Customer Service Training Tips

If you want to keep customers coming back, good customer service is essential. It’s the best way to encourage repeat business for the long term. Super stores with hundreds of employees don’t usually give their customer service representatives or floor workers sufficient incentive to be customer friendly. They often don’t provide training in customer service skills or don't insist that employees use what they learn in training. They may be given minimal training then be forgotten after employment and left to fend for themselves.

Training employees in the art of providing good customer service can be an inexpensive improvement that results in increased sales and business. Offering regular refresher courses can be easily accomplished and add to your company’s profitability. Your employees should have good people skills and enjoy working with people. One employee with a bad attitude can have an impact, especially on a small business.

Sometimes customers can be difficult. They may be complaining, demanding, picky, unreasonable, know-it-all, and faultfinding. There's no way to avoid these customers. Overwhelmed by emotion, angry people cannot reason because anything you might say to help them gets filtered through their anger. Trying to solve their problems or negotiate with them doesn’t do any good. However, you can listen to them and let them vent their emotions. After they have their say, the first thing you should do is apologize. Recent research shows that fewer than half of angry customers receive an apology and that the fastest way to diffuse a situation is with two little words: “I’m sorry.” Most people simply want their feelings to be acknowledged. They don’t want to be ignored or made to feel that their situation is unimportant.

The customer is not always right, and some people try to feel better by making someone else feel bad. Being a captive audience, a store clerk or customer service representative is easy prey for displaced aggression. Employees should understand that being courteous to customers does not mean accepting abuse from them. But saying something like “I’m sorry. Thank you for letting me know that you're unhappy with...” will usually calm even the angriest of customers.



 

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