4 Customer Service Training Templates to Avoid DIY Solutions

Scalable, cost-effective training solutions for customer service leaders

Customer service reps are often your frontline defense against bad reviews, diminishing brand image, and shrinking business. Furthermore, turnover in these positions is traditionally high at 30 to 45 percent, creating more costs for training and making employee retention a priority.

In the end, you know that relying on stale, DIY solutions like PowerPoints, PDFs, and docs to inform your customer service training program affects your bottom line. Maybe you want to move on from instructor-led training—a drain on your budget with venue fees, materials, and travel costs—or you’ve been stuck educating your teams straight from a customer service training manual.

If you’re looking for a way to overhaul your training program, increase customer satisfaction scores, and build consistent revenue growth without driving up costs, consider a switch to e-learning. Customer service training distributed through e-learning allows for efficient, personalized course creation and cultivates better customer interactions, moving customers to make more purchases.

In this post, discover the benefits of scalable, cost-effective customer service training, and explore the power of pre-built CS training templates that engage all learners, deliver personalized content, and drive productivity.

The benefits of customer service training

The long-reaching benefits of effective customer service training affect employees and organizations alike, all the while creating happier customers along the way.

Employee-centered benefits

• Enhanced communication skills. Training customer service team members on soft skills like active listening produces clearer, more empathetic interactions with customers.

• Improved empathy and emotional intelligence. When customer service reps are trained to view situations from the customer’s perspective, it’s easier to build rapport and strengthen brand loyalty.

• Better conflict resolution. Resolving customer complaints quickly, calmly, and effectively can reduce repeat contacts with better problem-solving skills.

• Increased confidence and morale. Better-equipped customer service reps move through their day without frustration, building their own confidence and boosting morale of those around them simultaneously.

• Greater engagement and retention. When training accelerates the time to value for employees, they’re more likely to commit to the job, stay on course, and continue to seek new learning opportunities.

Organizational benefits

• Higher customer satisfaction (CSAT). When agitated customers encounter calm, efficient customer service teams, your organization’s CSAT score will undoubtedly rise.

• Increased customer loyalty and retention. Accurate and timely customer service reduces customer churn and produces repeat business.

• Boosted brand reputation. Excellent service experiences increase chances of word-of-mouth referrals, expanding brand recognition.

• Revenue growth. Loyal customers are more likely to make additional purchases—a recent survey revealed that 81% of customers who have great customer service experiences will be moved to make another purchase—and reduced complaints decrease overhead costs.

• Consistency and efficiency. When good training is a consistent expectation across teams and departments, productivity increases.

• Stronger company culture. Shared team values across the organization geared towards greater customer satisfaction create a customer-centric culture that permeates the whole company.

The advantage of online customer service training

There are many common pain points among learning and development professionals centered around course creation and distribution. Move from PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, and time-consuming instructor-led training to a full service e-learning platform to enjoy the following benefits.

Scalability

Delivery of highly engaging content to geographically dispersed teams has never been easier. Your options for course creation range from quick, responsive courses that adapt to every device to fully interactive, highly customizable courses for immersive learning.

Expanding your CS team? Can’t keep up with new product features? Imagine being able to create courses up to 9 times faster with a powerful AI assistant that keeps you in the driver seat.

Content management

Delivering engaging content quickly—and to the right people at the right time—amidst constant workplace changes should be simple, but managing content for new hires and veterans alike is time-consuming. Failing to do so can cost you customers and cause reputational damage.

Course content management doesn’t need to be a hassle, but L&D pros know that keeping content up to date and relevant can quickly turn into a game of cat and mouse. They also know that it’s not just course content that needs organizing—managing users, organizing learner groups, and tracking activity are important pieces of the puzzle, too.

Engaging content

All L&D pros know that engaging content is the key to higher completion rates, productivity, and employee retention. Relying on old PowerPoints, PDFs, and docs to train your CS teams isn’t going to cut it.

That’s where microlearning comes in. An efficient, affordable, and mobile-responsive way to provide training, microlearning modules require fewer resources to develop and deliver quick, focused content. These bite-sized lessons can come in a variety of formats, including:

• An interactive checklist for first call resolution
• A short video explaining a new return policy
• An infographic with hotspots highlighting company values
• A quick quiz testing CS reps on product features

Personalized learning

A common pain point for customer service department leaders is ensuring relevant, on-time training for different roles and tenures. New hires may need more training in soft skills to learn patience, adaptability, and resilience. Mid-level and senior CS reps may need training focused on navigating emerging technologies.

With the variety of learning needs, skill levels, and abilities in mind, it’s best to use e-learning tools like branching scenarios. Branching scenarios—like a teacher who differentiates content for their students—allow for customized learning paths based on role or skill. Learners can take a nonlinear approach to learning, selecting where to start and where to go next, all as the software adjusts to the learner’s choices.

