Modern marketplaces are saturated and competitive. And in a marketplace where all products may appear and perform the same, one area where you could stand out is customer service.
Reports indicate that businesses can lose as much as $41 billion each year because of poor customer services. Moreover, 34% of the conflicts at a workplace occur among front-line employees. And training becomes even more complex when you realize that your employees are constantly interacting with customers over multiple fronts. Like call centres, physical stores, online chats, and door fronts. This makes it important to consider training your front-end staff. We live in a time where the news of a bad experience can travel across the world in minutes. There is a growing discontent for mistreatment. So, what can you do to protect your organization? Let us find out!
How to Train Your Front-End Staff
Catering to New Needs and Demands
Your customer’s needs are changing and so are their expectations from you. As your business evolves and markets its latest offerings, are you taking the time to inform your front-end staff about what to expect while facing customers?
Training your workforce to keep up with changes is important. A report from 2016 said that as many as 22of the customer-facing workforce are bound to be unaware of changes in the policies and offerings of their own organization when dealing with customers. And when customers encounter such employees, the possibility of a conflict increases.
Front-End Staff Should be the First to Know About Changes
Update in product policies, offers, and customer service terms must definitely be communicated with your employees. Animated explainer videos are a great way to roll out such training. Simple microlearning in the form of text and audio-based slides or even interactive eBooks can also address the updates and how soon they are being rolled out. These are quick to build and easy to roll-out. The aim is to inform your employees about the change before the customer hears about it. Plus, it also serves as just-in-time training when your employees need a quick refresher.
Additionally, even though today’s customers are technologically-savvy, they still expect the customer-facing workforce to be experts. Unlike training other staff which could be a one-time activity, training the customer-service workforce must be ongoing.
They need access to an updated knowledge base and to be equipped to offer the most current and relevant advice and assistance.
Training the workforce on dynamic product details such pricing, discounts, coupons etc. that change all the time, as well as educating them about all possible queries must be done on a continuous basis for improved customer service.
Understanding Customer Behaviors
Customers can be finicky as well. They may sometimes behave in an absurd manner and seem illogical. But it is very important for your front-end staff to be able to determine ‘what behavior is too far too much’.
On the other hand, some customers want to know more about your business before committing to making a purchase. Or they may appear overly critical of your services. Your employees need to know that such behavior is normal and that a customer is entitled to making an informed purchase. Losing their calm or responding in a callous manner to such customers is not the way to go.
This is why understanding customer behavior is very important. If your employees understand that such customer actions are acceptable and that it is normal, they are less likely to choose a distasteful approach to dealing with such customers.
Roleplay is Ideal for Front-End Staff to Practice Customer Interaction Training
Assessing customer behavior cannot be learnt via theory alone. Some form of roleplay or simulations are important here. eLearning that uses scenario-based questions, activities, and perhaps even animated videos that outline the exact customer behavior to look for, followed by the appropriate action to take is a good way to get your learners started. Give learners the option to practice their selling skills in a safe environment and provide remedial feedback.
Customers can be of various types: a potential customer who wants to learn about your product, a new customer who has a fair idea about your company but wants to know more, an impulsive customer who will make a decision based on the response of your customer-service agent, an unhappy customer who is dissatisfied with your product or a loyal one who trusts you blindly.
Assessing each customer’s behaviour and personality and dealing with them in the most appropriate manner is important. By investing in behavioural development and using real-life scenarios for training, you can equip your customer-facing staff with the skills required to tailor their approach for each individual customer.
Selling with Charm
49% of the clashes are a result of clashing personalities and warring egos. Slick talks can win you a customer and some courteous gestures with a smile can win you a customer for life. Winning a business is important, but we already know that the thin line between your business or the one next door can come down to a simple experience. And so, being courteous to your customers in exchange for their business is very important.
Your front-end staff may not even know it, but the stress of their job and the monotony of dealing with customers could sublimely be making them respond in a rude, cold, or exaggerated manner.
You have two options here. Either work towards alleviating the stress or train them on how to recognize their own change in behavior. We have an article on how eLearning itself can be used to bust stress, check it out here.
The point is that you need to win hearts and business. You cannot afford to appear indifferent to your customers. This is something that plagues a lot of businesses. And if you’re not paying enough attention, you’ll never know that the reason why your customers never return is because they weren’t treated right.
Your Front-End Staff are Humans Use Reinforced Training
Courtesy is acquired. More importantly, not losing your calm is practiced. Such training relies on employee behavior changes and is long-term reinforced training. A mix of VILT and eLearning-based course material on the importance of pleasant behavior is what will work here. Story-based or conversational learning can be extremely effective here where learners can ‘watch and do’.
