There are many reasons that live support is great for ensuring customers come back to you again and again. But at the heart of your customer service experience, it’s your staff’s performance that counts. Taking the time to train your staff properly should see a higher customer retention rate and will save you money in the long run. There are some key points that you should address when considering training staff on how to deal with consumers online.
Let’s have a look at what turns a customer service rep from average to exceptional:
Communication is Key
One of the reasons live support increases consumer satisfaction so much is that it can be used to explains things in a way that can’t be done through your Help Centre or other automated means. However, the benefits of this are lost if staff don’t communicate in a clear manner with customers. It can help to teach your staff to:
- Check they understand what the customer needs.
- Explain each step as they execute it.
- Use simple, non-technical language.
- Show they sympathise with the customer.
- Check they have solved the customer’s issue before ending the conversation.
Thick Skin
Dealing with complaints can be tough. Customers can get angry and emotional in the moment, and this can be hard to handle. Customers may attack your live support agents personally. Without proper training, reps may not offer the same level of service they normally do if they become rattled. They may even respond passive aggressively, maybe without even knowing they are doing it. Teaching them not to take customer irritation personally can help them to remain calm, still offer an exceptional customer service experience and keep consumer satisfaction high.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is described as the ability to:
- Recognize, understand and manage our own emotions.
- Recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.
Nurturing E.I. in your support staff when dealing with consumers online will help them to have more empathy, patience and understanding. This leads to better customer service all round: a study by make-up giant L’Oreal found that staff that were recruited for their high emotional brought in $91,000 more in revenue per year.
Some ways to nurture E.I awareness include:
- Active listening exercises—to improve listening skills.
- Exercises that encourage staff to put themselves “in the customer’s shoes”.
- SessionCam recommends giving some presentations looking at how to respond to different customers emotions or scenarios.
Optimize to Mesmerize
Customer service agents should have a good level of skill when you recruit them, but focusing on some specific areas can help to improve these skills and really optimize your level of service. The points mentioned above apply to any customer service platform. But when combined with live support they make a powerful combination, allowing you to help customers out in real time and give them the attention they deserve. A high-quality live support software such as Xeno will have a myriad of features that can assist reps when offering support. Including records of past conversations, pre-chat questionnaires and post-chat satisfaction surveys so that you can gauge your employee’s progress.
