How to use training as a tool to improve customer service and increase sales
How much money do you spend on understanding your customers and marketing to them? In most cases, it’s usually a heck of a lot more money than you spend training your employees to offer exceptional customer service. When you think about it though, your customers’ touchpoints with your company are almost exclusively with your staff. Your company can do all that it wants to understand your audience and market to them, but if your customers' one-on-one experiences with your sales staff, phone line, or email are mediocre, it won’t matter - they won’t buy from you. Your employees bring your brand to life, and are critical to your success. Here are three ways you can leverage employee training to improve your customer service and increase your sales:
Make sure every single employee understands why you exist and your underlying corporate values and mission. For example, if you’re a restaurant and your advertisements/branding are all about making your guests feel like family, make sure all employees are well-versed in these expectations and how to practically implement them. In other words, don’t just touch on the branding at the surface level, but go into detail about what this means for their day to day work life and how they can embody it. Integrate this into your employee training program.
Ensure that your sales and customer service staff are able to effectively deal with situations they might encounter. Make sure your office staff are equipped with the knowledge and ability to answer phone calls/emails about potential issues and can remedy them appropriately (and consistently). You want your customers to know they can count on you, and will always get correct and consistent answers no matter which channel they go through or who they contact. From a training perspective, you could consider offering mini case studies to explain how you want different situations to be handled.
Make sure your staff understands your product offerings inside and out. This will vary by industry but your topics could include manufacturing processes, ingredients, company history, which tools/processes you use and why, etc. These topics could be built into a new hire training program and used as part of a reference guide to support staff until they’ve mastered the information.
Setting employees up to be successful by giving them the tools and knowledge they need to do their jobs well means they will show up with more confidence - and confidence sells.
If you’re ready to discuss your employee training program, reach out. We’d love to chat!
HIGH TIDE LEARNING STUDIO
We’re Erin and Peter, a husband and wife team passionate about making your organization successful through employee training and engagement. Join us as we explore new opportunities to improve your workplace.