Are You Making These Mistakes with Your Customer Service Training?

Is it really possible to train employees on providing top-quality customer service? We think so—look at companies like Apple. They provide extensive training to their employees, and the result is a floor staff that’s friendly, knowledgeable and enthusiastic.

The problem with your customer service team may not be your employees, but instead may be your training.

Are you making any of these common mistakes when training your employees on customer service?

Making Assumptions

This is a problem that deals not just with customer service training, but with customer service in general. Many managers assume employees understand how to provide great customer service, but the key word here is service.

Your employees may know how to be nice and pleasant, but that doesn’t equate to providing actual valuable service.

Your eLearning training should focus not just on the technicalities and pleasantries, but you also need to provide comprehensive training on exactly what good service is, and how to deliver it. Otherwise, your employees are going to be nothing more than a smile or a friendly voice, and they won’t be able to bring true value to your customers.

The best way to tackle this in your customer service training is by creating definitive, clear service standards and showing your employees how to carry these standards out through videos or scenarios. You can also present case studies to highlight different points, such as a case study that shows poor service, one that shows a friendly customer service representative but a lack of service, and finally a case study where excellent customer service is delivered. Give your employees a chance to see real service, and the impact it has.

Maintaining an Ineffective Training Strategy

This is perhaps the number one reason many companies struggle with customer service training, and customer service in general. Your company may be using the same customer service training over and over again, and if you’re not getting the results you want, this is probably why.

Training is something that should evolve and grow, along with your employees and your company.

Your company may expand and take on a significantly larger customer service team, but if you’re still sticking with the same training from a decade ago, it’s not going to be relevant or effective, particularly if it wasn’t to begin with.

Think of your training as constantly changing. Gather feedback from your employees about your training, and incorporate their ideas into it.

It’s also a good idea to evaluate training based on your employees’ performance, and find ways to improve upon it, based on gaps in what you see.

eLearning provides a great opportunity for delivering customer service training, because it is time and cost-effective to make changes as you go along and see fit, without a complete overhaul.

Always try to think outside the box, and don’t be afraid to try something new, because the result can bring your company tremendous benefits.

Failure to Implement a Long-Term Strategy

Just as your actual customer service training materials should constantly be growing and evolving, so should your employees.

Customer service training isn’t a short-term proposition—it’s something that has to be carried out over the long-term, so your training strategy should follow this same idea.

Put in place metrics of measurement and feedback so you can continuously measure the success or failings of your employees, and provide them with valuable, constructive feedback.

Also, customer service training isn’t a one-time deal that happens when a new team member comes on-board. It’s something that should happen on a regular basis, with the idea that employees will hone their skills on a deeper and more comprehensive level.

Don’t let customer service training fall to the wayside—instead, create long-term goals that fit into your company’s overall trajectory, and create training that’s going to help your employees stay on track with these goals.