How does your company train employees in customer service and relationship building skills?

Our company, for example, will send us to a travel exhibition in London, in order to present our hotel and its services and to generate business partnerships. The exhibition will take place in November2014 and the company will pay the accomodation and the transport.

Also, time to time our company pays trainers who teaches and works with us.

ABOUT OUR COMPANY, TRAINING ON JOB IS THE BEST WAY OF TRAINING, WE BELIEVE THAT EVERY COMPANY HAS ITS OWN PHILOSOPHY, WHEN WE CHOOSE ANY NEW EMPLOYEE WHEN CHOSE HIM ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH OTHERS, WE CHOSE TALENTED PERSONS  AND MAKE THEM EMPLOY THEIR TALENTS AND MAKE TALENTS COMPUTABLE TO OUR COMPANY`S SYSTEM DURING JOB.

Induction training...on servicing of customers...

- Special Training

- Continuous coaching

- Motivation

- Brain storm sessions

Training can play an important role in the success of your business. Hands-on exercises with realistic internal and external customer scenarios accelerate adoption of valuable capabilities. Develop strong customer relationship skills to bring customer experience strategies to life.

Training And Development

A strong company will already have great customer relationships. But a smart company will always be asking “What is good customer service?” If you are not constantly on the lookout for opportunities to improve your customer service, then your relationships will stagnate. Here are a few customer service tips for identifying ways to better serve customers.

 1. Strengthen your customer service skills

First, it’s important to make sure that your customer service team has the right skills for your managing customers’ needs. No amount of CRM software can compensate for shortcomings in this area. But what skills should you be looking for in a customer service rep?

• Empathy, patience and consistency. Some customers will be irate. Others will be full of questions. And others will just be chatty. You must know how to handle all of them and provide the same level of service every time.
• Adaptability. Every customer is different, and some may even seem to change week-to-week. You should be able to handle surprises, sense the customer’s mood and adapt accordingly. This also includes a willingness to learn– providing good customer service is a continuous learning process.
• Clear communication. Ensure you convey to customers exactly what you mean. You don’t want your customer to think he’s getting50% off when he’s actually getting50% more product. Use authentically positive language, stay cheerful no matter what and never end a conversation without confirming the customer is satisfied.
• Work ethic. Customers appreciate a rep who will see their problem through to its resolution. At the same time, you must have good time management skills and not spend too much time handling one customer while others are waiting. Stay focused on your goals to achieve the right balance.
• Knowledge. Ultimately your customers rely on you for their knowledge of your product. Stay informed enough to respond to most inquiries and know where to turn if the questions become too detailed or technical for you to answer. But don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” either. Customers will appreciate the honesty and your efforts to find the right answer.
• Thick skin. The customer’s always right… right? The ability to swallow one’s pride and accept blame or negative feedback is crucial. Whether your team works directly with customers or looking for feedback on social media, they’ve got to keep the customer’s happiness in mind.

Not sure if your reps have the right customer service skills? Survey or interview your customers to understand whether your service team is showing each of these traits. Running a customer feedback survey through your CRM program, at the point of sale, or when you send customers an invoice is a great way to see where your team’s skills do and don’t measure up.

 2. Look at every touch-point

A bad customer experience at any point in the customer lifecycle can ruin your relationship. In addition to making sure the right skills are demonstrated, you need to be sure they’re being demonstrated consistently. Pay the most attention to key touch-points, but make sure you have a full view of the customer experience, or you risk lapses in service that can really hurt business.

3. Improve your customer interactions

If your staff  has the necessary skill set, that’s a good start. But they still need to relate to your customers. Here are some tips for making sure customer service is both thorough and well received:

• Ask reps to try to identify a common ground–like shared interests–with the people they help. Having this point of understanding makes conflict easier to overcome by humanizing the relationship, and it endears customers to your rep (and ultimately your company).
• Practice active listening so your customers feel heard. Clarify and rephrase what the customers say to ensure you understand them. Empathize with and reflect their feelings by saying things like, “That must have upset you” or “I can see why you feel slighted.”
• Admit your mistakes, even if you discover them before your customers do. This builds trust and restores confidence. It also allows you to control the situation, re-focus the customer’s attention and resolve the issue.
• Follow-up after a problem is solved. Make sure the issue stays fixed and that your customers were satisfied with the service. Sending an email, or even a feedback survey is an excellent way to let the customer know you’re still on their side.

