A team of virtual receptionists must be motivated and engaged to provide the best customer service. Providing ongoing training to your team of receptionists ensures your team always has customer service at the forefront of their minds. Without proper training, your employees’ customer service levels may falter without you realizing it.
Here are some simple ways to train your staff to ensure they always provide the best customer service.
Offer Feedback and Always be Clear
Feedback should be an ongoing process for virtual receptionists. If you monitor phone calls, review them periodically and provide the virtual receptionists with tips. Talk to them about what they did well, and then discuss what could improve.
If there’s an issue with a customer or the virtual receptionist doesn’t handle it right, address it immediately so it doesn’t happen again.
Aim for Progress
When you train and provide feedback, always be positive and make sure everyone has the same goal – to see progress. Things won’t change overnight, but helping your team understand what they could improve and continually work on will help your bottom line.
Set team goals and monitor the progress. Consider providing motivation or prizes to help everyone feel like a part of the team to achieve optimal customer service.
Have an Open Door
Let your employees come to you with anything. Tell them you have an open-door policy, and they can always come to you with questions or concerns.
Also, let your employees know you will periodically check in with them. If they haven’t come to you with feedback or concerns, reach out and ask how they are doing. Listen in on their calls and, together, see what can be fixed to improve things even more.
When you have an open door policy, employees will be more likely to come to you without worrying they might lose their job or feel ridiculed.
Provide Ongoing Training
Set a schedule to have ongoing training for your employees. Whether it’s as a whole or individually, create times when they must refresh their memories with techniques and procedures while also learning anything new.
In the meantime, you do your research and stay up on your skills so you can pass them along to your team. The more advanced your team gets, the more business you’ll get. Companies want an answering service that is on top of their game and will provide their customers with top-notch customer service.
Final Thoughts
Virtual receptionist training is the key to a healthy bottom line. If you want your answering service to succeed, all employees must be on the same page. Letting things go assuming they are acceptable can be the biggest mistake any business owner makes.
Check in with your employees, provide positive and helpful feedback, have an open-door policy, and keep the training going. Don’t let anyone get ‘too comfortable’ in their position that their customer service skills lack. Keep everyone on their ‘A’ game, and your answering service will thrive.
