TrainSmart Earns 4.5 STARS on delivery of a Customer Service Workshop for a  distributor of category-leading unified communications, network infrastructure and security solutions with a global network of specialty resellers.

The Challenge

As part of an initiative to better serve its customers, a national distributor of communications and network solutions recently created a dedicated 10-person customer support team. Before the establishment of the new group, these employees were part of the sales organization, dedicated to one product line, and customer service was just one of many of their responsibilities.

Each member of the new team was handpicked for this new assignment. None of the employees had any formal training in customer service, and all of them had less than two years of experience.

The client wanted to provide the new team with basic customer service skills training. While it was agreed that TrainSmart would do some minimal customization, the client selected TrainSmart’s popular customer service training workshop, CustomerSMART.

In a conference call to discuss the workshop, it was learned that 90% of the customer service conversations occurred via email, with the remaining 10% conducted over the phone.

In addition to providing this young team with a basic foundation of strong customer service practices, the manager shared that the ultimate success of this workshop would be if these team members had more confidence in the work they were doing.

Without formal training and little experience, this lack of confidence showed up with some of the reps escalating situations to their manager too quickly and too often, while others spent too much time trying to resolve issues that needed to be escalated. The hope was that by having solid customer service principles to guide them in their work, the team members would have the confidence to know when they should handle a situation and when it was time to ask for help from a manager.

The Benefit of a Large Library of Training Workshops

What the TrainSmart team quickly realized is that the off-the-shelf version of CustomerSmart would not completely meet the needs of this particular team because CustomerSmart primarily focuses on in-person and on-phone customer service situations. The fact that this particular team spends 90% of its time providing customer service via email meant that with over 100 titles of workshops in our library, we were able to borrow sections from other workplace communication skills workshops and blend them into a workshop that would meet the needs of this particular audience.

A Customized Approach

Responding to the client’s goal of having a team with more confidence, the workshop included a segment where the participants could ask for help on a burning issue that was personally impacting their work. This open forum not only helped address key personal issues but also created a platform for shared experiences. Not surprisingly, several of the team members were struggling with the same issues. By opening up a discussion on how to address these issues, team members were able to help each other and gain some great strategies to address issues that were hindering their confidence.

What they liked about this training:

“Very customized to our company and position.”

“I will use this info to structure future, customer service emails.”

“Great content and very helpful material.”

“I will be adjusting my reactive and habitual nature to be a better customer service rep.”

“This program directly addresses some of the issues we face on a daily basis.”