@lieselottelusk
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Customer Service Training: Building Confidence and Communication Skills
The Real Reason Your Customer Service Training Falls Short: A Honest Assessment
Ignore everything you've been told about client service training. Following two decades in this field, I can tell you that 90% of what passes for employee education in this space is absolute garbage.
Let me be brutally honest: your employees already know they should be polite to customers. They know they should smile, say please and thank you, and resolve complaints efficiently. What they don't know is how to handle the emotional labour that comes with interacting with difficult people day after day.
Back in 2019, I was consulting with a major telco company here in Sydney. Their client happiness scores were terrible, and executives kept pouring money at standard training programs. You know the type - mock conversations about greeting customers, reciting company policies, and countless seminars about "putting yourself in the customer's shoes."
Absolute nonsense.
The core challenge wasn't that staff didn't know how to be polite. The problem was that they were burned out from absorbing everyone else's frustration without any tools to guard their own wellbeing. Think about it: when someone calls to vent about their internet being down for the fourth time this month, they're not just frustrated about the technical issue. They're furious because they feel powerless, and your customer service rep becomes the recipient of all that pent-up feeling.
Most training programs totally overlook this emotional reality. Instead, they focus on basic skills that sound good in theory but fall apart the moment someone starts yelling at your people.
This is what really helps: teaching your people psychological protection strategies before you even mention client relations techniques. I'm talking about breathing exercises, boundary setting, and most importantly, permission to disengage when things get heated.
At that Sydney telco, we introduced what I call "Emotional Armour" training. Instead of concentrating on procedures, we taught staff how to recognise when they were internalising a customer's feelings and how to emotionally distance themselves without seeming disconnected.
The changes were dramatic. Service ratings scores rose by 35% in three months, but more importantly, staff turnover decreased by 50%. Apparently when your team feel supported to manage problem interactions, they actually like helping customers solve their concerns.
Additionally that annoys me: the obsession with forced cheerfulness. You know what I'm talking about - those training sessions where they tell employees to "always maintain a cheerful demeanor" regardless of the context.
Complete nonsense.
Clients can sense forced positivity from a kilometre away. What they actually want is genuine care for their issue. Sometimes that means acknowledging that yes, their problem genuinely is awful, and you're going to do everything possible to support them resolve it.
I recall working with a big retail chain in Melbourne where leadership had mandated that every service calls had to open with "Hi, thank you for picking [Company Name], how can I make your day amazing?"
Really.
Picture this: you call because your pricey appliance stopped working two days after the guarantee ended, and some poor employee has to fake they can make your day "amazing." It's ridiculous.
We scrapped that approach and replaced it with basic genuineness training. Train your staff to actually listen to what the customer is telling them, recognise their frustration, and then focus on real fixes.
Client happiness improved immediately.
After years in the industry of working in this area, I'm convinced that the largest problem with support training isn't the education itself - it's the unattainable expectations we place on service teams and the absolute lack of organisational support to resolve the root causes of poor customer experiences.
Fix those problems first, and your customer service training will really have a chance to work.
If you have any kind of questions pertaining to where and how you can use Difficult Personality Training, you could call us at the web-site.
Website: https://buildingrapprtwithcustomers.bigcartel.com/product/showing-patience-with-customers
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