3 Customer Service Agent Training Tips for Product Expertise

Shoppers today want the customer service agents they interact with to be product experts who can answer their questions about the items they’re interested in and offer suggestions tailored to their individual needs. This means customer service agent training is an important factor in driving the personalization that leads to loyalty from customers.

Gladly’s 2022 Customer Expectations Report found that 68% of shoppers find it appealing when the “customer service agent is a knowledgeable expert on the brand and product.” Let’s explore a few customer service training ideas and how the right platform makes creating product experts even easier to achieve.

Customer Service Agent Training That Creates Experts

Getting your support agents to the expert level starts at the hiring process in order to find intelligent and capable individuals who learn quickly and have a passion for brand knowledge. To make sure you’re engaging with the best talent, check out our customer service hiring checklist.

Training these eager new hires should subsequently focus on teaching them the depth of your catalog, as well as how products work together and can be purchased as bundles. Exercises that put an emphasis on brand knowledge will pay dividends by enabling your staff to provide radically personal service that reflects and even anticipates shoppers’ wants and needs. This level of service lets agents upsell and cross-sell on the fly, enabling revenue-driving value through these enhanced personal touches.

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What Your Agents Need to Thrive

Customer service agent training needs to educate new hires about a brand’s products or services as well as the technology they will use on the day to day to deliver the customer experience. When agents have the ability to know and serve their shoppers on a more personal level, the results will be far greater retention and repeat business from consistently satisfied customers. Here’s what your team will need to know:

1. Understanding the catalog

A key piece of onboarding new agents is having them study your brand’s catalog inside and out. Knowing how products work individually, how they might complement each other, and important features becomes handy knowledge when working with shoppers.

This information can be used to answer quick questions about products, recommend alternatives and add-ons, and even close sales for buyers who are on the fence. To make these details universally accessible for your staff, use a knowledge base they can easily access in order to incorporate product information into their customer conversations.

2. Maintaining consistency across channels

Your staff needs to be able to work across the various channels your support center operates on. By giving each team member a chance to answer conversations over phone, email, SMS, and chat, you can give them the opportunity to gauge the different dynamics of each channel and the immediacy of each request. This will help give them confidence to handle a fluid, multi-channel system.

Your service platform should make conversations with customers ungated and accessible from channel to channel. Well-trained agents should be able to call on that multi-channel skillset to address customer needs wherever they meet the shopper. When support reps meet shoppers quickly on their preferred channels, it shows a personal touch that builds loyalty, while reducing friction.

3. Providing the confidence to upsell

Shoppers are more receptive than ever to recommendations from a brand expert. Our survey found that 66% of customers prefer brands that know them and can recommend things they would like. With the right training, your agents can create opportunities to upsell and cross-sell products at their discretion, using their deep knowledge of your brand’s offerings.

To achieve this, they need to be well-versed in your brand and catalog, and able to traverse across channels easily. By providing them with a platform that helps them identify these revenue-generating opportunities, agents will feel more confident when making product recommendations, and customers will appreciate their informed suggestions.

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