hone your skills. Talk about the personal benefits to the individual of faster ticket resolution, greater value to the company, and personal pride. Remind them that knowledge is power.
8. Being a Better Listener. A key component of customer service is improving your listening skills. That means learning to listen to understand and remember what the other person is saying. It means using active listening techniques. It means listening in way that makes the other person feel respected and dignified.
9. Showing you Care. You show you care through your use of the five principles of IT customer service: competence, compassion, empathy, good listening, and treating people with dignity and respect. In customer service training, teach your students to practice the five principles as much as possible, not only at work, but also with family and friends.
10. Dignity and Respect. Treating people with dignity and respect means using your manners, saying please and thank you, being on time, honoring boundaries, speaking well of your team, and avoiding whining, complaining, and making excuses.
11. Written Communication. Learn to use generally accepted business grammar, spelling, and style in your emails, texting, and chat messages. Be sure to review customer emails before responding to ensure you’ve answered all their questions.
12. How to Use Chat. Remember that your customer is probably doing many other tasks at the same time as they’re chatting with you. Be respectful of their time by avoiding unnecessary small talk unless the customer initiates it.
13. The Power of Punctuality. Be on time. Follow the rule, “If you’re not five minutes early, you’re late.” Allow yourself enough time to get to your destination without having to hurry. Avoid putting yourself in a position where you feel the need to make excuses for being late.
14. Dependability. Do what you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it. Build a personal reputation for dependability as part of your customer service training commitment.
15. Professionalism. Be a friendly professional. That means you maintain a positive attitude and are easy to work with while also being serious about your work. You dress appropriately for your workplace and use language that’s appropriate for your workplace.
16. Lose Sarcasm and Negativity. It’s easy to be sarcastic iwhen someone says or does something you think is stupid. Remember, they wouldn’t have done it if they thought it was stupid. Sarcasm is condescending and demeaning. Don’t do it, especially at work. Negativity casts a pall over relationships. Be a person who brightens the room when you arrive, not when you leave.
17. Gricean Maxims. Teach the Gricean Maxims of Cooperative Conversations in your customer service training. Speak the truth. Say enough without saying too much. Stay on topic. Use language that your customer understands (avoid jargon).
18. Avoid Death by Watercooler. Work to build advocates among your coworkers. Advocates speak well of you behind your back as opposed to detractors who speak poorly of you behind your back. Build advocates by being a helpful, positive influence on everyone you meet and following customer service best practices.
19. Dealing with Stress. Learn to separate stress into the types of stress you can control and the types you can’t control. If it’s within your control, do something about it. If it’s outside your control, learn to let it go.
20. Clean Up after Yourself. Strive to leave the places you visit better off than they were before you arrived. Wipe down monitors and keyboards. Clean mice. Dust CPUs. Straighten up cables.

Customer service training involves more than just these 20 tips, but they’re great starters. Use them to train your team and you’ll be well on your way to providing exceptional service to your customers and coworkers.

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