Front-End Staff Training is Complex with Multiple Possibilities
Most unsavoury instances take place as a result of lack of training. You must consider looking into all the possibilities that may arise when your workforce is interacting with customers over multiple fronts. More importantly, train your employees to approach each customer as an individual and give them the proper treatment.
At eNyota Learning, we deconstruct the existing customer-facing processes your employees follow and help you fine-tune it by deploying eLearning courses designed to train and develop your team’s soft and behavioral skills, making them better at handling customer grievances and providing world-class support.
If you want to know more about how we can help your customer-facing team with their training and development needs, please reach out to us at contact@enyotalearning.com or sign up here and one of our representatives will get in touch with you.
Skills That Every Front-End Staff Must Possess
Simply training the customer-facing workforce to be polite and patient does not guarantee great service. And the “treat people as we want to be treated ourselves” is also inadequate in today’s dynamic world of customer service.
to include some form of eLearning into their current mix, gradually turning the entire process of cost-intensive traditional training activities into a cost-effective eLearning program. Today’s marketplace is incredibly competitive. It could even be said that more than your product offering, it is the quality of your customer service that will make or break your organization. According to a report, businesses lose as much as $41 billion each year just to poor customer service. The task is made more complex by the various kinds of touchpoints where employees interface with customers, the call center, the store, and even online.
Why Do Customers Expect Assistance from Front-End Staff?
When customers reach out to you they do so mainly because they have an issue they can’t seem to solve on their own. When this happens, they expect the response to be knowledgeable, professional, and courteous. They need help to navigate quickly through your processes for a quick solution. Since customers don’t always behave like you would like them to, teaching the customer-facing workforce to simply read from a script in such situations just won’t work.
Your customer-facing workforce requires to display high levels of efficiency, competency, and customer-centricity. They need technical training on how to use the enterprise software such as CRM for quick access to billing and shipping information, past transactions, sales information, and up-to-date product and service information.
As a result, here are some more skills that your front-end staff must possess:
Providing Customer Service
The customer’s time is precious. Responding to the toughest of queries must be done with utmost urgency.
Therefore, the knowledge of the customer-facing workforce must extend beyond just the product and service being offered; their training should include how to use the enterprise system to quickly retrieve information.
They need knowledge of workflows and business processes, so they can escalate issues as required. All this needs to be done at in the quickest possible manner for quality customer experiences.
Being Courteous
Training folks in other departments usually involves imparting skills on company operations or process knowledge and perhaps, not really people skills.
The customer-facing workforce needs to be trained on how to talk to customers, how to respond to their queries and how to resolve them. Knowing how to be efficient and courteous is a skill that can be taught, and then must be practiced over and over again.
The customer-facing workforce has to be trained to be polite, courteous and professional.
Dealing With Frustrated Customers
Not all customers who reach out for customer service are patient and courteous.
Very often, customer-facing agents also need to deal with upset and frustrated customers that make efficient service difficult. Therefore, training the workforce on how to effectively work with such customers is important so that issues don’t escalate to become problems.
They have to be exposed to a variety of situations and different stress-levels, so they are equipped to deal with the real deal when it occurs. It is only when your customer-facing workforce shows professionalism, even in the most trying circumstances, that you can safeguard your company’s image.
Handle All Possible Customer Interactions and Situations
First impressions are vital. When customers get in touch with an organization, they want to be taken care of, want their issue resolved and want to feel in control. Customer facing folks are under a lot of stress and pressure while catering to customer queries. They are under pressure to offer quick and impactful solutions. In situations where one interfaces directly with the customer, very often, what you say is not important; how you say it matters. That’s where a good training program can pay off.
With training, you can enable your customer-facing workforce to have the skills and confidence to handle all possible customer service situations and offer the best of service tailored to each individual: from the curious to the demanding, the first-timer to the eager, the difficult to the impossible!
Concluding
By training your customer-facing workforce to tackle each customer as an individual, you can guarantee that you have a legion of happier customers in the making.
At eNyota learning, we deconstruct the existing customer-facing processes your employees follow and help you fine tune it by deploying eLearning courses designed to train and develop your teams soft and behavioral skills, making them better at customer grievance addressing and providing world-class support. If you want to know more on how we can help your customer-facing team with their training and development needs, please reach out to us at contact@enyotalearning.com or sign up here and one of our representatives will get in touch with you. You can also view our LMS here Abara LMS.
