4 Reasons Why You Need Customer Support Training

It seems like one of the few things that all Americans still agree on is that cable companies and internet services providers are awful. The familiar frustrations include being placed on hold for hours, having to stay home all day in order to get basic equipment installed, and listening to service representatives imply that their company’s shortcomings are somehow our fault. In short, we don’t appreciate lackluster customer support services.

Luckily for cable companies and ISPs, telecom markets are often oligarchic at best and monopolistic at worst, so consumers don’t have many alternatives if they become fed up with the attention – or lack thereof – they receive. For those of us operating in more competitive industries, we’ve got no such leeway when it comes to keeping our customers happy.

And yet, despite ample evidence that high-quality, consistent customer support training delivers a healthy ROI, many businesses still view customer service as a chore more than as a revenue driver.

According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, customers who rate their experience with a company as “superior” spend 140% more with the company in the future and, with subscription-based business models, are 74% more likely to renew for an additional year compared to customers who rate their experience as “poor.”

Customers who rate their experience with a company as “superior” spend 140% more with the company in the future

At Continu, we firmly believe that providing excellent customer support is the right thing to do, but we’ve also seen the numbers and are not hesitant to admit that our commitment is simply good for business. When we adequately prepare and educate our clients, they spend less time calling us for help and more time taking advantage of everything our learning management system (LMS) has to offer.

But how does a company go about achieving a top-notch customer service record? It can hire experienced customer support reps, of course, but most companies don’t have the resources necessary to revamp entire teams through new hires alone. As such, companies must often resort to honing the skill-sets of the employees they already have, a process which, though it takes time, is usually for the best anyway since longer-tenured workers tend to have a more intimate understanding of their company’s products.

There are many ways to mold your employees into an exceptional customer support team, but all of them involve an effort to keep the employees themselves happy and an investment in comprehensive support training. In our experience, a good LMS helps companies check both of these boxes. In addition to showing that management is invested in them and keeping them engaged at work, a platform like Continu enables customer support reps to access all the information they need in one place and helps managers train those reps efficiently and effectively.

Making sure every one of your reps is on the same page is essential to providing superior customer service, but doing so is only possible with extensive support training. Yes, it’s an investment – of both time and money – but the evidence proves that it’s worth it. After all, unhappy customers call help-lines repeatedly, file support tickets, return products, and perhaps worst of all, tell their friends and colleagues about their negative experiences. In other words, unhappy customers are expensive. In the end, the cost of properly training your customer support reps is far exceeded by the savings you accrue by preventing unhappy customers. As the old saying goes, you gotta spend money to make money.