The most important thing to remember is that during customer service training, you cannot plan for every possibility or every situation. It is therefore vital that you build a strong foundation within your customer service team. You can do this by training them to be effective and learn how to interact with the customers in such a manner that they can adapt to any situation that arises. Dealing with issues to ensure there is no negative impact on them or the company itself.
By upskilling your team you can create an environment that will help you achieve your goals.
Once your customer service team have the knowledge needed, they will feel prepared to respond effectively to different situations, they will also develop the ability anticipate potential issues that may arise. Here are some ideas to train your employees effectively.
1.) Role-playing scenarios to create a sense of empathy
Empathy is vital to great service. It allows us to understand another person’s situation and see things from their perspective. The ability to do this usually makes people more helpful.
Empathy is crucial in customer service. If your team have the ability to understand how a customer could be feeling or affected by a potential issue it will be easier for them to communicate with the customer and take the appropriate actions.
For some people empathy is a part of their natural skillset. For others utilising role-playing exercises is a great way to develop the skills needed. By practicing different situations from both sides, the organisation and the customer, your team can learn how to deal with different situations.
Introducing potentially sensitive or ‘awkward’ scenarios in to the role play excercises will better prepare your team for dealing with real customer’s.
2.) Positive words and phrases
Positive language plays a vital role when speaking with a customer. It creates a great customer experience and helps avoid miscommunication. It prevents the customer from feeling misunderstood.
Training employees to use positive phrases such as “I can tell you upset” instead of telling the customer to calm down or even making small changes like “I’ll find out” instead of just saying I don’t know will make the customer feel understood and listened to.
3.) Improvisation games
Customer service requires you to be quick thinking, and very responsive. You cannot plan for every situation and yet you should be ready for any situation that might arise. Improvisation games are often used in acting classes to improve abilities. It also encourages participants to be creative and come up with different scenarios, solutions, and ideas on the go.
The main concept of this approach is to understand the need to always saying “Yes and” to every scenario. This helps the person to accept a situation and go with it. Using improvisation games is a great way of teaching employees to develop a response or solution by working off, or with the other person involved and how they are reacting.
4.) Reflective listening
You can create a sense of connection between yourself and the customer by simply repeating what they said back to them. This makes the customer believe that they are being listened to. This helps create a feeling of trust and like their concerns are understood during a frustrating situation.
While reflective listening may not seem difficult, in a heated situation, it can be a tool that is completely forgotten. Pair your customer service team up and have them practice by asking them in turns to respond to the other person using reflective listening. Adding reflective listening to your teams skillset is yet another way to achieve improved customer satisfaction.
5.) Stress reduction
Anyone who has worked in customer service understands the stress of dealing with an upset client or customer. While customer service focuses on the customer, it is important to remember the employees’ mental state is also very important. Your employees will face stressful situations all the time, and since they are a part of the team, it is vital to support them. Coaching them on how to deal with stress and methods to relieve it is a great way to protect the mental health of your employees.
There are many different relaxation techniques. Activities like yoga or meditation can be very helpful in calming your mind. Even small things like writing down your feelings, sharing how you feel with someone, or walking are all techniques known to help in a stressful situation. They relieve the mind and body from stress and calm the employee down.
By teaching your customer service team these techniques, you can not only inspire your team and make them feel valued, included and engaged, but you also teach them how to deal with situations, be quick on their feet manage the stress of the job.
Each of these techniques can help build your company’s reputation within your customer base. By being supportive, attentive and available for your clients, your customer services team will see the positive impact they have within their role. Their confidence, skills and abilities will continue to develop over time.
If you have good customer service, you will have happy, loyal customers who will talk positively about your brand. That type of advertising is priceless and will give you an edge over competitors.
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Why not invest in the development of your Customer Service team? IoSCM have Bite-Size courses and units of study within our Professional Qualification’s designed to enhance the capabilities of anyone working within a customer service role and department.
