Why is Customer Service Training Vital for IT Professionals?

Customer service training recognizes that information technology and customer service are two symbiotic fields – both work in tandem to improve business efficiency while ensuring that customers stay retained and satisfied.

While the involvement of IT in customer service remains well-documented and researched, what about the inverse? 

Like all their counterparts, IT departments and companies need a strong, personalized approach to customer service – one that takes into account the skillsets of IT professionals, the challenges they face, and the kinds of customers they face. 

It all begins with robust customer service skills training geared towards IT professionals. 

Let’s start with the basics:

What is IT Customer Service Training?

Broadly speaking, customer service training refers to coaching, guidelines, and the set framework that employees use to ensure customer satisfaction, gain customer insights and develop a positive experience/brand image.

When focused on IT professionals, customer service training becomes focused on IT-specific challenges. The average customer has little in terms of technical expertise. The goal, therefore, of IT customer service training is to bridge this gap between the customer service representative and customer, simplifying concepts while providing technically sound solutions from behind the curtain.

Why is IT Customer Service Training Important?

While having a skilled team is crucial, this amounts to little if your customers remain confused and incorrectly addressed. Some of the core ways in which IT customer service rep training helps your business – before, during, and after a sale are:

Bridging The Gap

Most often the average customer has little-to-no knowledge when it comes to system administration, network management, and other IT-specific tasks. However, they may need to handle tasks such as changing network settings or accessing system details through command-line interfaces – which can seem intimidating for the uninitiated.

A well-trained professional will not just have the technical know-how to solve the customer’s issue – they will also be able to convey this information in a way that makes sense for a customer.

Improving Soft Skills

The career of your average IT professional isn’t just limited to setting up company networks and handling client issues behind a desk. Today’s top professionals need to interact with customers from time to time as well – in both B2B and B2C environments. Delivering customer experiences by using positive language and efficiently addressing customer questions gives your business a competitive advantage. 

By investing in an excellent customer service team, you ensure that your IT staff have the interpersonal skills to prove their worth and rise above the competition. It gives you the tools to prevent angry customers, reduce customer complaints and increase customer retention. It also helps build customer loyalty. 

Applying Marketing Skills to IT Products

Let’s be honest – if you’re an IT professional, getting a potential buyer to show enthusiasm for server stacks and network interfaces isn’t easy – especially if you have a non-technical person making the purchase.

Here’s where an IT professional skilled in communication skills can step in. Instead of indifferently dropping product facts and features, a well-trained professional can angle the conversation towards how the product or service can actively help improve efficiency, throughput, and eliminate glaring issues in their IT framework – a perfect synthesis of interpersonal skills and tech expertise.

Customer Service Training Helps Collect Valuable Customer Information

Customer service experience isn’t a one-way street. While its main aim is to provide a customer with relevant help and knowledge, it provides great insights into the kinds of problems a customer base is facing.

Through friendly and approachable communication techniques, an IT professional can not only help resolve a customer issue, thereby dealing with difficult customers better, but also gain valuable information that can be used to avoid further errors, streamline your IT workflow, and make the customer feel truly heard and appreciated.

Tips for Building a Successful IT Customer Service Training Program

Now that you’ve understood the value of quality customer service skills for IT professionals, let’s work on optimizing the service training program.

To build a strong, customer-focused IT department and meet customer expectations, you will need to:

Make Your Training Sessions Interactive

While a regular training session can seem boring and forgettable, interactive programs allow your customer support team to use creativity, quick-thinking, and problem-solving skills. This not only improves the quality of their training but also builds up emotional intelligence and makes the lessons easier to retain.

Empathize With Employee Concerns

Effective customer service requires people to be affable. But many in desk-bound fields such as IT are known to be shy and introverted, making them seize up during customer interactions.

This can be improved by active listening, understanding their concerns, and letting them voice their anxieties. This makes customer service agents more comfortable and receptive during training sessions.

Showcase a Variety of Behavioral Styles

Facing a customer is a new experience every single time – so a one-size-fits-all approach will not always work. Customers have varying levels of patience, technical knowledge, and urgency with their issues, so teaching your professionals the value of a flexible approach is important.

Try to role-play various types of customers during training sessions – this will help them adapt and learn the right stance to take with each new customer.

Use Remote Desktop Tools When Necessary

Sometimes, an IT problem will be too difficult to troubleshoot without directly accessing the system of an individual customer.

To get around this, make sure your customer care team is well-versed in applications such as TeamViewer that allow for remote operation of a client’s desktop – making for quick and easy diagnosis when it comes to IT issues.

Today, companies look for customer service hires who go beyond mere technical expertise. For companies, equipping your IT teams with good customer-facing skills and conducting training on a regular basis is an excellent investment. It will not only build a strong IT culture within your organization but also lead to effective communication and give it an external reputation for reliability and trust.

Next Level IT Customer Service Training

Enroll your team now in Compassionate Geek IT online customer service training so they can work together, get things done, and take care of customers.