Training call center customer service employees can be a headache for every company. Due to the focus on meeting user requests, answering questions, and opening new accounts, it is essential that these employees put themselves in the customer’s shoes and know how to respond to their needs.
To help you with this mission, we’re offering 6 tips to help train call center customer service employees:
1. Start customer service training before starting the job
There is no better way to guarantee successful training than to start during the selection process itself. It’s here that you must send a clear message: “the customer always comes first.” If you can do this effectively before starting to work, employees will have begun customer service training before they even join your company (and almost without realizing it).
2. Practical training
Since it is a call center, employees must be trained by making phone calls from the start. The training should not be theoretical (or at least in very small doses), but instead should focus on tips, tricks, and techniques that call center employees can put into practice in their day-to-day work life. One good option is to use simulators, another is to have a trainer with them who corrects employee calls, and you can also have workers listen back to their own conversations (identifying their own mistakes).
3. Don’t forget about empathy
Although customer service training has many practical and technical aspects (product knowledge, vocabulary, standard phrases, etc.), it is important to not neglect the emotional side. You must ensure that employees always put themselves in the customer’s shoes, develop empathy, and have a positive attitude. Without this, everything else is practically useless.
4. Gamify your customer service training
If you want to break with the monotony of classroom training and traditional e-learning, opt for gamification and video games instead. You’ll be able to involve employees, improve their engagement level, and achieve better pedagogical results. Video games like 2100 let you customize content to suit the daily needs of call centers.
5. Continuous training in customer service
One training program is never enough. Employees often forget what they’ve learned and lose certain abilities over time. Therefore, it’s highly important to reinforce and repeat the training, even changing or combining different formats. That way, you emphasize the importance of customer service in call centers.
6. Get feedback to improve training
Don’t be afraid to ask your employees what they thought of the training. In fact, they are your greatest allies and the ones who can best explain how to improve customer service courses. Make sure you ask for honest feedback at various times and use it to adapt and improve training programs to the needs of your employees.