The Importance of Role Play in Customer Service Training

Many external customer service courses are theoretical, with only a little practical application to the assistant’s real world. In-house training provided by experienced staff or an in-house trainer has huge benefits. Relevant is on-the-job customer service training that will hopefully combine technical knowledge of the job with customer call handling skills. However, there is a difficulty with this in the way that the Company’s staff can see their Clients.

The Difficulty With Internal Trainers
A major disadvantage of Customer Service Training provided by internal trainers is that the agent learns to view the interaction with the Customer ONLY from the Company side. The problem with this is that the Customer Service Representative finds it difficult to see each situation through the Customer’s eyes.

The result of this is –

1. They may find it difficult to empathize with the caller and effectively manage a difficult Customer.
2. Over time, this CSR now becomes more experienced, but the lack of appreciation of the Client’s situation is more likely to get worse rather than better.
3. The result is a CSR group with little appreciation from its Clients. Because of this, they are only developing the skills to handle pleasant Clients and easy inquiries, not the more challenging situations or angry Clients.
4. The group will then stereotype the most challenging callers as ‘bad’ or ‘stupid’ etc.
5. This is then passed on when training new recruits.

break the cycle
Breaking this cycle starts with planning customer service training sessions that include:
1. Focus on your Role with your Clients expressed in terms of Client satisfaction
2. Foster a positive attitude towards the Client, seeing the world through their eyes
3. Understand the importance of each Client’s experience for the Company and for all personnel. Happy Customers come back, spend, the Company has money, and we all have jobs!
4. Appreciation that each Client is different, each one is important and each one is worth all the effort to make sure they are satisfied. There is no Client, or type of Client, that is not worth it!

These training sessions may be led by internal trainers, team leaders, or other experienced staff. However, it is important that the trainer is truly client-focused and promotes the correct positive values ​​and attitudes.

A good idea for existing teams is to plan short customer service sessions at regular team meetings. Team members can be assigned to multiple projects to promote Customer awareness. However, this will only take the team so far. The real key is to engage both new and experienced staff in Customer Service Training sessions that involve a fair amount of role-play.

The Benefits of Role Playing in Customer Service Training
Role play sessions are extremely powerful in building Client awareness and developing new skills and techniques for handling different types of Clients and different situations.

They have four main advantages:

1. The person playing the agent will learn how to develop their approach, their skills and the timing of the call.
2. The person playing the Client will experience what the real Client feels like. They will know when an approach or phrase works, or when it will provoke a negative reaction from the Client.
3. In the role-play summary, the Customer can tell the Agent what worked, what didn’t work, and what he needed to hear was missing from the interaction.
4. They can plan another approach and try it again and again until they get it right.
With role plays, they not only appreciate even the most difficult Client, but also learn that this person is only a human being and that they can change with the effective use of good skills.

Make sure all customer service staff use role play
If you plan to bring in an external Customer Service trainer, make sure they have a high level of role-play in their course and have a strong methodology for executing the role-plays.

Role-playing sessions can be done very well by internal staff, and are very beneficial. Every team leader can take a difficult situation and role-play to find a better way to handle it. A tough call resolved each week will really make any team better.

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