15 Creative Ways to Improve Customer Service Training Programs

Here are 15 Creative Ways to Improve Customer Service Training Programs

Understand customer needs

The more you know your customers, the more you will likely understand customer needs and expectations. Hence, get your customer service team to help you retrieve and store your customers’ information. After that, consider how your product/service could better suit their needs to improve customer service overall.

Seek and promote customer feedback

Allow customers to provide reviews. Ask customers their views after using your product/service, for example, by phone, face-to-face, or in writing. The easier and shorter it takes to complete the survey, the more responses you will likely receive. Invite regular customers to share their views of your organization individually.

Set and communicate clear service standards

Set some customer service standards that your customer service team can easily understand and implement. You can also include the team members in this process if you seek total engagement.

Share examples of excellent service

Recognize the best way to capture customer feedback across the organization. You can also have input from fellow members and managers where they identify a team member providing exceptional customer service. From there, you can build a toolkit of best practices within your organization.

Create easy customer service

Follow your customer’s journey, from how customers find and buy your organization’s service and products to billing and after-sales support. Look for ways of facilitating customer service processes at each stage of their journey.

Personalize the customer service

Take time to engage with the customers to find out their needs. As a result, you can offer your customers product or service options to meet their needs fully. This will help as you strive to improve customer service standards.

Invest in customer service training

Choose a training provider who will get to know your business and who can help your business strategy and service standards. An experienced and engaging training provider will help you and your team sustainably deliver personalized, tailored customer service. Alternatively, you could develop your internal customer service training program to raise the importance of customer service, product/service knowledge, and skills within the team. You can also train the team leaders to deliver regular bite-size customer service training sessions.

Analyze customer concerns and complaints

Get to the root cause of your customer’s problems and complaints to find out what is going wrong. It can help if you have a structured system storing all customer feedback, references, and complaints. Once you have all the information stored, review the data and share this data with representatives in your organization who are best placed to give the broadest of insights into why these customer complaints are happening.

Check out your competitors

Allow your staff to see the level of customer service your competitors offer. You may even include other organizations that are not competitors but are known to provide excellent customer service. Some of their customer strategies may be adoptable in your organization.

Hold regular internal customer service review sessions

When set up well, internal customer service reviews or forums can offer you some good ideas to improve customer service. Your staff works with customers daily, so they will share valuable insights if motivated to be open and honest without repercussions.

Build a customer-focused team culture

Focus your team on delivering exceptional levels of customer service. Ensure their roles are defined clearly and focused on improving customer service. As a result, your customer service team can see how they contribute to the broader customer service strategy and goals. Assess team members’ performance against delivering excellent customer service regularly and effectively.

Treat your staff as you treat your customers

‘Behavior breeds behavior’ and a happy team leads to satisfied customers. Hence offering as much attention to the needs of your employees as you do your customers will help improve customer service. If team members feel valued and recognized by their managers and the organization, they will likely perform better and engage with the customers well.

Set up an employee recognition and reward scheme

Implement an easy recognition and reward system to improve customer service that fits your organization’s culture. Consider what forms of recognition will motivate team members the most. Employee schemes can include small thank-you gifts, service awards, recognition on social media, etc.

Set measurable objectives around improved customer service

Focus your team members on improving customer service by offering measurable objectives and reviewing their progress regularly. Align these objectives to the overall customer service strategy and business goals. SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) objectives are primarily set to ensure they are measured. This method also ensures that you match resources and strategies to support the effective achievement of the standard set.

Review individual and team performance regularly

Undertake regular performance reviews, not just annually. Also, consider what time frames and formats work best for you and your teams. Include a review of how the customer service team contributes towards a set team objective and how they actively support others at work. This can be achieved through your standard one-to-one feedback, or you can facilitate a group discussion where you ask your team to review each member’s performance and contribution.

The abovementioned strategies can help you improve customer service training programs in your organization. But do you know a few other strategies? Are they not listed here? Let us know.

Infographic