How To Effectively Close A Tough Customer Service Interaction

You lot desire client service training ideas that get real-earth results.

Don't you?

Merely teaching your employees how to respond to unlike customer service situations is tough.

Thanks to client service grooming games, you lot can brand hard-to-grasp concepts a breeze. Gamifying your training helps your customer service team listen and communicate better.

What's more?

Your team will emerge from the training experience feeling empowered to face the nigh challenging customers and circumstances.

In this postal service, nosotros'll discuss x customer service games that will help your team engage with customers better.

Put employees in your customers' shoes
Gamify critical thinking, collaboration, and alignment
Bridge communication gaps and connect
Boost your team members' listening skills
Customer service training ideas to deal with difficult customers
Set a comfy surround for agents and customers
Putting Customer Service Training Ideas to Piece of work

Put employees in your customers' shoes

New processes can exist frustrating to your customers, and then let your representatives sit as customers to sympathise how they might experience.

1. "Here'southward What, This is Why"

This customer service grooming game teaches how to explicate your processes to the customer and why it'south important.

Customers oft feel frustrated when they aren't familiar with your methods or don't become the point of your questions. They as well don't appreciate long wait times.

The idea is to put your new customer service representative in your customers' shoes.

How To Play

The game starts with selecting two volunteers. Take the offset ane come frontward with the instruction to reply the question y'all're about to ask as quickly and accurately as possible. You don't have to follow any pattern to ask questions.

Although you can ask whatever question, a few examples include:

What are your allergies?
Which is your favorite weather?
What other languages exercise you speak apart from English?

Thank and transport the commencement volunteer back, and ask the second to come forwards. You'll ask the same questions you asked the get-go volunteer. Albeit, this fourth dimension yous'll include some explanations.

Using the to a higher place questions with explanations, you could accept:

Some of our branches are pet-friendly, so you might see a few dogs and cats roaming around. Exercise you have an allergy you want to share with united states of america?
We have our branches in all the content, and nosotros want each representative to piece of work where the weather won't be an issue. What'south your favorite weather condition?
The company is going to run a promo that will concluding for two weeks. Do you speak any other language apart from English?

Ask the whole squad how they feel near answering a serial of questions without knowing why.

You'll also find out that a client'due south response might differ when you give context to the questions.

For instance, one might claim to speak 4 languages. Nonetheless, when they know that it involves explaining how a product works, it might come down to two languages.

Takeaway

This customer service training game shows why it'southward important for your customer to understand the context of your conversation. Since they are neither mind readers nor co-workers, it might be difficult for them to sympathize your processes.

When you explain yourself, the client feels more at ease and more willing to cooperate. Plus, you lot'll get better and more accurate information from the customers.

2. "Yes We Can"

Past design, these customer service preparation games allow employees to master real-life customer service scenarios.

No ane likes to hear that information technology's impossible to become what they want. So don't tell customers things you can't practice.

Tell them what y'all tin can or plan to practise.

This tactic is easier on paper than in practice, but it's worth mastering. It's piece of cake to slip into focusing on your weaknesses.

How To Play

Requite each employee a legible proper noun tag and ask all of them to stay in a circle. Each of them should remember of two or three requests. They tin choose to ask reasonable and realistic questions or make them imaginary and outlandish.

You lot can start past giving them examples like:

I want to switch proper noun tags with yous.
I'll like a mansion for my adjacent birthday.
I want you to stand in the middle of the circle.

Allow them to recall about their asking in a few minutes. Let them know that fifty-fifty though information technology'south a game and it should be fun, they shouldn't make inappropriate requests. Then requite them the rules of the game.

Each employee is to take turns calling out the name on another employee's tag and make a request.

The named employee is to decline without maxim "No," then phone call another employee and make a request—the process of requesting and failing continues until no request is left.

To make it easy for the squad to understand the game, y'all and another leader can play briefly till you call the first member of the group. Information technology gets easier with practice.

Takeaway

No thing how absurd a client'due south asking is, yous can always refuse information technology without maxim no. The game makes it easier to give positive answers to questions and exist more solution-minded.

Gamify disquisitional thinking, collaboration, and alignment

Your goal here is to foster critical thinking, squad collaboration, and alignment with gamification. Here, your agents will learn to plan and collaborate with team members that you don't go along with on a normal twenty-four hour period with the following games.

3. "We know our destination"

This squad collaboration and alignment game for customer service training requires simply a pen and paper.

It shows how a company's culture can impact the services it provides.

Participants volition see how easy information technology is to get carried abroad with work that you lot fail to stop and see if you're still on rail.

The game contains two rounds, each followed by a curt debriefing. Information technology works best if you have at least half dozen people in a group.

Round One

Encourage participants to piece of work in a grouping and instruct them to take a minute to recall of items they'd need for a road trip. Then almost immediately, say "Ready, go!" and start timing before they ask you whatsoever questions.

Debrief One

Ask each participant how many items they take on their list. The discussion that follows will either narrow downward or expand their listing. For instance, someone who listed shoes can be asked if they're hiking boots or their regular office shoes.

