Customer Service Training Program Ideas

We have said it time and time again — customer service is paramount to a company’s success. And when it comes to the efficacy of your organization’s customer service department, having a well-trained team is critical.

If the destination is a robust and supportive team culture, then proper training, onboarding, and development are the stepping stones to getting there.

Below, we have compiled a list of great training and onboarding ideas to start building your customer support team or refine and shape the one you already have.

Customer Service Training Goals

It’s important to have achievable and defined goals for your customer service training program. Below are some of the most important training goals you could implement into your program.

Communication skills

Improving communication skills should be one of your top priorities when assessing your training goals. Agents can transform into CX heroes through a human-centered approach that emphasizes positive language, empathy, patience, persistence, and professionalism.

Team building

Team building is key to any CX environment because it encourages and fosters company culture, camaraderie, unity, and collaboration. Simply put, team building leads to happy team members, which subsequently leads to happy customers.

Defining processes

When you define the customer service processes for your team, you’re establishing a clear, repeatable set of steps that will both make it easier for agents to work through customer issues while simultaneously improving efficiency. Without a clear, repeatable process for your agents to refer to, it can be very easy to devolve into chaos.

Patience and emotion regulation

A lot is expected of customer service representatives, and if they’re working with unhappy or frustrated customers, it’s important to continue to remind your team to remain mindful and patient. Creating activities or simply reminding your team members how to deal with difficult customers are all solid ways to maintain emotional regulation.

Training Ideas for Your Customer Support Team

Once you’ve established your customer service training program goals, the next natural step is to provide training activities and programs in order to meet those goals.

Below are a few training ideas to help instill the kind of values you want your support team to carry.

Encourage new agents to test products and services themselves

Part of what makes a great customer service hero is not just their ability to understand their customer, but to understand their products or services. Encouraging new agents to test products and services themselves will give them the hands-on experience to answer questions and to understand the product/service from the vantage point of the customer.

Chatbots

In the same way that chatbots provide space for customers to handle issues on their own, intelligent chatbots can also provide new hires with another tool to learn the key components of their position. Chatbots can answer questions, provide support, and guide new hires through the onboarding process.

Guidelines and scripts

Guidelines and scripts are great ways to provide readily available, asynchronistic resources to employees anytime, anywhere. While scripts are great support resources for agents whenever they need a refresher or a reminder of their talking points, guidelines will ensure that representatives are always familiar with the kind of branding points and values that make your company unique.

Communication exercises for the entire team

Communication exercises create valuable space for a number of things. One of the things you get out of these exercises is a sense of community, allowing for the entire team to meet together, learn something new, and have fun. At the same time, valuable communication skills like tone of voice, emotion regulation, and positive engagement can all be honed through role-playing and other exercises.

Incentivize team and individual goals

Incentives and creating individual goals are both tried and true ways to motivate and maintain quality with your team members. Employees appreciate rewards and recognitions, and providing a point system, prizes, or friendly competitions are great ways to show your team they’re valued and contribute to a spirited company environment.

How to Set Up Your CX Training

Our Hero Experience Report found that 57% of customer service agents believe that onboarding and training are crucial to their success. When new hires feel valued and supported, their retention and job satisfaction increase, making them more likely to do their best work.

But what should a new hire program look like? Here are few best practices for customer service onboarding that promote agent success.

Assign mentors or buddies

Research has found that new hires with buddies or mentors assigned to them in their first week are 23% happier with their onboarding experience than those without them.

As part of a new hire’s support system, a buddy or mentor can help them feel supported with hands-on coaching as they learn the ropes. New agents will also have someone to turn to when they have questions or need guidance.

To launch a successful mentorship program, keep these tips in mind:

• Match mentors and new hires based on personality, work style, and experience level
• Schedule regular touchpoints for mentors to offer constructive tips for improvement to new hires while also encouraging casual check-ins outside of formal meetings
• Provide training and resources to mentors on how to be effective in their role

Gladly pro tip: Mentorship isn’t only beneficial to new hires — no matter where you are in your career journey, you could benefit from having a supportive adviser, too. Join the Gladly Connect Community to unlock exclusive networking opportunities, online events, and access to our next mentorship program cohort.

Listen and gather feedback

Your customer service onboarding program won’t be perfect right from the start — as you onboard additional agents, make sure to solicit feedback through surveys and discussions. By asking recent hires how you can improve your training curriculum, materials, and overall processes, you can regularly enhance and refine the program over time based on new hires’ needs.

Transforming onboarding from a one-way broadcast to an open, two-way dialogue also shows new customer service agents their voices are valued from day one. This helps boost satisfaction and retention during a critical period.

Gladly pro tip: When they’re assisting customers, agents will inevitably run into walls that make them feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and demoralized. By listening carefully to their needs from the get-go, you can gather crucial insight that will transform their emotional obstacles into opportunities for leveling up your customer service program.

Make Onboarding fun and engaging

Onboarding doesn’t have to be a tedious, monotonous process. Instead, look for opportunities to liven up the training, boost camaraderie, and increase knowledge retention through customer service training games, friendly competition, and enticing rewards.

Introducing interactive elements like roleplaying also brings training to life. For example, you can have new agents practice handling different customer issues through simulated calls — this helps them build critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills in a safe environment.

Gladly pro tip: Engaging training that incorporates customer service training games can help new hires develop their CX muscles and bond with their new teammates — all while ensuring they internalize the new knowledge they’ve gained.

Why Gladly Has You Covered

Even with the most thorough and well-thought training program, it’s going to be difficult to take your support team to the next level without the right help desk software. This is where Gladly comes in.

Gladly’s radically personalized platform is a cutting-edge solution that provides omni-channel support, unique customer profiles, communication history logs, social media integrations, seamless automated workflows, and much more.

Pick a solution that places your customers at the center of the support experience, and turn your customer service representatives into customer service heroes with Gladly today.

DEMO

Experience the first all-in-one customer service platform

Sign up