 4. Enhance your customer service strategy

Your staff may have the skills and know-how to interact with your customers. But what organizational strategies can you employ to please customers? Practice proactive customer service by making your customers happy before they come to you with problems. Here’s how:

• Get personal. Your customers want to feel like they have access to real people, not bots and FAQs. Offer more than just automated email responses, and do not let your telephone prompts or website send them down a rabbit hole. Take full advantage of social media (such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp) and write responses when your customers post on your page. Post photos and bios on your website. This shows your customers that you are real people working on their behalf.
• Be available. Part of the personal touch is making sure your customers can reach you. For example if your business is primarily online, meet in person occasionally with local customers and offer video calls (such as Skype) for those farther away. Work early and late when needed, especially if your customers are in different time zones. Even providing customers with your physical address helps build their trust and reminds them that your company exists off the internet as well.
• Cater to your customers. Make sure you are fully meeting your customers’ needs. Consider assigning reps to specific customers so they can build a relationship. Offer VIP treatment for your best customers to let them know they are appreciated. What special services might your customers like? Set up focus groups, interview customers, or run a survey to get ideas.
• Create communities. Your customers will feel even more valued if you treat them as important members of a community. You can bring various customers together in numerous ways, including webinars, interactive websites, social media, trade shows and conventions. And don’t forget that while your customers come to these forums to learn from you, you can learn as much–if not more–from them.

 5. Make sure your reps are engaged

You can have the best customer service skills and the best training in the world, but if your reps are checked out, it won’t matter at all. Improving employee engagement is another way to make sure customers have a great experience. Dissatisfied employees are unlikely to come forward with their problems, so consider an anonymous suggestion box or an employee engagement survey to see what makes your employees tick.

6. Give your customers a way to provide feedback

No matter how proactive you are, you’ll never be able to get in front of every customer issue. To make sure you learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly experience your customers have, create an easily accessible way for customers to give feedback. Whether it’s a phone survey at the end of a service call or a form on the “Contact Us” page of your website, creating a means for customers to give feedback makes it easier for you to learn what needs improvement. It also helps keep unhappy customers from voicing their displeasure on highly visible places like your social media pages.

Whatever steps you choose to take, remember that your customers are the most important part of your business so improving your customer service should be a top priority. Unsure what your strengths and weaknesses are? Make an effort to get closer both to your customers and your reps. Not only will you discover touch-points and skills that need improvement, but your customers will see that are dedicated to providing top-notch, proactive customer service.

totally agree with the answers given.

Select the right people

Sensationalize the service experience for your customers\\

Set performance standards

Sustain on-going training and reinforcement

Specify incentives for demonstrated good customer service behavior.

Survey your customers and reduce your defection rate

Seek customer complaints with enthusiasm

by Assigning him to a professional team member and at the end discussing what he learned and how he can enhance his skills on continuous basis.  

In the bpo/ITES sector we are serving a client10 to12,000 miles away depending on east coast or west coast.

The1st step consists of study of American culture. A warning about privacy rules and independent mature of Americans.

Understanding of American terms like my gadget is a lemon, he hit the bucket , ball-park figure which are normally not used in India.

The value of time which people in the west value most.

A CUSTOMER CAN BE A DETRACTOR SIMPLY BECAUSE THE PROCESS OF ISSUE RESOLUTION TOOK TOO LONG.

Thaining to make the tech rep speak to the level of customers understanding. People on the coastal cities like New York and San-Francisco are multi cultural. They can accept different accents. But elderly people in the mid west , Arizona and other southern states need to treated carefully. Active listenning is essntial along with speaking slowly in a neutral accent. Having a fake American accent would not help as u would be found out. It is better to declare the fact that yes we are located in india10,000 miles away and we do have a different accent. But I  speak slowly and try my best to assist u.