eLearning in Customer Service: How Effective Use of Customer Service eLearning can Reduce Queue Times and Improve Brand Value

The need to rapidly train customer service representatives is a key challenge for the customer service industry, and eLearning offers an effective solution. The recent surge in people working from home means that an increasing number of activities that were previously conducted in person are now being conducted remotely through telephone and online customer service representatives. As a result, customer service lines are busier, hiring levels have gone up, and the demand for effective training with fast turnaround times has risen astronomically.   With all these changes to the customer service industry, it's no surprise that training programs for customer service eLearning have continued to grow and become more rigorous, with increasingly higher demands for how quickly learners are expected to absorb content and be ready to work. The good news is that, with new advances in the eLearning space, it is possible to meet and even surpass these high demands thanks to technologies such as audio-visual demos, mobile microlearning, and game-based learning.  

The impact of Customer Service eLearning: Why faster training is so important?

  Anyone who's been stuck in an infuriatingly long phone queue knows that the experience only worsens a customer's opinion of a company that, if they’re calling customer service, they are likely already unhappy with. Studies have shown that longer wait times lead to more irate customers and poorer customer satisfaction scores, which can massively affect the company's brand and thus reduce revenue.   While surges in customer service calls are occasionally predictable, allowing additional representatives to be brought in pre-emptively, new employee hiring and training often only begins after the need for additional staff is felt by the team. This isn’t ideal because, with over 63% of new customers first engaging with a business online, it's important for these customer-facing systems to be quick and responsive. Because of this, even small reductions in the time taken to fully train new employees or upskill existing ones can have a huge impact on business outcomes.  

How it happens: Why new customer service eLearning processes make training faster and more effective?

  There are dozens of Customer Service eLearning techniques designed to serve different companies and industries. Some companies utilize fully digitized training programs, while others benefit more from a hybrid system that incorporates both in-person and eLearning sessions.   eLearning techniques such as interactive video demos can be a great way to showcase technical or administrative responsibilities, e.g., documenting a ticket or performing a transaction. Game-based learning systems have shown a tremendous ability for teaching objection handling and complaint resolution, as trainees compete to think critically and solve complex problems.   Each of these techniques can shave several days off onboarding time for new joiners. For some companies, the usage of multiple techniques such as interactive demos followed by game-based competitions and digitized mock customer calls has resulted in training time being reduced by half or more. This has an enormous impact on businesses, massively reducing long queue times and letting companies maintain a positive relationship with customers without creating overworked, undertrained customer service teams unable to handle a sudden influx of calls.  

How to get started: Building or redesigning effective customer service eLearning.

  Whether you're building a new training program or redesigning an existing one, you’ll need to overcome several hurdles when implementing new Customer Service eLearning techniques. First, while most young people are already familiar with eLearning from school and college courses, older employees might require a small adjustment period. Still, because technology is so ubiquitous in today’s workplaces, it's better for employees who are unfamiliar with Customer Service eLearning to undergo this adjustment period during training instead of on the job.   Additionally, although eLearning systems can save a tremendous amount of time and money in the long run, developing an eLearning infrastructure can be a long and arduous process. While some companies choose to hire instructional designers directly, hundreds of top-level firms have worked with Ozemio to build state-of-the-art customer service eLearning content for both fully digital and hybrid training modules. You can find out more about Ozemio on our website, where you can also chat with one of our learning experts or request a sample case study. We're happy to answer any questions you have about Customer Service eLearning and how we can help you improve your training. We look forward to connecting with you soon.