What Effective Customer Service Training Programs Should Include

Effective customer service training programs help your team members by challenging their pre-existing beliefs about how to define excellent customer service. The best training programs will ensure customer service reps understand how to treat customers and coworkers, introduce new ways of working with people and establish standards of behavior for your organization.

Justification for the Customer Service Training Program

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle says, “Without the why, the how and the what don’t matter.” As CIOs know, IT teams tend to be very smart and equally skeptical. This combination means that effective customer service training for IT teams will include training about why implementing a specific customer service strategy benefits them.

Implementing any customer service program should lead to more satisfied customers for your company. As you plan your customer service team training, consider an interactive exercise in which you ask team members to discuss how improving customer service skills benefits them personally. Follow up with a discussion about how improving customer service skills benefits the organization.

Ask questions about empathy, such as:

• What do you appreciate when you’re talking with customer service agents or technical customer service representatives?
• How can you empathize with an angry customer?
• What to say to a customer who is upset or frustrated?
• How do you handle irate customer answers?
• How would you make a customer feel understood?
• Why is it important to have loyal customers?
• Is it important you have happy customers 100% of the time?
• How do you make customers feel valued and appreciated?
• How can you go the extra mile for a customer?

Practical Application of the Lessons

Use real-world stories and examples about customer service experiences to make the training relevant. People remember stories; they don’t remember statistics. Find a story that helps make a point your team needs to understand. Look for stories from your personal experience, your business’ history, or from people you know.

When you need to clarify a definition such as poor customer service, a tried and true method is to tell the story, then make a point. Some examples of stories to use include dealing with difficult end-users, resolving conflicts with teammates, or being a better listener. Consider having team members share their successful customer interactions.

Setting Expectations

One purpose of a customer service training program is to set expectations for how you want your team to treat customers and each other. You see, customer service affects not only your paying customers but also the coworkers in the cubicle next to yours. When you design a customer service training program, you have an opportunity to say to your team, “This is who we are as an organization. This is how I believe people should treat each other. This is how I treat others. This is how I expect you to treat our customers and each other.” Remember, you must be a role model for your team on how to treat people.

What Does Success from a Customer Service Training Program Look Like?

A successful customer service training program should result in higher CSAT scores and other metrics, better anecdotal feedback from customers, repeat business, endorsements, and referrals. Additionally, your team members should work better together as a high-performing team.

A great customer experience includes more than positive language training. The best IT teams understand that the best customer relationships are built with proactive customer service. Effective customer service training should cover empathetic communication, as addressed above, as well as other aspects of the customer journey. Your IT team should understand how body language, chat services, and the period of time a customer waits before their needs are addressed all contribute to good or bad customer service.

These are the same highly-effective techniques we use in Compassionate Geek IT Customer Service Training.

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