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Customer service training (CST) refers to teaching employees the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to increase customer satisfaction.
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Customer service training (CST) refers to teaching employees the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to increase customer satisfaction.
Any employee who interacts with a customer is a candidate for customer service training. In addition to customer service representatives, this includes other positions such as receptionists, technical support representatives, field service technicians, sales engineers, shopkeepers, waiters, etc.
Course content typically includes greeting the customer (either by phone or in person), questioning to understand the customer’s need or problem, listening, confirming understanding, responding with value, using positive language, eliminating jargon, concluding the phone or face-to-face interaction, dealing with angry customers, and the importance of body language and tone of voice.
Customer service classes can be taught in a traditional classroom setting with workbooks or DVD and a trainer, through various methods of e-learning (web based training), or a blend (blended learning) of the two.
An advantage of classroom training, whether traditional or the synchronous form of blended learning, is that participants can discuss best-practices with each other and build a solid team foundation. Drawbacks include work-force management when scheduling a large number of people off the job at one time, and the cost of travel if participants need to travel to the training location.
A main advantage of e-learning is that participants can be scheduled for training in a staggered fashion to allow for job coverage. Participants can work at their own pace and take whatever time is needed in order to develop a thorough understanding of the content. One drawback of e-learning is that without management oversight there may not be a satisfactory completion rate.
Listed below are several benefits that accrue to an organization when employees are trained in customer service skills:
Employees who are properly trained and demonstrate professional customer service skills, can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. This helps the business retain customers and improve profits. It costs less to retain loyal customers than to acquire new ones. In addition, satisfied customers are more open to additional sales messages and are likely to refer others to that business.
Good listening skills and questioning techniques can shorten the interaction time with customers. This allows an organization to serve more customers in less time, possibly with fewer staff. However, consumers are intelligent and do not want to feel rushed, when they have questions. So be proactive and make sure every consumer feels they are being heard and not just "listened" to.
Being able to clearly explain the next step in a process and confirming that the customer is satisfied, will decrease the number of callbacks and return customers. Improving "first contact" resolution is one of the primary drivers of customer satisfaction.
Training all employees using consistent customer service skills, allows them to have a common process and language when assisting customers. This allows the business to brand their interaction of excellent service to the customer, which adds value to the business.
Investing in employee training gives employees a feeling of value and improves morale. In addition, when employees feel valued, they value their customers. This could be a result of effective customer service skills training, which not only benefits the employee, but will enhance the relationships with the customers. These important factors can help to increase employee loyalty, reduce employee turnover, and lower productivity costs.
Mentorship is the influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and professional growth of a mentee. Most traditional mentorships involve having senior employees mentor more junior employees, but mentors do not necessarily have to be more senior than the people they mentor. What matters is that mentors have experience that others can learn from.
Rapport is a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned are "in sync" with each other, understand each other's feelings or ideas, and communicate smoothly.
Experiential learning (ExL) is the process of learning through experience, and is more narrowly defined as "learning through reflection on doing". Hands-on learning can be a form of experiential learning, but does not necessarily involve students reflecting on their product. Experiential learning is distinct from rote or didactic learning, in which the learner plays a comparatively passive role. It is related to, but not synonymous with, other forms of active learning such as action learning, adventure learning, free-choice learning, cooperative learning, service-learning, and situated learning.
Blended learning, also known as technology-mediated instruction, web-enhanced instruction, or mixed-mode instruction, is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with physical place-based classroom methods.
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that of increasing revenues. The perception of success of the customer service interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer". Customer service is often practiced in a way that reflects the strategies and values of a firm. Good quality customer service is usually measured through customer retention. Customer service for some firms is part of the firm’s intangible assets and can differentiate it from others in the industry. One good customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer holds towards the organization.
The loyalty business model is a business model used in strategic management in which company resources are employed so as to increase the loyalty of customers and other stakeholders in the expectation that corporate objectives will be met or surpassed. A typical example of this type of model is: quality of product or service leads to customer satisfaction, which leads to customer loyalty, which leads to profitability.
Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Customers play an important role and are essential in keeping a product or service relevant; it is, therefore, in the best interest of the business to ensure customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty.
Competence is the set of demonstrable characteristics and skills that enable and improve the efficiency or performance of a job. The term "competence" first appeared in an article authored by R.W. White in 1959 as a concept for performance motivation. In 1970, Craig C. Lundberg defined the concept in "Planning the Executive Development Program". The term gained traction when in 1973, David McClelland wrote a seminal paper entitled, "Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence". The term was used by McClelland commissioned by the State Department, to extract characteristics common to high-performing agents of embassy, and to help them recruit and develop. It has since been popularized by Richard Boyatzis and many others, such as T.F. Gilbert (1978) who used the concept in relationship to performance improvement. Its use varies widely, which leads to considerable misunderstanding.
