News: Customer Service/Care
Focus on users' experience 'key to customer service training'
02 February 2009
One of the key steps businesses must take to increase their sustainability is to make the consumer's experience more relevant, potentially deploying customer service training to promote a value-added approach to communication, an expert asserts.
Louise Druce, the editor of MyCustomer.com, uses mobile phone company O2 as an example, where irrelevant sales prompts were removed from the end of agent calls.
Using customer service training, she says the firm prepared its front-end staff to operate as agents that are capable of assessing which offers are appropriate to potential consumers.
Hugh Wilson, a professor of strategic marketing and director of the customer management forum at the Cranfield School of Management, tells the news provider this is an approach heavily centred on the user.
"By doing that, firms not only look after their own interests but those of the customer to keep and grow the most relevant people to the business," he states.
Dr Jeffrey Gorbski, a faculty member at the Carson-Newman College and Lincoln Memorial University, recently told Sales and Marketing magazine call centre training could improve customer service levels by allowing staff to address communication breakdowns. 