Somewhen, the question of destination will come up. Take this time to hash out the importance of destination to planning.

Round Two

This round is a repeat of circular ane except that this time, you give the groups their destination on a piece of newspaper.

Debrief Two

Notice the departure between the showtime and 2d lists. In most cases, the second list contains items from the first one with a little extra. Withal, the list becomes more specific to adapt to the destination.

Use this opportunity to tell participants about your customer service goals. And so encourage them to evaluate how their personal goals align with the team's goals.

Takeaway

Participants will notice the deviation in planning with and without a destination in mind. They'll find out that when the whole grouping agrees on the destination, information technology's easier to concur on items to pack.

Span communication gaps and connect

You want to bear witness client service agents to encompass communication gaps and connect. These games and other squad-building activities assistance you lot go in the shoes of your customer and teammates and bridge communication gaps.

iv. "Say my proper noun!"

Forgetting a name tin can ruin a professional person relationship, but not everyone is expert with names. Albeit, you can foreclose it from ruining your business concern by teaching your employee how to create a memory palace.

This game provides client service preparation ideas for developing communication skills and remembering names longer. Getting your employees to play it allows you lot to kill 2 birds with one stone. Your employees tin interact better, and you retain more customers.

How To Play

The game works best when you use it on new recruits who haven't had time to collaborate. The larger the group, the better.

First, explain how the retention palace works to the group using the following steps:

Choose a place yous're very familiar with to form your retentiveness palace (It could be your domicile, a hostel you stayed in, your high school, a theme park)
Kickoff list the names you want to remember.
Place each name in a specific place within your familiar structure or memory palace and stick it to your memory.
Stroll around your memory palace for a while and phone call each name you lot kept
Try not to move anything to proceed things organized

Now, yous've created and furnished your retention palace. Whenever you need to call up a proper name, just have a stroll through that familiar place. You tin make information technology more visual by imagining the person standing close to their names in the palace.

When everyone is satisfied with your caption, ask each person to tell the grouping their name and one fact about themselves. Make it one person per time and give anybody a few minutes to place that person in their memory palace before moving to the next. When the session is over, let a few participants try to recall everyone'due south name.

Takeaway

This game shows that people who think they're poor at remembering names aren't using the correct techniques.

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5. "Client Service Charade"

Most businesses call up they do well in satisfying their customers, simply that's because 96 percent of unhappy customers won't complain. Only the trick is, you lose 91 percent of them without getting the gamble to notice out what happened.

Client service training ideas for communication skills assistance to bridge the communication gaps between companies and their customers. The customer service deception is a fun game that'll teach your team the importance of torso linguistic communication and verbal advice. It likewise helps your team grade useful bonds.

How To Play

Every team member gets a phrase or term that'southward relevant to your visitor or manufacture. Assign turns and calls the first participant to act out the term with him or her without proverb a word. The rest of the team will try to guess the word or phrase based on the demonstration.

Takeaway

From the game, you'll detect out that even when the customer doesn't talk, yous must try to approximate the meaning of their body language. But don't just presume what they want. This is where you carefully ask questions no thing how articulate you think their requests are.

It becomes more challenging when you can't meet the customer face-to-face to observe their torso linguistic communication. And worse when you tin can't hear the tone of their voices, in the case of emails and chats.

Charades show the impacts of unspoken words in normal conversations. Now allow your employees know that it'south important that they effort to find the missing information when they're talking to customers. His will assistance them come up with strategies that span the communication gaps.

Heave your team members' listening skills

Teach your team to reduce errors that come from overlooking important information.

6. "Whisperers and Listeners"

If you're looking for a client service training idea for listening skills, the old telephone game is an splendid one. This activeness will testify your team why they need to communicate directly and avoid reported speeches every bit much every bit possible.

How To Play

Divide your team into groups of at least ten participants each. Let each group form a straight line. Then phone call the kickoff participant on each line and whisper a argument that they should whisper to the next person on their grouping.

They should go along the process until the last person in each group hears the statement.

Each person must be quiet, and then the next person doesn't hear the statement. You can as well choose to requite each group unlike statements to laissez passer down the group.

This game is always fun considering when the last person shouts out the argument, it has no resemblance to the one you told the first person.

Takeaway

You can't rely on reported speeches because your colleague might go out out some of import information. Sometimes, people endeavor to explain information technology to you and end upward calculation to the information. Both cases can make customer service representatives appear incompetent.

7. "Keeping Memories"

This customer service training idea for listening skills emphasizes the importance of remembering the client. It's a helpful exercise for team members that discover it hard to retrieve faces and names.

How To Play

This game can exist played contiguous or online, but in any case, team members start by introducing themselves. If y'all're playing online, let each participant share their names and pictures in the grouping chat. Then let everyone become ameliorate acquainted.

Enquire each member to create a user persona for a customer with a false proper noun and stock photo. Distribute a test, physically or by email, respectively, with an instruction to submit in two minutes. And so, share the answers in the group.

