According to the Salesforce studyState of the Connected Customer, 91% of customers would be more likely to make another purchase from a business following a top-notchcustomer service experience. This data underscores how important it is for companies to invest in delivering high-quality, consistent customer service. To make excellent service part of your company’s reputation, start by investing in proper customer service training.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the skills you and your team need to create satisfying customer service experiences.
Table of Contents
What is customer service training?
Customer service培训教育是普通员工or members of a specialized customer service team receive to learn how to deliver support effectively and efficiently. Proper training helps employees address customer questions, concerns, and complaints over the phone or through digital ecommerce platforms and chat apps.
Customer servicetraining refers to the initial onboarding and upskilling (or learning new skills) of employees, as well as the ongoing teaching of customer service workers throughout their careers.
What are the benefits of customer service training?
Having a team of employees well-trained in the art of customer relations is beneficial in many ways, from increased customer engagement to improved sales. Key benefits include:
- Customer engagement.Businesses use a variety of strategies to increasecustomer engagement, from social media campaigns toloyalty programs. Training employees to have empathy, strong listening and communication skills, and problem-solving abilities (among other people-forward skills) shows the human side of a business. This can increase business-customer interaction times, reducing the likelihood of customer churn (the loss of an existing customer).
- Customer retention.An excellent customer support team can influence whether customers stay and make repeat buys. Customers appreciate a business that is responsive and attentive to their concerns—and the reward is loyalty. In fact, 61% of customers said they would switch to a competitor if they had a single poor customer service experience, according to a2022 Zendesk customer experience trends report.
- Increased sales.Customer service is the “new sales engine,” according to a 2018Forbesarticle. A company that offers strong, personalized customer support is more likely to provide a positive buying experience, and in turn, see a bump in sales.
- Brand strengthening.At the heart of a strong brand is consistent service. High-quality, personalized customer care gets great公关by way of positive online reviews, chatter in discussion forums, and social media posts. By building a reputation for good customer care, companies increase customer loyalty to the brand, which translates into increased sales, potential growth, and long-term operational sustainability.
Three key components of customer service training
- Communication
- Problem solving
- Conflict resolution
Many aspects of customer service are based on soft skills—interpersonal attributes including patience, listening, and clear communication—that help make a person more relatable and easier to interact with. Ideally, training focuses on building the following skills:
1. Communication
The basis of any effective customer service strategy is the ability to actively participate in the communication process to show that you are engaged in a positive way. This includes processing your thoughts and presenting them in a clear, concise manner—whether by phone or in writing through email or a messaging service. Key to a productive exchange is the ability to listen and reflect back on what you are hearing, ultimately putting yourself in the customer’s shoes to show understanding and empathy.
2. Problem solving
Oftentimes, customers reach out to customer support teams to resolve a problem. While some problems are more basic issues like product returns or exchanges, others are more complex, such as a communication conflict between an employee and a customer. Through training programs, customer service employees learn how to think outside the box or come up with creative solutions to address unmet customer expectations. Doing so can result in more satisfied customers, which in turn leads to repeat business and glowing reviews.
3. Conflict resolution
When dealing with customer complaints, it’s important to de-escalate the situation through conflict resolution strategies to get to an agreeable solution. A goal of customer service is to identify the issue through empathy, emotional intelligence (understanding and managing various emotions), and active listening (demonstrating that you understand the customer’s perspective). From there, you can find a way to resolve the dispute to the customer’s satisfaction.
How to implement a customer service training course for your employees
- Determine whether you want to go in-house or purchase a course
- Discuss with your current customer service team
- Choose a training course
- Onboard with care
- Ask for feedback
There are many approaches to training your employees in essential customer service skills. Consider the following steps before setting up a customer service training course so your employees are better equipped to improve your ecommerce customers’ experiences.
1. Determine whether you want to go in-house or purchase a course
Decide if you want to outsource your training program or build one within the company by setting up your own PowerPoints and video lessons. Both options have their advantages. Outsourced courses will generally be cheaper and simpler to implement. If you choose to opt for an in-house program, however, you can more easily tailor the course to your business’s needs or specific industry.
2. Discuss with your current customer service team
If a customer service team is already in place, talk to them about the types of skills or knowledge expected from new hires stepping into these roles. Lean on their experience, as they can anticipate what customers will ask and how to respond. You could either integrate that feedback into your in-house training program or prioritize them when you search for a premade course.
3. Choose a training course
There are a variety of options when it comes to picking customer service training courses. They’re advertised on sites like LinkedIn or through specialized companies such as Axelos. Some are meant for large, multinational corporations, while others cater to small ecommerce businesses. Besides finding a single course or program suitable for your business type, consider the cost, the amount of time it will take to complete, and the number of trainees it can accommodate. The courses included in a customer service training program typically tackle skills such as communication, professionalism, and navigating various digital customer service platforms.
4. Onboard with care
If you don’t already have a dedicated team of customer service reps in place, or if you’re a newcomer to implementing this type of training, consider putting employees through the training course slowly. Measuring training successes through tangible metrics, like the time it takes to resolve a problem, can help you figure out what does—and doesn’t—work. Building amemorable ecommerce customer experiencethat you monitor through data will go a long way in ensuring the efficacy and sustainability of your business.
5. Ask for feedback
This applies to both the employees completing the trainings and the customers being serviced. Many ecommerce sites collect feedback about the level of service provided via customer-service-based chat apps orcustomer satisfaction surveys. You can incorporate this information into future training materials, improving the success rate of new customer service representatives.
How to measure the impact of a customer service training course
There are metrics you can use when determining the effectiveness of your customer service training. Key performance indicators (KPI) include:
- Average resolution time (ART).This is a type ofkey performance indicator (KPI) for ecommercecompanies that gives the typical amount of time it takes to solve a customer’s issue or complaint. This is a key measure of how well your customer service team is operating. If you measure this KPI before and after your support team received training, it can help determine whether or not that training was effective.
- Net promoter score (NPS).NPS is the measure of how likely a customer is to return to—or recommend—your company. If your NPS increases following a customer service training course, that’s a good indication you implemented effective customer service training.
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT).The CSAT KPI calculates customers’ happiness with goods or services provided through key questions. A typical example is: “On a scale of very unsatisfied to very satisfied, how satisfied are you with our product?” This general metric can help you assess how well you’re doing as a business and can change based on good customer service training.
- First call resolution (FCR).A more specialized measure, FCR tracks how many customer service queries are resolved during the first ask, rather than being escalated or revisited multiple times. FCR helps measure the effectiveness of your customer service and, by extension, your customer service training.
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