Believe it or not, customer service can save the day when other aspects of your company messes up. They can field complaints about products that were damaged during delivery. They can answer your customer’s questions. And if the manual is not clear, they can explain the steps to them. Or if the product does not meet the customer’s expectations your customer service staff can pacify them.
With the best customer service, you can make up for other shortcomings. You can make sure that your customer will be happy. You may even gain new customers if lots of reviews mention just how great your employees are.
So how do you train your staff to be the best? Your training must focus on the following aspects:
- Dealing with Customer Emotions. When a customer is irate, your staff should be patient and understanding. Often they’re very upset when they call and so your staff should know how to calm them down. The training must provide for this sort of emotional control. In a way, it’s like training to be a counselor.
On the other hand, when a customer just wants some info, your staff should be friendly and even cheerful. This projects a nice image for your company, and it may even foster loyalty.
- Listening Skills. This is also another crucial aspect of customer service. One of the communication issues may be language barrier—your people may not understand the accent of the caller, for example. So you have to train your staff to overcome this barrier.
Then emphasize the need to really listen. Why is the customer calling? The staff needs to figure this out, and the caller or the person in front of them may not have the right words. Sometimes your staff need to read between the lines. These are things you need to convey to your front-line employees and ensure they understand the significance.
- Effective Verbal Communication. Not everyone knows how to speak the “right” way. Training may include accent and verbal communication instruction. It may even include lessons in common slang used by most callers.
But at the very least, mistakes such as mumbling, rambling, or using fillers like um or er frequently must be avoided. They should learn to enunciate their words properly, and the training must therefore include vocal exercises.
Of course, part of this training involves conveying attitudes and feelings. In face to face meets, your employees must also learn about body language too, including when to smile or when to sympathize.
- In-Depth Product Knowledge. Obviously, your staff should possess sufficient knowledge about your products and services to actually be of help to your customers. This training is rather straightforward—you can test them of their product knowledge by giving your employees an exam of some sort.
Training isn’t really training without standards, and reasonable and measurable criteria should be set up. For example, you may set up a feedback system that allows callers to grade your customer service personnel. By doing so, you can determine weak areas and even find out which among your staff needs more training.