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How Employee Training Increases Customer Satisfaction
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It’s no secret that excellent customer service is good for business, but it takes a lot more than a smile or friendly word to drive sales.
So how do you ensure your employees deliver the kind of customer experience you can be proud of?
You train them.
Customer service training provides employees with the knowledge and core competencies necessary to increase customer satisfaction. It’s about teaching skills – such as focus, communication, organization and problem solving – in a way that’s consistent across the organization, helping ensure a seamless customer experience, regardless of who they encounter.
Training doesn’t just provide employees with important information about products, services, policies and your competitors, your company’s values and culture should also be embedded in all you do. This is an important part of teaching employees what’s expected of them and helps align the various departments – and training programs – across your organization, providing consistent and seamless customer service.
While learning solid theory is foundational to providing an excellent customer experience, nothing can replace the real thing. Role playing a real-life incident is good. Actually seeing it in action is better. This is where virtual, augmented and mixed reality can’t be beat. Walmart uses MR to help employees navigate the chaos of Black Friday and ensure customers are well served on the busiest retail day of the year.
Most employees want to do the best work they can, and if they’re satisfied with their job, chances are that’s going to translate to your customers. Offering them training and development programs that can help further their careers is becoming increasingly important as more Millennials and Gen Zers enter the workforce. These generations seek constant improvement and opportunities for career growth. Providing more challenging projects and incorporating training programs can help them advance – and keep them engaged, productive and satisfied.
Even if you have amazing employees, satisfying all customers all the time is never going to happen; employees are bound to encounter some sticky situations. Providing a training plan that includes the steps employees should follow to properly manage frustrated customers will go a long way to diffusing the situation – and hopefully retaining a customer.
A study conducted by Gartner found that more than two-thirds of marketers responsible for customer experience say their companies compete almost entirely on the basis of customer satisfaction.
In today’s competitive marketplace, the importance of improving the customer experience through effective employee training cannot be underestimated; it’s the blueprint for a company’s support process. When done well, these training programs pay dividends, leading to higher customer retention, the acquisition of new customers, reduced employee turnover and increased sales. Now that’s a critical advantage worth investing in.
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