Welcome to our four-part series on better customer service training.
A happy customer is a loyal customer. The customer service experience and relationship created during an interaction doesn’t just impact one sale—it influences repeat sales for years to come.
Want to guarantee superior service? Radically focus on those who interact with customers on a daily basis—the customer service representative. For truly great service, leaders need to equip their reps with the necessary knowledge and skills they need to connect with and help customers. That’s why proper customer service training can make all the difference when it comes to delivering consistently excellent customer service.
Foundations of great customer service training
World-class customer service training programs are unique to every company. However, there are usually three major components to any program:
Product or service training
Every support team member needs to know their company’s products and services, inside and out. Since they’ll most likely need to answer questions and provide support around these topics, it’s important to provide a good foundation of knowledge about each.
Work environment training
This type of training is company-specific and features information regarding policies, processes, and procedures. From knowing what software to use to how to escalate a customer service ticket, work environment training covers a lot of different topics.
Customer service skills training
Training a support team for customer service skills is the most crucial step for any company. Even if reps have good product and company knowledge, they can’t provide great service without being trained on the right set of skills. Some essential service skills should include:
- Communication
- Listening
- Empathy
- Patience
Free customer service training materials
So, how can leaders deliver training courses that deliver essential knowledge and improve key skills? While planning and building a customer service training program may seem like a daunting task, there are plenty of free resources and helpful tips to get started. Here are few of our favorites:
Customer service training manual template: Consistent and thorough customer service training is essential—even if customers already seem satisfied. A training manual makes it easier to meet and exceed customer expectations by providing reps with consistent training that quickly gives them the tools they need to succeed.
Customer service policy examples: It’s important to develop a clear and concise policy for the entire customer service team. Reps need to know how far they can go to solve a customer’s problem or what they should do when dealing with customers who are extremely dissatisfied. These guidelines will help every rep understand the policies they should follow.
Customer service employee training plan template: Hiring new reps without an employee training plan is like asking them to climb a mountain in the dark—with no flashlight. It’s important to give everyone a clear understanding of what they need to learn and practice to perform at their highest level. By using this interactive experience, leaders will quickly develop a detailed and easy-to-follow training plan.
Customer service training activities: Although customer service reps are part of a team, they can often feel isolated as they interact with customers individually. These customer service training activities make learning fun, interactive, and engaging. The benefits of providing training activities are two-fold: reps will improve their skills and come together with the rest of their team, both of which drive employee engagement.
Customer service training calendar: Sometimes the hardest part about building a training program is deciding when to train reps. A training calendar can help leaders outline what topics their customer service team should focus on and when they should deliver critical training, development, and practice opportunities.
Bonus Materials: Free Customer Service Tools
Another key aspect of making sure your customer service team is well-equipped to delight your customers is to have the team use simple, free customer service tools. With an easy-to-use customer service tool, your employee and customer experiences are improved. Here are a few free customer service tools to check out:
- HubSpot Service Hub gives you free shared inbox, ticketing system, and live chat features
- Freshdesk provides a free central inbox tool to centralize customer service communication
- Zendesk offers a free online ticketing system
Customer service training doesn’t have to be rocket science. By leveraging the free tools and listed above, leaders will be well on the way to building an all-star customer service team that goes from delivering good customer service to great customer service.
World-class customer service teams Do Better Work with Lessonly
Customer service is changing rapidly—and training is too. Empower reps and agents with the knowledge and best practices so they can delight customers and turn them into raving fans. Lessonly’s powerfully simple software enables reps to learn, practice, and perform like never before. Learn more, or get a demo today.
