Customer Service Training Checklist

Customer service is always a challenge for a business organization because customers always want to get a better
treatment so the organization has to do its best to satisfy customer needs. The following Customer Service Training
Action Plan will help your company teach employees to treat customers in a better way. It consists of these categories:
 Define Success of Your Training Programme.
 Define Key Principles for the Programme.
 Communicate the Programme.
 Provide Tools and Material Necessary for Training.
 Plan Scenarios for Training Sessions.

1. Define Success of Your Training Programme.

 Have clear expectations and results to be obtained at programme completion.
 Set objectives for the programme.
 Make a definition of success for your training endeavor.
 Let your employee figure out your definition and understand what success looks like.
 Quantify measures of success. For example:
o Satisfaction (as a manager you’re satisfied with results your employees gained after training).
o Goal achievement (goals and objectives of your training programme has been achieved).
o Improvement (there’re some improvements to be applied to your custom service after the training
process is finished.)
 Provide these measures to employees as major goals they must accomplish during and at the end of the
training process.

2. Define Key Principles for the Programme.

 Every single customer is treated as special.
 A customer service employee always respects your company’s customers, regardless of how this
employee is treated by the customers.
 Prioritization is used to handle multiple requests.
 A customer service employee always tries to anticipate what a customer needs in order to provide a better
service.
 Customer service is provided on a continuous basis, from the very beginning to the end of every
transaction.
 Professional and courteous behaviors are used at all times.
 A customer service employee always listens to a customer and tries to do his/her best to meet the
customer’s needs.
 A customer service employee promises to satisfy a certain need only if he/she is completely assured the
promise can be made.
 A genuine understanding and care are always used to figure out what a customer requests.
 Every customer’s question is always answered, without exception.
 Customer complaints are always handled with courtesy.

3. Communicate the Programme.

 Create your programme in the form of an action plan that specifies key activities and tasks for achieving
success.
 Share this document between employees involved in providing customer service.
 Be sure your employees know what you expect to get after the programme is realized. For example, you
can use a meeting as a good way to communicate the programme and tell your workers about upcoming
training.
 Set start date, finish date and duration for the training process.
 Choose location where training sessions will be arranged.
 Be sure your workers are aware of all this information.

4. Provide Tools and Material Necessary for Training.

 Provide your workers with software and hardware tools required for customer service training. For
example, these tools include:
o Special software dedicated to creating and sharing various training materials.
o Presentation management software and slideware.
o Graphic design applications.
o Computers, laptops, headsets, microphones.
 o Cell phones, Pocket PCs, Blackberry.
o Black boards and white boards.
 Consider organizing additional training workshops and seminars to help your trainees as well as trainers to
learn how to use software/hardware tools.
 Provide your employees with necessary teaching material. For example:
o Books and manuals.
o Guides describing how to handle common situations and scenarios.
o Examples of the best behaviors.

5. Plan Scenarios for Training Sessions.

 Describe roles for common situations.
 Create a list of the most challenging situations and identify the best solutions.
 Engage your employees to participate in live discussions of every situation during a training session.
 Encourage employees who offer their unique responses to the situations.
 Provide your trainees with an opportunity to realize their own vision of the best practices.