New Customer Service Reps: 3 Key Questions to Ask and 3 Key Training Techniques
Customer service is your company’s first line of defense. CS does more than just handle complaints—it defines a client’s experience with your brand. Fifty-seven percent of customers say customer service determines their brand loyalty. Twenty-six percent switch to a different company after only one negative customer service experience. With so much riding on quality CS, you need a team of customer service reps that you can trust.
Still, finding and training the right representatives can take valuable time and resources. That’s why Bandalier has developed a data-driven matching process to quickly build stellar CS teams. We’ve compiled a few quick tips inspired by our own experiences. Building the right customer service team can be tough, but delivering ideal service to your customers makes the process worth it.
Key Questions to Ask Potential CS Reps
1. What excites you most about this role?
When a CS rep is passionate about their work, it shows. This question gives your potential representative a chance to showcase the energy they’ll present to your customers. For the right representative, it’s an easy question to answer. When your CS team is happy to be representing your company, your customers will feel it, too.
Asking this question also helps you understand your rep’s priorities. Are they excited to build relationships with customers, or are they looking for novel challenges to resolve? Once you know where their interests lie, you can place them into the role where they’ll perform at their best.
2. How do you handle customer complaints? How do you make their experience positive?
In Salesforce’s annual 2022 report, 88% of customers said that their experience with the company matters as much as its products or services. Even if a customer had a negative experience with your product or service, great customer service offers an opportunity to change their minds. Customer service is an opportunity to reestablish a good footing. By the time your customers leave a CS experience, they should have new confidence that your company will take care of them.
Pairing these questions shows what techniques your team member will utilize to resolve customer’s complaints. Bandalier’s customer service training program equips new team members with a wide range of techniques to test, but different techniques work differently for each rep. Ask how they approach tough situations to find the right spot for them on your growing team!
3. What do you know about our company and values?
As your company’s primary representative, your CS team needs to embody your company values. Representatives that understand your company’s priorities and principles will portray your company most effectively. When customer service reps share your values, so do your customers.
When interviewing new CS team members, questions like this are a great way to check their interest. Their answer will help you see how much research they did before meeting you. In many cases, that preliminary research indicates how extensively the representative will delve into a customers concerns. More is always better!
Best Training Techniques
1. Product and Service Briefing
From return policies to product malfunctions, customer service representatives have to be ready to answer all sorts of questions. When helping your customers, your team needs to have more than just a functional understanding of your product. To start your CS team on the right foot, make sure that they know their stuff. Bandalier’s onboarding process is designed to make sure our CS representatives are ready to hit the ground running once they start working with you. They’ll jump into your team with well-developed CS skills and be ready to learn your product from top to bottom.
2. Team Collaboration
Two secrets to effective customer service? Team culture and shared knowledge. Your customer service team is just that — a team. With the right team culture, your representatives help build each other up. During training, encourage your representatives to work together to generate creative solutions.
3. Role Play
Practice, practice, practice. The best way to prepare your representatives to handle actual clients is to give them space to get it right. Run your team through hypothetical situations and monitor their responses. Deliver constructive feedback afterward to help them hone their skills. Role play engages your team’s practical thinking and boosts their confidence. They’ll enter every customer call with a plan.
Here at Bandalier, we know that role play is central to good customer service. That’s why we integrate role-playing into both our interview and training processes.
What makes Customer Service Reps Great?
Your company deserves the best. So, what makes a good customer service rep? At Bandalier, we know it’s all about combining promising talent with specialized training to give them the skills they need to succeed. The other hallmarks of the best customer service reps inevitably follow. With the right foundation, a CS representative embodies kaizen, the principle of continual improvement. Customer service that always gets better? Sounds good to us. Our company culture is founded on kaizen; we’re always looking for ways to make your customers happier.
Outsourcing Customer Service
Outsourcing is the up-and-coming method for finding the right customer service representatives. At Bandalier, your customer service is our specialty. Our experts are constantly looking for the best and brightest, even in the most unexpected places. With our intensive training regiment, we prepare talented prospects for real-world customer service. From there, we connect companies with representatives that are ready to hit the ground running. No more long interviews and training regiments — just high-quality customer service.
Ready to join the Bandalier bandwagon? Contact us.
