Kate Tammemagi asked:
Customer service training is best carried out with the  whole team together – no matter what the organisation is, whether in a call centre, a business or professional situation
With the team together, you can improve their customer focus, basic telephone skills and the standard high quality best practice. Â However, Â here are far more powerful benefits -Â for the team, for the team culture and for the resulting quality of service your customer receives.
The team can work on, and improve their approach and language for their own typical and difficult situations
The methods used to workshop the ‘best approach’ can be continued in the workplace – to build a ‘Best Approach Manual’
It is possible to work on, and improve, both the team customer focus, and the culture of the team.
Getting the team to workshop together to get the best approach and phrasing for their typical scenarios, and for their very difficult and challenging situations, is both fun and hugely beneficial. They compete in small groups – with a winning team who has the approach that will really work. This teaches so many concepts e.g. –
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â It is possible to get an approach that will work well for even the most difficult situations
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â We really should be working these out for all our situations
-         It is not the customer who is the problem – it is the fact that I have not yet found the best approach
They can then try out and fine tune their ‘best approach’ in role-plays – to see if they really will work well.
The team benefit hugely from these role-plays, both from working out the specific approach when they are playing the role of the CSR, and from understanding the customer view point when they are playing the caller.
But the most powerful effect of having the whole team together is that they can work together on their positive customer focus and their enabling Team Culture.
We find that if we give the team the tools and understanding to look objectively at Team Culture – bad cultures vs the ideal culture – they find little difficulty in appreciating the benefits of a high performance culture. We build in team processes so that they can talk about, and improve, their own culture in the real working situation.
The power of the team will ensure a springboard effect in terms of improvement.