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Posts Tagged ‘Training’

Customer Service Agents are the frontline staff of the company they are who customers speak with first. Essentially, they are the voice of the company.

If a Customer Service agent is professional, friendly, and can solve a customers needs, that customer will have a positive impression of the company. This pleasant experience can lead to repeat business and even referrals increasing profitability.

On the other hand, if a Customer Service Agent is unprofessional, uniformed, and unable to solve a customers needs, the customer will hang up the phone in frustration resulting in a negative impression. Consequently, the customer will indeed talk about your company, but with a very pessimistic tone which can discourage customers away from you and to your competitor decreasing productivity!

As a leader, it is your responsibility to train the staff with proper telephone skills and company and product knowledge as well as the requisite customer service skills necessary to excel customer expectations. With this education, you are arming the Customer Service Agent with the power to better assist customers and increase productivity creating many positive first impressions along the way!

The Customer Service Representative

As the leader of customer service agents, you will engage with a wide variety of personnel, different backgrounds, different ages, and different skill sets including:

• The young employee who is starting his first job.

• The single mother who needs a second job for additional income.

•  The recent college graduate who has not yet found his dream job, but needs a job to pay the bills.

• The middle-age mother who has gone back to work now that her children are grown just to give herself something to do.

• The business professional that has just been laid off from his real job due to downsizing.

These are just a few examples. Every Customer service agent has a different story and a different reason for working.

Your staff may or may not be excited to work at the company. For example, a recent high school graduate may be quite excited about his first job. Whereas, a single mother would much rather be at home with her children. It is your job as the leader to motivate everyone even the most disgruntled Customer Service Agent!

Every Customer Service Agent within your staff will have different skill sets. For example, the business professional may be quite computer-savvy, whereas the middle-age mother who has gone back to work may have very little knowledge of computers. It is your job as the leader to train everyone even the Customer Service Agent who thinks he knows it all!

A major component of your responsibility as a leader is motivating and training the Customer Service Agents so they are comfortable with the technological and people skills that are needed for the job. You also need to know what motivates each employee to keep them excited about being at work.

Call Center Challenges

As a call center leader, you face many challenges a day. Here is just a sample:

• A competitive workforce for qualified Customer Service Agents

• Lack of time to properly train Customer Service Agents

• High turnover rate among Customer Service Agents

 • Technological challenges for Customer Service Agents

• Unmotivated Customer Service Agents

• Different skill levels of Customer Service Agents

Throughout our training courses, you will learn how to deal with such situations, whilst your agents learn the critical success factors necessary to deliver excellent customer care.

If you’re an executive or business owner who has decided to send one or more of your strongest leaders to business management training in Vancouver, you can be assured that you’ve made the right decision.  By giving your top people a chance to excel and learn, you’ve ensured that your departments are likely to run more efficiently and profitably than ever.  And that will translate to happier customers, a stronger corporate culture and other positive results.

Because you’re making an investment in business management training in Vancouver, you want to ensure that you get the biggest return.  Thus, it’s critical to implement the five steps below to maximize the benefits related to the outcomes of business management training.

1.  Ask Questions about Your Employees’ Business Management Training in Vancouver

Don’t be satisfied to simply send an employee to business management training and then assume that changes are happening.  Ask him or her to periodically tell you about what he or she has learned and how it has made a difference in his or her management style and/or processes.  This type of tête-à-tête doesn’t have to be in a formal setting.  Schedule a coffee meeting or lunch once a month.  Just remember to be open to what you are hearing… and don’t be surprised if you learn something new, too.

2.  Provide Time for Your Employee to Implement What He or She Learns

Too often, businesses that send their people to management training expect results overnight.  This is completely unrealistic and will only serve to frustrate attendees.  Typically, it takes more than a month for companies to see major changes, especially changes in sales and marketing.  Have patience and look first for smaller changes which may be less obvious but are nonetheless important.

3.  Provide Opportunities for Your Manager to Make Changes within Their Departments and/or Teams

Nothing is more frustrating for an attendee of a management training program than to come back to the office and discover that his or her employer will not allow changes to be made.  If you’re sending your employee to training, be aware that you’ll need to be open to revising the way the company has approached business.

4.  Offer to Help the Employee Work with His/Her Newfound Tools

If you’ve been through business management training yourself, you may be in an excellent position to mentor a new business management attendee.  Often, managers are unable to figure out where or how to start applying their newfound tools and knowledge.  You can play an extremely important role in helping him or her bring new information and ideas to life.

5.  Have the Employee Train Others

There’s nothing wrong with putting a graduate of business management training in Vancouver in charge of mentoring other up-and-coming employees.  Although he or she should not be expected to be a formal training coach, he or she can nonetheless provide assistance and guidance to workers with leadership potential.

Never forget that the more emphasis you put on and time you put into your employees’ business management training experiences, the more your company will get out of the process.

For more information on sales management coaching programs in the Vancouver area, visit www.dynamicachievement.com.