Unleash Excellence on the Phone: Elevate Customer Service Training for Employees
Mastering the art of Customer Service and Customer Service on the Phone can be challenging. It is not merely ‘common sense;’ it’s a learned skill that your employees must master in order for your company to succeed.
One of the most common ways customers communicate with employees is through the telephone, and how your team handles those calls can create a huge impact on your reputation and your bottom line. Fostering customer loyalty begins with the first contact someone makes with your company. Despite living in an age where social media seems to dominate, 74% of Americans have used their landline to initiate contact with customer service.
Solid and effective communication is the foundation of customer service: the words we use, our tone of voice, active listening, and non-verbal cues like eye contact and body language convey the messages that we send. But, when we communicate via telephone, we can’t rely on non-verbal cues — so we must practice our verbal-only issue-resolution skills. That’s why customer service training for employees on the phone is so important.
What’s different about Customer Service on the phone?
When you conduct customer service on the phone without being able to read body language and other non-verbal cues, customer service professionals may not realize that what they are saying is being taken negatively and upsetting the customer until it is too late. With 82% of customers ceasing to do business with a company because of bad customer service, that’s not a risk worth taking.
When communicating over the phone, like when providing customer service on the phone, your frontline representatives have to rely solely on what they hear. Limiting your team members to a single sense makes the process of resolving customer issues tougher, but still certainly possible!
Great customer service through verbal cues only involves shifting your team members’ mindset to focus on building emotional intelligence and exercising skills like active listening.
Active listening involves investing yourself fully in what the customer is saying. The goal is to show genuine interest in the customer’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives while offering them a supportive environment to express themselves. It’s an opportunity for frontline representatives to exercise empathy and provide exceptional customer service.
On the other side of the conversation, your staff only have the tone of their voice and vocabulary choices to make a great impression on customers. Customer service professionals should clearly convey messages while choosing their language carefully to reflect positivity and empathy.
The end result is a positive two-way conversation that resolves a customer’s issue and leaves them satisfied and happy!
What goes into Customer Service Training for Employees?
Your customers expect undivided attention and prompt resolution. They need to ‘hear’ a smile and a welcoming tone. By delivering on that desire, you can foster loyalty, build your reputation, and expand your base — 77% of customers have said they would recommend a business they’ve had a positive experience with to a friend.
Our Customer Service Essentials course can teach your team new and improved communication techniques — delivering messages in the right tone of voice — and demonstrate the phrasing and word choices that will keep every call going smoothly for you and your customers. Upon completion, your team members will know the details of providing exceptional customer service over the phone, including how to:
- Guide a phone conversation from the beginning and stay in control.
- Ensure the customer’s needs are not only met but exceeded.
- Build and maintain rapport using positive vocabulary choices and voice tone techniques.
- Show empathy and compassion by providing a human approach.
- Deliver a negative message in a positive way while ensuring the customer’s accurate understanding of the message and increasing their receptivity and cooperation.
- Transform an unhappy customer into a satisfied one without the need for supervisor intervention and increase one-call resolution.
By mastering communication techniques, demonstrating empathy, and delivering resolutions effectively, your customer service professionals can meet and exceed customer expectations, foster loyalty, and bolster your company’s reputation.
Training your professionals leads to great service over the phone
Face-to-face interactions in business are becoming less commonplace, replaced by the telephone as a medium for regular customer interactions. Investing in customer service phone training now matters more than ever to ensure that your customer service professionals are equipped with the skills and knowledge to deliver consistent and top-notch service.
With the techniques we present in our courses, your employees can elevate their ability to provide exceptional customer service over the phone. You can ensure that each customer call is an opportunity to forge strong relationships and enhance your company’s reputation. Make the most of every phone call, and unleash excellence in customer service across your organization.
To improve your customer service experience over the phone, start with our Customer Service Essentials course.
Additional Resources:
- Increase the confidence of your team members so they can consistently deliver exceptional customer service.
- Employee engagement, emerging leaders, and improved customer experience. Contact us today!
- Check out what we offer and cultivate your team one course at a time.
- Empower your agents to make every interaction a productive and successful one!