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[T1235]Training For Customer Service

by Mark Griffin, Mar

Applications for - from Marketing to Customer Self-Service

Webvideos have become a crucial part of the online marketing activity. They are being used to market, to sell, to explain the detail of products and services and to provide customer service, help, advice and guidance. Online corporate video productions range from 10-30 seconds for quick riding advertisements, to 2-3 minute summaries and longer for customer service video tutorials.
It is no exaggeration to say the possibilities of productions are endless. The diagram below shows types of website video usage and how they work in the context of online viewing habits.

We categorised web video uses into two broad areas of marketing and customer service. The duration of a web video will depend on its marketing objective and when, in the web conversion or sales-to-service cycle, the viewer will see it.
For example, an online video advert must get its message over in 10-30 seconds, but if someone visits your website as a response to that advert or to pay-per-click advertising there is an assumption that the viewer has some interest in what your business message is and consequently they will allow you longer to say it.
A Web based customer service video production can provide complicated information, broken down into bite size sections and played repeatedly at the viewers convenience. So long as the information put forward is useful and relevant the duration of the video production is not usually an issue.
Information delivered through the use of online video softens the gap between wanting to know something and the process of finding it out. If people are interested in the presentation they will watch on and come back for more.
What is clear is that a can provide a return on investment at all points in the business cycle: from generating extra business to providing customer advice and guidance, thereby reducing the overall cost of customer care.

In the communications industry there are two types of people - Bell Heads and Net Heads i.e. those who understand voice and those who understand data. This old, established voice products manufacturer needed to move into the data world, and the unified communications market with the onset of technologies like VoIP (Voice over IP).

Through mergers and acquisitions they acquired lots of data companies and their associated products and services, but the expected revenues did not appear. Quick analysis of the situation showed that the sales people were uncomfortable introducing the new data products to their customers. Many had board level relationships with their customers, but felt they did not have the data background to allow them to discuss data with them. A needs analysis was completed and presented the findings to the European board to gain their buy-in to move forward with the project.

This became known as the right-angled turn, impacting the culture of this company and the way that they did business. We designed a program consisting of 3 workshops each running for 3 days, which culminated in becoming certified to sell data, which was linked to the sales force's compensation plan.

To ensure the program didn't become dry and technical, the technology was introduced on a pre-program CD, with a web-based test prior to joining the actual program. The face to personal face learning was focused on specific markets, the customers' business drivers and applications to deliver business results. All of this was underpinned with role plays, where each team worked with customers to deliver a business solution. The role play ran throughout the 3 sessions, developing and deepening the sales people's understanding of what a customer wants from them.

As there were 600 sales people to train in Europe, we ran the pilots and then ran TTT sessions to train 6 delivery teams of two people. The take-up of the program meant that the whole sales force was trained in 18 months, and the program spun-off to other groups in Europe like Pre-sales, Operations and Marketing, in addition to being run across the Asia Pacific region.

Article Source : Customer Service And Training

About Author

Both Mark Griffin & John Fowler are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Mark Griffin has sinced written about articles on various topics from Video, Web Development and Customer Service. After an early career in the Steel industry Mark studied Graphic Design at his local university. He then went on to work for a number of years as creative director of Mannenberg Ltd. Here he managed all creative output from Nationally based magazines to w. Mark Griffin's top article generates over 4400 views. to your Favourites.

John Fowler has sinced written about articles on various topics from Sales Training, Site promotion and Sales Training. John Fowler is a sales and management trainer designing and delivering workshops across the world specifically for the IT industry. John can be contacted on his website at. John Fowler's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.