Benefits of Customer Service eLearning Training

When it comes to businesses, making a sale is only part of your success. As soon as a new customer starts to use your product or take advantage of your services, it’s up to your customer-facing teams to increase customer loyalty. The importance of customer service training is pivotal in scaling your business and increasing customer satisfaction. 

Who Needs Training in Customer Service?

A range of different industries can benefit from customer service training for employees. However, it is particularly important for companies in the retail space, healthcare and software industries, civil aviation, and other verticals in which tech support is critical to the business. The reasoning behind staff training in customer service revolves around the below purposes.

• New hire onboarding: It’s not uncommon for medium or large enterprises to onboard dozens of customer service reps within a given month. It’s essential that your team receives the right training as soon as they’re onboarding.
• Scheduled regular training: Employees, no matter how long they’ve been at the company, can always benefit from a refresher on how to interact with customers. 
• Addressing customer service pain points: Higher management may pinpoint bottlenecks in service delivery. This training can help iron out best practices and ensure the staff is aware of how to handle different scenarios. 
• Product knowledge training: Help your employees become acquainted with new products, new features, or new services. 

With the right customer service training approach, you can ensure that your business has a united, professional front so you can continue building a positive reputation. 

Why Is Customer Service Training Important?

The importance of customer service training for an organization is critical. Every interaction that your team has with a customer or a potential customer, helps to build the foundation of your reputation, ultimately impacting your business’ bottom line. Not only are customer service eLearning courses beneficial to your customers and your employees, but they also give you a leg up over your competitors and can drive sales. This type of training empowers your team with the right skills and tools to provide high-quality customer service. In turn, this offer benefits such as:

• Positive reputation in the community
• High customer retention
• Increased profit
• Larger clientele 

Despite many organizations shying away from customer service training, it alone can provide businesses with a competitive edge. 

Customer Service Online Training Benefits

Now that we’re talked about the definition, let’s explore the benefits of training employees in customer service. 

Increased Profit

The better experience that a customer has with your company, the more likely they are to come back again. They’ll know that your organization is passionate about caring for its customers, resulting in more money in your bottom line. The most impactful way to approach this type of training is to give real-world training that’s directly applicable to the scenarios they’ll encounter. From simulations to serious games, you can choose a range of assets to include in your training course. 

Improved Employee Motivation and Engagement

Another benefit of customer service training is increased employee motivation and engagement. If your employees feel confident about how to talk to a customer about your product or service, they’ll be inherently better at their job. Another great thing about these courses is how customizable they are. You can create different courses to address different service areas at your company, equipping your team with the specific knowledge they need to excel in their role. 

Increased Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Retention

Consider a company which you’ve had a great customer service experience with. Chances are that you’ve gone back to that company time and time again thanks to this positive experience. This is another benefit of customer service training for employees as it allows them to build loyal customers through the skills and knowledge they learn in each course. For example, if you have product knowledge presentations for free on your website, it will be easier to support the customer as they already have foundational knowledge. 

Drop-In Employee Turnover Rates

Employees like to feel like they are investing in their overall growth and professional development. By providing them with hands-on training courses, you can reduce the chances of the employee leaving the company. Not only will this reduce your employee turnover, but you will in turn save money on the onboarding and hiring process. As you retain your company’s top talent, you continue to solidify your emphasis on great customer service.

Saves Productive Time

Another benefit of customer service training for employees is that your employees will always have access to the training material. Even if your company works from remote locations, employees can access training whenever needed. It’s not uncommon for customer service executives to undergo training for many days. This places more cost on the employer side and can result in wasted time. Thanks to eLearning, your team is able to go through the training at their own pace and better absorb the information.

Enhanced Brand Image

Companies with effective customer service training are often associated with having a positive brand image and reputation. The more positive your brand reputation, the more you’re able to build a loyal following of customers as they continue to rely on your company, which is another benefit of attending customer service training. Customers will be more likely to take advantage of your products or services when they understand that you’ve invested in training your employees. 

Online Training Personalization and Flexibility

Not all of your employees will come into your company with previous customer service training on their resumes. That’s why many companies are turning to online customer training courses as it offers personalization and flexibility. Different courses can be tailored to different skill sets to help close knowledge gaps and allow all of your employees to feel confident. Employees will also be able to fit in training when it’s convenient for them and can break it up into smaller sections. 

