If you’re a training manager of a Customer Service organization, how much time do you spend training customer service? Anyone else hear crickets creaking? Exactly. The basis of your business isn’t even what you’re focusing on training employees. You’re training on specific products, on answers to inquiries, and how to “handle” difficult callers, guests or clients. But shouldn’t you be training how to service clients in a manner to prevent them becoming “difficult”?

Our culture is much more re-active than proactive. Hey, if it weren’t, Reagan wouldn’t have pulled the solar panels off the White House when he got into office. But if you want to provide the best service to your clients, like so many companies say they do, you need to provide better customer service training.

According to a report by the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), just 27 percent of service and support staff spends more than five days on annual ongoing learning. Another study completed by Professors Bill Withers and Patrick Langan, both of Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, determined that 78 percent of employers said they provided some customer service training, but 65 percent of those said they would provide more if it were available (Chief Learning Officer Magazine, September 2007)

How do you provide this training? It seems 65% of you reading this are seeking the answer, which is a simple one. Role-play. Your employees know better than you the situations that need to be practiced. Let them record freestyle videos in SureSpeak. Have them send the videos to other employees. Every time a new customer service employee encounters a new or challenging situation, create a training module based on the situation. Want some help? With our Rapid Results™ program, our implementation team can help you create these customer service scenarios. We’ll even promise that your customer service employees will be better equipped to handle tough situations in as little as a month. Find out more by emailing sales@surespeak.com.