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Ann Parfenova

Course creation· 15 MIN · 06.11.2024

6 steps to create effective customer service training

Ever think about how your customers see your company? The correct answer to this question can double your revenue. That’s because customer-centric brands report profits that are 60% higher than those that fail to focus on improving customer satisfaction. Just think about these numbers:
  • 73%
    of customers say customer experience is the first thing they consider when purchasing a product.
  • 49%
    of loyal customers left the brand due to poor customer experience.
  • 80%
    of companies plan to increase their investments in customer experience in 2025.
Want to follow the trend? Customer service training is the first thing you need to consider. In this article, we share:

What is customer service training?

Customer service training is a system of activities that helps employees better understand how to interact with customers. These activities help increase employee engagement in customer service, develop employees' skills and competencies, and build customer loyalty and retention through service.
The critical aspect is that you must build a system of activities, not just separate courses and random activities that don’t work together. No worries; in this article, we discuss how to do it.

Which types of customer service training activities can you implement in your company?

Look at different customer service training activities through the employee’s career path.

First days

in the new job



NEEDS

Support in adaptation to the new place


HOW TO HELP

New-hire customer service training

The probationary

period



NEEDS

An environment that helps them unleash their potential.


HOW TO HELP

In-house employee training

Development

in the position



NEEDS

Ability to grow and improve their competence.


HOW TO HELP

Upskilling training

First days in the new job

You need to ensure that your employees understand your policy regarding customer experience. Every company has a unique style and technique of interacting with customers. What can be included in the new-hire customer service training?


  • Onboarding courses
  • Learning from peers — experienced employees
  • Introduction to best practices

The probationary period

At that stage, you need to teach employees the necessary skills and give them the ability to use them. What can be included in in-house employee training?


  • Courses about scripts and principles of working with customers.
  • Real case role play — live training in a simulated environment.
  • Special cases customer service training.
Your training should be relevant and reflect the real work environment. Dozens of corporate learning teach employees knowledge and skills they can’t use at work. For example, they don’t have tools introduced in training or are overloaded with work and simply don’t have time to perform the way we teach them in courses.

Development in the position

Now, you must ensure your employees can grow and understand their value to the company. They help you improve customer experience, and you help them increase their expertise and recognise their professionalism. What can be included in the upskilling customer service training?


  • Consultant workshop
  • Customer service refresh training
  • Advanced training with more details and complex cases
As you can see, customer service training is not just a bunch of courses. It’s a whole system that supports and helps employees throughout their careers.

How to create effective training for customer service employees?

To create a comprehensive system of customer service training, you must follow the next steps:

Step 1. Set your goals

Every corporation should be goal-oriented. You need to know what you want to improve and which metrics will show your training is successful. For example, increase the percentage of customer satisfaction and decrease the rate of complaints or employee mistakes when consulting customers.
Note:

  • Your goal should be measurable.
  • You must describe what helps you understand that training caused success, not something else.

Step 2. Conduct the analysis

Before developing training, you need to gather information:

  • 📌

    Find areas that you can improve. You need to explore the current situation. Is there any stage of employee development that your training doesn’t cover? Are your training activities connected and consistent? Can your workers implement the knowledge and skills they learn during training? You can conduct anonymous surveys and audit existing activities.

  • 👀

    Study your audience. Who are they? How do they prefer to learn? What stops them from doing things the proper way? Analise the existing statistics of employee behaviour, conduct surveys, interview managers, and create a portrait of your employees.

  • 🌱

    Analise the working environment. How should workers work, and how do they work? Is there enough support to help employees use their skills?

Step 3. Find educational needs at every stage of employees' development

After you gather all the information, you need to find the educational needs. What exactly should you improve to reach the set goals? To get better outcomes, use a competency-based approach.
Areas you need
to improve
What competencies
affect these areas
What knowledge and skills
form these competencies

Step 4. Choose training formats that suit your goals and audience

Now that you know the results you need from your training, you must decide how to achieve these results through learning. For example, your employees may have solid customer interaction knowledge but can’t perform this skill in a real work environment. In that case, you need training that offers case-based courses, real-world role-play training, and simulators for working with customers.

Step 5. Ensure learning transfer

That’s the important part that many companies oversee. There are a lot of barriers that stand in the way of the learning transfer. To eliminate them, use this questionnaire:

  • Ability

    • Is your content relevant and reflects the real work environment?
    • Do you have enough practice to transform knowledge into skills?
    • How do you motivate and support your employees to learn new things?
    • Do your employees have an opportunity to use their knowledge and skills?

  • Motivation

    • Are KPIs, reward systems, and performance goals connected to training?
    • Do you include managers and employees in training creation so they know this training is relevant?
    • How do you help employees believe they can tackle the tasks they learn to tackle?
    • Do you work with employees' performance and outcomes expectations after training?

  • Environment

    • Do you have a transparent system of supervisors' and peers' support for employees to use new skills?
    • Do you have a transparent system of supervisors' and peers' sanctions for employees refusing to change their behaviour?
    • Do your employees understand positive and negative personal training outcomes?
    • Do you provide feedback to support behavioural changes in employees' performance?
    • How do you address the employees' resistance to change?
This questionnaire may seem a bit overwhelming, but it can help you increase the effectiveness of the customer service training by up to 90%.

Step 6. Design and launch education

Now, the easy part. Using all these data, you can design an educational program, create content and launch the training. Remember to announce training in advance and "sell" employees the idea of learning. And you must constantly monitor feedback and improve the training.
These steps look like hard work, but you don’t need to do it alone. Many providers can help you with every step. For example, Seturon has a fully equipped team of professionals who can consult and support you throughout the process.

FAQ

  • Ann Parfenova
    Learning experience designer
    With 7 years in Learning Experience Design, I’ve crafted 90+ interactive courses that prove learning can be fun! From gamified simulations to educational games, I'm all about making education exciting and engaging. Let's make learning an adventure!

    All articles by this author
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