Improved Customer Service Skills

At the very least, customer service eLearning training can help your employees improve their knowledge, competencies, and skills to excel in their respective roles. They will learn the right questions to ask customers and learn how to understand customer concerns and the problem-solving skills necessary to overcome them. As a result, your employees will be able to deliver a more consistent approach to customer service and they’ll be able to solve issues on their own. 

Cultivate a Supportive Corporate eLearning Culture

The benefits of creating a supportive and positive company culture are expansive. Creating this environment helps to encourage your team to become lifelong learners as they know they have the support necessary to thrive at their jobs. Once you have proven success in one area, you’ll be able to scale your learning culture globally if you so choose. This means that employees throughout the world can participate in online discussions and productively interact with their coworkers. 

Collect Valuable Employee Feedback

Another benefit of customer service training for employees is your ability to collect data from your team. By collecting data about how useful each course is, you can learn where your eLearning courses are excelling and where they are falling short. In return, your organization will be able to develop even more impactful customer training courses in the future rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach. Also, your employees will appreciate the chance to provide feedback because you value their opinion. 

How to Create Effective Customer Service Training

Set Clear Objectives

You should start your approach to creating customer service eLearning courses by setting clear objectives. A huge reason why to invest in customer service training is to collect measurable data about what is working and what isn’t. Are there specific goals or milestones that you want to achieve? How will you determine if a course is successful? Ask yourself these types of questions before delving into course development. 

Be Clear About the Customer Service Skills that You Want to Improve

Different courses target different skills for customer service representatives. Consider the skills that you want to develop such as:

• Listening skills and being empathetic with customers
• Using positive language even in difficult situations
• De-escalating problems before they snowball
• Problem-solving skills
• Communication skills
• Technical product knowledge to ensure that your staff can provide helpful suggestions and fixes
• Time management and organizational skills especially for teams that may not have a large customer service staff
• Stress management to help your team unwind after a long day of fielding calls

Tailor the Course to the Intended Audience

Different team members will require different types of training at different times. This means you should tailor your courses accordingly to target specific skill sets and roles on your team. Let’s say you create a customer service course that revolves around the onboarding process. This course may not be applicable to all team members who require a more pointed set of skills for their particular role. Feel free to create specific courses tailored toward different employees. 

Relevance Is Essential

Another reason why to do customer service training is the fact that you can make each course incredibly relevant. The content that you include in each course is completely customizable to your brand and your industry. This means that your learners will get more out of the customized course than they could with a generic course with high-level examples. 

Use Branching Scenarios

Including scenarios in your courses is one of the most powerful ways to convey information to your employees, but branching scenarios take this concept to the next level. Branching scenarios help your learners understand the potential consequences of the decisions that they make during customer service scenarios. If your team will often face tough customer service scenarios that require them to make fast yet important decisions, this is a great technique to use in your course. 

Include Tough But Realistic Situations

Not every day as a customer service representative will be a walk in the park. In fact, more often than not, there will be difficult situations that your team will have to navigate. You can include these scenarios in your customer service eLearning courses to help prepare your team ahead of time so they are not caught off guard. The more exposure they have to the types of situations that will appear on the job, the better they’ll be able to handle them. 

Show the Impact of Bad Customer Service

With some types of customer service training, it can be beneficial to outline various examples of bad customer service. By including these examples, it demonstrates the impact that poor customer service can have on your organization. Encourage your employees to put themselves in the position of the customer so they have another viewpoint on the situation. 

Provide a Blended Learning Option

According to research conducted at Vanderbilt University, when eLearning is mixed with face-to-face learning, this approach can meet or even exceed traditional training efficacy. This blended learning approach isn’t applicable to every business, however, it can be beneficial to meet even quarterly to build a stronger sense of company culture.

Customer Service Training by Allegro Media Design

As you can see, the benefits of customer service training are more pertinent than ever before and can help your company stand out from the crowd. If you’re not sure where to begin in your eLearning customer service training approach, our professionals at Allegro Media Design are more than happy to help. For additional information or to learn more about how we can help, please contact us today.