Why your front office needs customer service training
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- Category: SME toolkit
- Written by Bridget Olotu
- Hits: 1091
Most businesses today do not understand why their market share is shrinking, customers are moving their businesses elsewhere and sales are dropping drastically. They therefore increase the budget for advert and marketing, evolve well thought-out, well-designed and well-packaged products and services, employ smart and good looking front office personnel, locate their business in good and attractive workplace environments, and yet are not able to figure out reasons for their consistent poor sales records and shrinking customer base.
Solving this problem starts with recruitment. Recruiting and manning the front office or sensitive areas of the business with staff that possess the right soft and hard qualifications and people skills is the starting point. Then, exposing this group of people to training and development programmes in the area of customer service, customer relationship management, communication skills and front office behaviours helps to hone their natural people skills and position them to “sell” the organisation and its services to the outside world very effectively.No customer wants to do business where he/she is treated with disrespect, rudeness, slightness, impoliteness, impatience, and insolence. Every prospect/customer wants to do business where he/she is courted, escorted and rewarded. Every customer becomes a sworn loyalist when he/she is respected, appreciated and honoured. Putting all these together, the modern-day customer is the new bride in the marketplace and businesses that want her must be willing to court her.
What’s more, when front office staff exude the right customer service orientation, prospects are already sold on the organisation before actual selling is done. Training objectives for instilling customer service orientation in front-office and customer-facing personnel for effective front office management will include the following among others:
• Understanding the basics of effective communication
• Evaluation and understanding of front desk operations
• Understanding and utilising the right Telephone management principles
• Understanding the types of listening techniques and which one to use for which occasion
• Understanding and deploying the right customer service for front office
• How to handle difficult customers/prospects
These objectives will guide any form of training to be given in this regard and will form part of the training evaluation to assess the impact of the training on participants. SMEs need to train their front-desk staff on the right customer-facing techniques that will endear customers to them and the company and increase business for the organisation.
Articles
Why your front office needs customer service training
Category: SME toolkit Written by Bridget Olotu Hits: 1091
Most businesses today do not understand why their market share is shrinking, customers are moving their businesses elsewhere and sales are dropping drastically. They therefore increase the budget for advert and marketing, evolve well thought-out, well-designed and well-packaged products and services, employ smart and good looking front office personnel, locate their business in good and attractive workplace environments, and yet are not able to figure out reasons for their consistent poor sales records and shrinking customer base.
Solving this problem starts with recruitment. Recruiting and manning the front office or sensitive areas of the business with staff that possess the right soft and hard qualifications and people skills is the starting point. Then, exposing this group of people to training and development programmes in the area of customer service, customer relationship management, communication skills and front office behaviours helps to hone their natural people skills and position them to “sell” the organisation and its services to the outside world very effectively.No customer wants to do business where he/she is treated with disrespect, rudeness, slightness, impoliteness, impatience, and insolence. Every prospect/customer wants to do business where he/she is courted, escorted and rewarded. Every customer becomes a sworn loyalist when he/she is respected, appreciated and honoured. Putting all these together, the modern-day customer is the new bride in the marketplace and businesses that want her must be willing to court her.
What’s more, when front office staff exude the right customer service orientation, prospects are already sold on the organisation before actual selling is done. Training objectives for instilling customer service orientation in front-office and customer-facing personnel for effective front office management will include the following among others:
• Understanding the basics of effective communication
• Evaluation and understanding of front desk operations
• Understanding and utilising the right Telephone management principles
• Understanding the types of listening techniques and which one to use for which occasion
• Understanding and deploying the right customer service for front office
• How to handle difficult customers/prospects
These objectives will guide any form of training to be given in this regard and will form part of the training evaluation to assess the impact of the training on participants. SMEs need to train their front-desk staff on the right customer-facing techniques that will endear customers to them and the company and increase business for the organisation.