March 13 -
Training should not end when the new-hire training program is over. While orientation and new-hire training should be sufficient to get new employees on the phones and performing at a satisfactory level, it should never be the end of their training.
All staff need regular, ongoing training and coaching to perform at their best. Many of the principles learned in the early days of training need to be reinforced several times to take hold. Even if the staff learn customer service basics during new-hire training, they may not yet have enough of a context to fully understand how to apply it all yet. Therefore, it’s vitally important that once they’ve been on the phones for a while, you reinforce the critical elements and techniques of providing great service.
Just as you would have refresher training for a new product development or upgrade, you’ll want to have refresher training and next step, more advanced training to support their interaction skills. Getting together with their peers to learn and share proven service and support techniques is an essential element in learning the “how to” part of service as well as to provide the motivation to want to apply these skills on the phones.