Customer Service Training Articles

The New York Times carried a small note of large interest to all of us in personnel management who are in contact with the public: “If one of your New Year’s resolutions was ‘I will be more patient’, be warned: Customer Service Reps are not going to make it easy for you!”

Ten years ago if you told someone you worked in a call center, they responded by asking, “A call what? What’s that?” No more. In fact, I’m waiting for the TV sitcom to come out because the life in a call center is such “real life” and full of story after story. So it’s no surprise that call centers make the news as did Victoria’s Secret recently, and it’s no surprise that in a letter to its credit card holders, Dress Barn alerted its customers to a change in the location of their call center operations.

Want to add some fun into the workplace while making sure that company or department standards are being met? It’s easy!

Put on your consultant hat and invite the manager to chat about the situation. There are some important considerations to look at before signing folks up for a return trip to the same class. First, look at the message sent to the returning staff person and their colleagues. Is a return trip for re-training a signal to everyone of failure the first time? Do other staff members think management is clueless about how to help this person?

An important six article series written by an industry expert who provides clarity for call center teams. The call center industry insists on interchanging the terms “coaching” and “monitoring.” But they are two separate and distinct activities that should be clearly set apart from each other. If you want to know who has a handle on how different these activities are, ask the people involved – management and the frontline. You will discover one question gets two different answers every time.

Effective coaching increases a person’s level of self-confidence due to the positive reinforcement that is deliberate during the feedback. It is this confidence that then catapults your staff into achieving mastery of the newly introduced behaviors. That being the case, then, everyone on the team needs coaching! Even those employees you would say are your so-called “best performers” benefit from coaching.

The front-end qualifier is sound (voice-tone presence) not appearance. If you bristle when you hear their voice, what will your customer do? If you lip-read to interpret their dialog while they answer a face-to-face interview question, what will your customer do on the phone?

When you were little, remember the teacher saying, “Good Job!” And remember how you felt when you test came back with a BIG GOLD STAR? WOW!
Recognition! It’s one of the most powerful motivators we have. Your employees may have certificates, trophies, and plaques all over their desks and walls. But why does it seem that it is typically the same group who win all the awards?

Whoever answers the telephone — it could be the receptionist, switchboard operator, customer service specialist, technical support engineer, or manager — is actually the company gatekeeper and sets the tone for the entire conversation during the first 3-5 seconds of the call!

Measuring soft skills in an objective manner has always been difficult, and it still is. The software and technology we have available is conducive to capturing real numbers; soft skills are simply more difficult to define and measure — which is exactly the reason they are often avoided or overlooked.

Beyond tools, toys, and trends lay the true essence of relationships – people interacting with people, and not all people speak the same language. In his book The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman makes a profound observation about the frustration experienced in many personal relationships. He writes that “We have overlooked one fundamental truth: People speak different love languages.”

There is a goal in the hiring process: find the best person for the job. In pursuit of that goal there may be many people that just are not the right “fit” for the position. For these people, it is important to remember that they may not become an employee, yet they still may be a customer.

Technology’s complexity promises us simplicity and delivers it at one level and fails us at another. We can get a tremendous amount of work, data, and information moved in a flash. In the same flash, we discover we are more connected digitally than relationally. Ah, yes, the relationship. Phileos.