Throughout the pandemic, business owners have had to adapt to new ways of serving their customers. This need to stay agile has solidified customer demand for personalization, speed, and ease-of-use when interacting with businesses remotely. Now, customers want faster response times and more options for connecting with a company. With these changing service expectations, customer service training has to evolve.
Today’s customers make buying decisions based on their experiences, with 84% saying the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Therefore, companies need to prioritize personal connections with customers to retain and grow their business. Below are a few tips for developing customer service training programs that build employee confidence and meet the demands of today’s consumers.
Set the foundation: track and adjust training programs for learner ability and confidence.
We’ve seen how technology has impacted training programs and expect the trend to grow. No matter the specifics of your customer service training, it can be helpful to use an online training platform to provide access to learner analytics. Plus, most platforms enable you to establish checkpoints that ask learners their confidence level when answering questions to gauge their progress.
For instance, if an employee is answering a question they feel confident about but is also frequently not answering it correctly, you know someone has high confidence and low knowledge. Conversely, if the employee answers a question correctly but repeatedly says that they’re unsure about the answer, you know it’s a low-confidence, high-knowledge situation. The coaching approach and guidance would then need to adjust based on this learner data.
With this learner data, you can group learners into cohorts. By grouping people based on their learning pace, and confidence levels, companies can adjust the support needed to get an employee ready to do the job. Proficiency may happen faster for some, but the key is in how you give the support. Think of this as the opposite of a manufacturing line.
Grow the spirit: train for, and treat, team members with empathy.
Internally, the way companies treat employees will reflect how they treat customers, so prioritizing the employee experience is as important as considering the customer experience. Promoting trainers who have previously done the job to work with new hires one-on-one helps build empathy internally. Trainers who know what the employee will experience develop trust and connection with new hires because they’ve been through it. This relationship is especially effective during more challenging times when the customer experience team is under pressure.
Empathy is a significant contributor to customer service representatives’ ability to articulate a genuine and helpful tone through their voice and how they write in chat transcripts. To help with this, team members can practice through roleplay, with emotional intelligence components weaved throughout the training. Scenarios may look like addressing a customer with a direct question, another caller with an issue they’re trying to solve, or one isn’t sure what they need. One might be exhausted, another angry, and another pressed for time. These various scenarios allow employees to practice their empathy, which is most successful when the team works in an environment where they feel supported to be themselves. Truly being authentic is the key!
Nurture the relationship: encourage personalized, proactive customer interactions.
Companies that prioritize customer interactions and provide access to valuable resources and information are more likely to weather economic stress and thrive. Perhaps that’s because more than 70 percent of consumers expect a business to understand and anticipate their needs, while 90 percent rate an immediate response as important or very important when they have a customer service question.
Handling customer concerns is more than providing solutions; it’s making sure customers feel heard. Being present in customer conversations is key to showing that companies care. Even if the problem feels familiar, it’s best never to assume what a customer wants or needs.
Empower employees to use their personalities to talk to customers naturally, rather than pre-packaged phrases. Using employees’ personalities builds a connection and draws people into what the business is all about.
During training, focus on the type of customers with whom employees will interact. Will it be more formal? Quick ask? Something sensitive or personal? Empower people to trust their gut and be authentic. Teach them to use critical thought in every scenario. Once employees know whom they’re speaking to, they must then genuinely listen to the situation. These skills should be practiced through coaching during customer interactions or immediately afterward to make a real difference in how customers perceive a company.
Ultimately, investing in your customer experience can have a dramatic effect on customer acquisition and retention. While the pandemic has elevated new customer experience expectations, businesses have the opportunity to take those learnings and evolve them into a new service strategy. To do this successfully, companies need to bring employees into the experience, providing them with the confidence, tools, and environment to foster a proactive service culture.
