In This Economy, Customer Service Training Is Vital!

      One critical mistake many businesses make in tough economic times is that they cut back on key training and development. While sometimes there are areas that can withstand these types of cutbacks, the area of Customer Service Training is usually not one of them. In fact, cutting back on training your associates on how to provide the very best customer experience will come back to haunt you in the future.

     Today customers of all types have an unprecedented number of choices and options as to where they purchase their products and services. With the increased usage and visibility of the Internet, it is no longer necessary to limit yourself to buying from merchants or businesses in your hometown or county. Today, you can gain access to businesses all over the country and world with just a few clicks on a keyboard! so, what does that mean to our businesses?

     Basically, it means that we have to be more competitive than ever just to keep our current customers not to mention bring in new ones! 

     Being competitive means more than having the lowest price or the biggest selection of products. Now what we need to do is provide the very best customer experience possible. In other words, we need to become totally customer focused. In order to accomplish this, we must get everyone trained on Customer Service Training fundamentals. This is important because having the necessary skills sets enable us to provide a quality customer service experience.

     Increased competition means more people fighting for the same customer. When this occurs, customers look for benefits from one business to another. That means customers are looking for more than price. They are looking for what represents the very best overall value to them at that particular moment. In other words, the very best customer experience.

     Being customer focused means more than smiling when customers walk through the door and wishing them well when they walk out. It is more than having great products at great products. In fact, the total customer experience is everything, and we mean everything, that happens from the first time they walk through your doors or call you on the phone until the present. If you concentrate on only one part of the entire process your efforts will likely bring little, if any, positive results. In order to be effective, you must address the entire process and not just parts of it.

     Many companies make the mistake of training only a small portion of their employees in customer Service Techniques and skills. Usually these people are the people staffing the complaint desk. (Why they sometimes call this the Customer Service desk puzzles me. customer Service is so much more than just handling complaints.) the reality is that almost every associate, be they in sales, service, or support functions needs to be trained in Customer Service.

     Why?

     Because everyone in the company has an effect on the service and experience the customer encounters when he does business with your company. Individuals needs these skills because these same skills that help them interact with customers are also used when interracting with friends, co-workers, vendors, and other people we come into contact with each and every day. By learning how to communicate effectively and interact with customers, we help ourselves not only treat customers better but also influence rules, policies, and procedures that may or may not be customer friendly.

     Some businesses question whether or not they really have to make this effort. The reality is that they really have no other reasonable choice. For every customer who bothers to tell how why they are leaving you for your competition, 10 more leave without saying a word. These people take with them present and future sales and also the power of word of mouth communication. Studies have shown that every customer that has a negative experience is going to tell 15 people on average. Who know how many those people will tell. Our long term success hinges on the satisfaction of our customers.

     The key to success is not to try to be perfect but to try and be pro-active and responsive. No one person is going to have all the answers and all the cures. success must be a co-operative effort relying on the strengths of a wide array of people. not just one or two people. Success is achieved by making things the best you think they can be and then being responsive to your customers suggestions, complaints, and comments. The key lies in creating a situation where those thought and comments are actually exchanged and not left unsaid.

     Customer Service Training teaches us how to interact with our customers, co-workers, and vendors to understand the needs and requirements of everyone involved. Customer Service Training shows us how to communicate effectively and reduce the amount of miscommunication and honest errors made because decisions were based on inaccurate or incomplete information.

     Most important, customer Service training teaches us how to become more pro-active and how to create an overall customer experience that will not provide any reason for your customers to ever look outside your business for their present and future needs.

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