Time to value

One of the biggest advantages of using e-learning to deliver training courses to your customer service team is speed to value. Quick course creation and simple distribution mean reps are getting the knowledge they need, right when they need it. Better yet, the more efficient training is, the sooner your reps can get back to attending to clients.

With speed, quality, and scalability in mind, let’s check out four of the best customer service training templates to get your CS team’s KPIs moving in the right direction.

4 CS training template ideas for a better customer experience

As training needs differ for all teams and individual reps, the following course template ideas are presented in no particular order. Each one comes with suggested topics to cover, sample learning objectives, and interactive features you might include to boost engagement. All they need is your personal touch, brand logos, and company colors!

Providing exceptional customer service

This introductory course idea helps CS reps build the most necessary customer service skills, all while customizable to your company’s standards.

Typical topics might include:

• Why customer service matters
• Customizable customer personas or avatars to interact with
• Effective customer communication practices like active listening and empathy
• Customer service strategies like managing expectations and product knowledge

Sample learning objectives might include:

• CS reps will be able to demonstrate the value of excellent customer service.
• CS reps will be able to identify the benefits of active listening.
• CS reps will be able to list two strategies to go ‘above and beyond’ for customers.

For interactive features, try interactive flashcards for expressing empathy, branching scenarios for real-world CS scenarios with interactive characters, and quick quizzes to test knowledge.

Want to see what this one could look like? View this customizable course template. Scroll through and interact with the whole course to see how well it fits your needs.

Soliciting and responding to customer feedback

This course idea focuses on teaching customer service reps the importance of taking customer feedback seriously, and offers strategies on how to to effectively respond to customer input. Centering around communication skills, this will help drive customer retention.

Typical topics might include:

• Understanding the value of customer feedback
• How to ask for and respond purposefully to customer feedback
• Examples of customer feedback and responses to interact with

Sample learning objectives might include:

• CS reps will be able to identify why customer feedback is important.
• CS reps will be able to explain the best techniques for responding to customer feedback.
• CS reps will be able to demonstrate how to effectively respond to common customer feedback to improve retention.

For interactive features, try using short videos of customer interactions and sorting quizzes that use drag and drop features to test their understanding of the do’s and dont’s of soliciting feedback.

Want to see what this one could look like? View this customizable course template. Scroll through and interact with the whole course to see how well it fits your needs.

Handling difficult customer service scenarios

It’s unavoidable. Customers get frustrated, confused, and angry. And it’s almost never your team’s fault, but they need to know how to handle difficult situations to keep your bottom line safe. This idea for a course will help reps manage stressful situations and improve customer satisfaction.

Typical topics might include:

• Exploring why customers get upset
• Responding to abusive customers
• How to handle refunds and cancellation requests
• How to retain customers
• Strategies for gaining ‘gentle’ control over customer conversations

Sample learning objectives might include:

• CS reps will be able to identify two strategies for gaining control over customer conversations.
• CS reps will be able to explain how to say “No” to customers.
• CS reps will demonstrate how to handle refund requests while maintaining customer retention.

For interactive features, try using pre-made personas for examples of typical customers, interactive flashcards to test knowledge, and branching scenarios for how best to respond to angry customers.

Want to see what this one could look like? View this customizable course template. Scroll through and interact with the whole course to see how well it fits your needs.

Developing a growth mindset

Developing resiliency against the daily challenges of any job is an important skill to build. Considered a soft skill, the development of a growth mindset in your reps improves their confidence on-the-job, benefitting customers and the organization.

Typical topics might include:

• The benefits of a growth mindset
• The difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset
• Strategies for developing and maintaining a growth mindset

Sample learning objectives might include:

• CS reps will be able to identify three benefits of a growth mindset.
• CS reps will be able to explain the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
• CS reps will be able to demonstrate two strategies for developing a growth mindset.

For interactive features, try using an interactive infographic with hotspots explaining different strategies to build a growth mindset and a drag and drop quiz separating growth and fixed mindset examples.

Want to see what this one could look like? View this customizable course template. Scroll through and interact with the whole course to see how well it fits your needs.

While the above course ideas aren’t an exhaustive list of needs for customer service teams, they do represent a great starting point. You’ll likely provide additional technical skills training for software and product knowledge, compliance training for customer data privacy, and even sales training where necessary.

Boost your bottom line with the e-learning advantage

Leave the clutter of aging, DIY PowerPoints and PDFs behind with training delivered via scalable, cost-effective e-learning.  Enjoy easy content management, content libraries packed with engaging multimedia, and a faster time to value for your reps and customers. Create, update, and share content seamlessly to boost your bottom line, drive real outcomes, and make positive change.

Ready to explore the benefits of efficient, quality course creation? Start your free trial of the Articulate 360 platform today to unlock millions of multimedia assets, customizable course templates, access to expert training, and frictionless course distribution.