Empathy based customer service training improves customer experiences

Every company knows the importance of Customer Service and its impact on the bottom line in business. Along with training their workforce on products and services, organisations have started to realise the potential of using empathy-based approaches to teaching people the importance of care, trust and authenticity when it comes to serving customers.

In customer service, empathy is the ability to have a human experience and interaction with a customer where you would intentionally put yourself in the customer’s shoes to understand their issue and find the best possible solution for your customers. The trick is to also not become emotional yourself and to understand the bigger picture to try to find mutual ground to begin engagement.

The goal of every organisation is to add value to their customers- to meet their needs irrespective of what the business is about. Each person in the organisation needs to understand their role in respect to the endcustomer and the difference they make as individuals to service as a whole. Addressing customer problems, pain points and issues must be a priority even before the customer engages in the product or service. Through the past 2 years, humans have been starved of contact, comfort and engagement and now place a significant amount of value on a human experience when it comes to customer service.

Customer Service Training Program

Several programs are developed for educating employees whenever a new product or service is launched. These programs provide the required skills, abilities, and information to the employees and stakeholders so that they can deliver the product or service with ease to its maximum capacity. By providing the right kind of training, companies can retain new and existing customers.

A company’s service operations must ensure that processes, skills, and practices are attuned to every touch point. Although companies know a lot about customers buying habits, incomes and other characteristics used to classify them, they know little about the thoughts, emotions, and states of mind that the customers interactions with products, services and brands induce.

This means that investing in the right customer service training program offers a direct, positive experience to the customer.

Some of the benefits of the Customer Service Training Program include:

1. Increased engagement with customers.

By providing the right tools, you can train employees on how to engage customers on the right things, in the right way. Direct engagement with customers allows representatives to be helpful and create trust with the brand and creates an excellent customer experience.

2. Increased customer retention.

By identifying a customer journey and then engaging on each of the customer touchpoints, employees then have a shared understanding of the expected service levels that are being experienced and work together to close out any gaps that they identify in the process.

An effective and efficient customer training program can help companies where churn rates are significantly high. Successful upselling and retaining of customers can happen by investing time in your customer journey mapping and moments of truth.

3. Reduced support costs, by including customer education in service.

Teaching employees the importance of direct after-sales service, engagement and customer education, means that you set up your business for success by ensuring your customers have a great customer experience from the get go all the way to after the sale has been made.

When customer education forms part of customer service, the business ensures that call backs and queries reduce with a direct correlation to a positive increase in customer experience.

4. Consistent customer experience.

Every employee is special and wants to feel important and that they belong. Ensuring that all your employees attend and receive the same training when it comes to customer service means that you get a consistent customer experience across the value chain. This helps customers confidence in the company. You only have to think of a personal experience where the person on the other end of the line said that they didn’t know, was not sure or just blamed another person internally.

Consistency is key!

5. Better Product Development.

On the Customer Service Training Program, employees are given an opportunity to share their experiences with non-delivery or when customers were upset. This can then be used to develop better products and services.

When the feedback is implemented properly and customers can connect with your product and services, they will recommend, rate, and review your products.

Customer reviews and recommendations help your business grow rapidly.

Customer Service Training Programs help you develop a community of loyal customers. Customer service is key to ensuring your revenue grows as markets open up. [Insert full name] (HRSS) is a SEIFSA Alliance Partner. We are passionate about and champion Customer Service

Training Programs.

For more information contact Melissa Subban