Customer service is all about communication with people, so interactive training might as well be part of the deal. You want to make it fun for your employees, and you might as well make them laugh, too. You do want them to be serious about learning to handle the needs of your customers, but you want them to enjoy their jobs. Here are some valuable tips for training your customer service team with humor & interaction, making the experience fun for all involved.
Everyone has heard of the telephone game. Do your employees handle customers on the phone or in person? Regardless, teaching them to listen intently to the needs of customers is essential. There are many games you can play with your customer service team to get the point across. The Telephone Game not only does just that, but it also helps your team interact better with one another. This is a really fun game that you can get them to play in different ways.
Have you ever been part of an employee training program that was quite dull? I’m not talking about just the material, but the program itself just wasn’t, well, cool. With a diverse group of employees in front of you, every idea you come up with isn’t going to be a winner with everyone either. You want to try and focus on making the training program fun, witty, engaging and lively. You want your employees to have a good time at work while learning.
As you make things fun, here are some tips you need to focus on teaching them. You want your customer service representatives to be adaptive, patient and consistent. Listening requires patience, and problem-solving requires adaptability. You also want your employees to know how to transition between customer experiences properly, and you want them to be able to practice patience and control. They are at times going to be dealing with unhappy customers.
Teach them to deal with unruly customers in a fun way by doing some role-playing. You know your business well, and you can come up with situations where customers might get a little perturbed. Have your employees act out scenarios so that they can get a funny and goofy look at how they might handle those predicaments. This activity will play out very interesting indeed, and your employees will enjoy the situational role-playing.
You want to make sure you focus on the professional aspects of customer service of course, and not all of them can be made into a joke. You want to keep your employees on their toes with fun activities and a little humor. As you do that, tell them what you expect in regards to work ethic and daily duties. Teach them the knowledge they need to know to get the job done. Don’t give them modules to look at because they aren’t going to absorb all the information they need to learn. Make the employee training program fun, and help your staff help your customers.
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Adam Christing is a popular Event MC and Funny Motivational Speaker. He is the author of Your Life is a Joke: 12 Ways to Go from Ha Ha to AHA! (For more information go to AdamChristing.com)