Takeaway

This exercise tests how fast your team members can memorize names. Plus, new hires get to see other members of the team at one time. The group interaction will also show you members that can easily collaborate with new people.

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Customer service grooming ideas to deal with difficult customers

Teach your squad to be comfortable with hard customers and in tough situations.

8. "The Heard Technique"

What customer service training idea can you draw inspiration from to handle tough situations involving a client?

This one will assistance:

Disney manages a lot of visitors annually, even so most of its visitors look frontwards to another visit. This doesn't mean that their customers don't have complaints. The brand knows what its customers want, then they developed strategies to keep them happy.

HEARD is Disney's refined approach for managing aroused customers in 5 steps.

Hear: Allow the customer to say everything they want to say without interrupting them
Sympathise: Show them that after listening to them, you deeply empathize how they feel in the phrases you lot use. Say things like: "I understand how you must feel."
Apologize: Accept the arraign and take responsibility for the problem considering that'south what the client wants to hear at this signal. Although this doesn' resolve the problem, a heart-felt apology eases the tension.
Resolve: Ensure that your customer service team is trained to handle the issue. And if they are unsure of what the customer wants, they can ask questions like: "How can we brand it up to you?"
Diagnose: Clarify the issue to ensure information technology doesn't happen again.

How To Play

First by explaining the concept of HEARD to your team and inquire for two volunteers. Ane will human action similar the customer while the other will be the customer service agent. The rest of the team members will watch and judge the role play.

Use a customer service consequence in your company as a scenario and guide them to us the five HEARD steps to resolve information technology. Initially, you might accept to remind them of the next step until they no longer get stuck.

Then ask the judges what they think of the customer service in each of the steps, and why. Then allow them come upwards with a diagnosis.

Take Abroad

This game explains the famous phrase: "Customers are ever right." Even when they are at mistake, allowing them to leave volition injure your business organisation. The steps in this technique ensure that you get to the root of every problem.

Gear up a comfy environment for agents and customers

These activities bear witness the importance of a conducive working environment to the agent and client.

9. "The Quadrants"

Are yous trying to come upwards with a client service grooming idea for supportive piece of work environments?

Let's play the Quadrants.

How To Play

Use masking tape to split up a room into four quadrants and number each of them. Let your team that they'll be performing some activities for about 45 seconds in the squares. Then assign actions to each of the quadrants.

The outset quadrant can have participants sing nursery rhymes at the meridian of their lungs. Let them bound on one foot repeatedly in the second quadrant and recite the alphabet backward in the third. Simply the quaternary one will be for relaxing.

Distribute them evenly in all the quadrant and ask them to start based on the quadrant's activity. Afterwards xx seconds, ask them to switch. They're gratuitous to motility to any other quadrant, but not anyone they've been in previously.

Ask them to switch subsequently every 20 seconds until they've experienced each of the squares.

When you lot say "switch" after they've entered all the quadrant, you'll discover near of them jump into the "relax" quadrant—showing the need for most of them to be comfortable.

Takeaway

This exercise will show your team the value of working in a comfortable environment. Each rep will know why information technology's crucial to brand the client comfortable. But you demand to know what comfort means to your customer.

The best way to make customers comfortable is to enquire them if they're okay with your offer.

10. "What the customer wants"

The 2nd customer service grooming idea for supportive piece of work environments focuses on what customers desire. In getting that, the team is encouraged to piece of work together, which also improves collaboration.

How To Play

Pick one of the participants to share the name of a customer they serviced before. They are to tell the squad the customer's contempo buy and the assistance they provided for them.

Each of the remaining team members will imagine how the offset participant fabricated the client's twenty-four hours. And then, etch a alphabetic character, from the customer's point of view, to give thanks the company for the service. This letter should emphasize the company's stiff points.

And so ask them to submit the letters so you can start a discussion.

Takeaway

Knowing that their services are appreciated will enhance the conviction of your squad. Plus, the exercise helps them to see what the customer actually wants from their services.

Putting Customer Service Training Ideas to Work

Customer service grooming games bring fun and date to customer service training. But your needs are unique.

Do you want your squad members to pay more attention to work and their interaction with your customers?

Play Quadrants and What the Customer Wants.

In one report, 49 percent of buyers made an impulse purchase because the customer felt heard. Simply customers won't feel heard if your employees feel disengaged. A supportive piece of work environment can help your customer service agents serve your customers better.

And if your team is remote, yous can observe artistic ways to bring your customer service team together. For instance, they can work on online puzzles together, or compete for the highest score in solitaire. Simple activities like these give your squad the opportunity to bond and take fun together online.

Just similar setting the correct environment, applying the above mentioned customer service training ideas and games can boost your performance. If you've never tried them, you lot'll never know. Get to piece of work.

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Nicholas Godwin unearths your dream customer's motivations and aspirations using AI. He then reaches deep into his resources and years of experience in tech, eCommerce, and marketing to develop content that makes that audience crave your product and evangelize your make for skillful.