Keep Customer Service Skills Fresh
Build a Reputation for Consistent User-Friendly Service
Article by Donna Earl
Help Desks with reputations for user-friendly service believe in training and keeping customer service skills fresh. Here are some tips to reinforce key skills.
- After a baseline customer service training or yearly refresher, make a list of the most significant skills you or your team can implement to ‘wow’ your users. Post this list in a conspicuous place or in each agent’s workspace.
- If you’re a supervisor or lead, choose one skill to highlight and reinforce during team meetings. Provide a scenario and ask two team members to role-play the skill. The demonstration will keep the meeting lively and reinforce the message. You can rotate the responsibility for describing and demonstrating a skill so all team members have the opportunity to participate.
- During call monitoring if a supervisor recognizes agents need reinforcement of a skill, that skill can be highlighted in an upcoming meeting. Ask an agent to play the customer, and demonstrate the best way to handle the call. Discuss (without mentioning names) how you’ve heard the call handled in monitoring, and reinforce more effective call handling methods. To reinforce the ideal techniques, ask agents to role-play after you’ve demonstrated best practices.
- If you receive feedback from users regarding a negative call, listen to recording of the call and develop a scenario or role-play that will teach the lacking skill. Present this scenario at staff meeting, and discuss best technique for handling the call. Ask an agent to role-play the customer, and you can play the role of agent.
- Develop quizzes to keep learning fresh and remind agents that customer service skills are important. If you’d like a quiz HelpDeskCoach offers as part of training materials, send a message to the email address listed below and you’ll receive a sample quiz.
- Create a contest where agents can demonstrate their most challenging customer interaction and how they used their skills to cope. Ask team members to vote for the most difficult/well-handled call.
Reinforcing customer service skills pays dividends in a positive reputation for the help desk, and agents who are more comfortable delivering user-friendly service. Training for baseline skills is essential, and reinforcing skills on the job is essential for skill retention and implementation.
Donna Earl is an international expert in Customer Service. She specializes in helping technical help desks deliver world class customer service. To use this article, Contact Us for permission.
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