Can you relate to that frustrating feeling when you phone a customer service line and you end up being put through to one after the other consultant to trying to sort out your problem? Is your customer service a game of chance? It is extremely dangerous to gamble with the life line of your business.
The fact is that all staff members are different and perform differently. You have those who are only there because they want to get paid, but hate every minute of their work day, lack a great deal of passion and motivation. Then you have those employees who won’t go the extra mile to help, because they don’t understand the consequences of bad customer service. Then you have those once in a blue moon type of employees who want to help, who wants to sort out problems and who feels for the customer.
What if we told you that with the right training, the investment in your call centre staff can increase their motivation, passion, team work, empathy and willingness to go the extra mile? Here’s how:
- Emotional Intelligence – when you develop the EQ of your staff, they learn the very important skill “empathy”. With this skill they are able to look at the situation through the eyes of the customer so as to understand the frustration and emotion behind the query better.
- Effective Listening and Communication skills – most of the time an angry or frustrated customer just wants to feel heard. By learning how to adopt an active listening style and then communicate properly, your staff will be able to get the feedback they need and respond with a solution, which is exactly what the customer wants.
- Product Knowledge – a lot of the time the call centre agent ‘passes the buck’ so to speak, because they don’t feel confident enough about knowing the ins and outs of the product. Proper sales and product training will assist them with any query even if it is not their department.
- Friendliness – actually straight forward, but if you are friendly and remain friendly, customers will calm down and appreciate your professionalism and humanity.
- Motivation – it cannot be stressed enough how regular motivational sessions help increase work performance. To constantly motivate your staff and remind them why they are doing what they do, make them feel important and makes them want to strive even more to achieve the goals you set for them.
- Team Building – work together to combat Customer Service Roulette. Team activities and team building sessions help teams understand each member. When we can work together, we can better solve problems together.
If you want your staff to stop gambling with the service of your customers, invest in their knowledge and developing their skills. A customer service agent or call centre staff member, who has the ability to answer a call and assist the customer properly from the start, can truly help with the ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing of your business. The Mindspa Institute offers a variety of these soft skill training courses across South Africa both in-house at corporate or also on public platforms in Cape Town, Durban and Gauteng.