On-the-job training is an important topic of human resource management. It helps develop the career of the individual and the prosperous growth of the organization. On the job training is a form of training provided at the workplace. During the training, employees are familiarized with the working environment they will become part of. Employees also get a hands-on experience using machinery, equipment, tools, materials, etc. Part of on-the-job training is to face the challenges that occur during the performance of the job. An experienced employee or a manager are executing the role of the mentor who through written, or verbal instructions and demonstrations are passing on his/her knowledge and company-specific skills to the new employee. Executing the training on at the job location, rather than the classroom, creates a stress-free environment for the employees. On-the-job training is the most popular method of training not only in the United States but in most of the developed countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, etc. Its effectiveness is based on the use of existing workplace tools, machines, documents and equipment, and the knowledge of specialists who are working in this field. On-the-job training is easy to arrange and manage and it simplifies the process of adapting to the new workplace. On-the-job training is highly used for practical tasks. It is inexpensive, and it doesn't require special equipment that is normally used for a specific job. Upon satisfaction of completion of the training, the employer is expected to retain participants as regular employees.
A touchpoint can be defined as any way consumers can interact with a business organization, whether it be person-to-person, through a website, an app or any form of communication. When consumers come in contact with these touchpoints it gives them the opportunity to compare their prior perceptions of the business and form an opinion.
A Practice Enterprise is a practice company that runs like a real business silhouetting a real enterprise's business procedures, products and services. A Practice Enterprise resembles a real company in its form, organization and function. Each Practice Enterprise trades with other Practice Enterprises, following standard commercial business procedures in the Practice Enterprise worldwide economic environment. It offers a ‘learning-by-doing’ training programme with the aim to better prepare young people for their future careers and to increase their entrepreneurship potential through running their own Practice Enterprise.
Service Climate has been embedded in the research of social climate which relates to the overall group influence of individuals who partake in certain within-group activities. The group aspect of service climate has been compared to atmospheric climate in a way to illustrate its inner distinctive characteristics between different groups of individuals. The social environment has also been related to entrepreneurial leadership within business management and how organizing a group of people can be done to achieve a common goal. Evidence also leads to a rise in research beginning with early social experiments in the 1960s.
The service recovery paradox (SRP) is a situation in which a customer thinks more highly of a company after the company has corrected a problem with their service, compared to how they would regard the company if non-faulty service had been provided. The main reason behind this thinking is that successful recovery of a faulty service increases the assurance and confidence from the customer.
People skills are patterns of behavior and behavioral interactions. Among people, it is an umbrella term for skills under three related set of abilities: personal effectiveness, interaction skills, and intercession skills. This is an area of exploration about how a person behaves and how they are perceived irrespective of their thinking and feeling. It is further elaborated as dynamics between personal ecology and its function with other people's personality styles in numerous environments. British dictionary definition is "the ability to communicate effectively with people in a friendly way, especially in business" or personal effectiveness skills. In business it is a connection among people in a humane level to achieve productivity.
Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees and make sure the sustainability of employees. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic. Employee retention is also the strategies employers use to try to retain the employees in their workforce.
Service recovery is an organization's resolution of problems from dissatisfied customers, converting those customers into loyal customers. It is the action a service provider takes in response to service failure. By including customer satisfaction in the definition, service recovery is a thought-out, planned process of returning aggrieved/dissatisfied customers to a state of satisfaction with an organization/service. Service recovery differs from complaint management in its focus on immediate reaction to service failures. Complaint management is based on customer complaints, which, in turn, may be triggered by service failures. But since most dissatisfied customers are reluctant to complain, service recovery attempts to solve problems at the service encounter before customers complain or before they leave the service encounter dissatisfied. Both complaint management and service recovery are customer retention strategies. Researchers recently proved that strategies such as value co-creation and follow-up can improve the effectiveness of service recovery efforts.
Business relations are connections between stakeholders in the process of businesses, such as employer–employee relationships, managers as well as outsourced business partners. The association of businesses began relationships that have been constructed through communication channels such as the likes of telephones, personal contacts, and e-mails. These types of contacts are maintained and deepened through similar channels in internal businesses and organizations.
Literature Circles in EFL are teacher accompanied classroom discussion groups among English as a foreign language learners, who regularly get together in class to speak about and share their ideas, and comment on others' interpretations about the previously determined section of a graded reader in English, using their 'role-sheets' and 'student journals' in collaboration with each other.
Service-Ability: Create a Customer Centric Culture and Achieve Competitive Advantage is a book written by the customer service advocate Kevin Robson to highlight the need for organizations of all types and in all sectors to respond to the effects that increasing use of technology is having on the customer.
Social media use by businesses includes a range of applications. Although social media accessed via desktop computers offer a variety of opportunities for companies in a wide range of business sectors, mobile social media, which users can access when they are "on the go" via tablet computers or smartphones, benefit companies because of the location- and time-sensitive awareness of their users. Mobile social media tools can be used for marketing research, communication, sales promotions/discounts, informal employee learning/organizational development, relationship development/loyalty programs, and e-commerce.