Customer Service

All aspects of staff and volunteer (agent) training are very important to any public access media center, whether it be in administration or operations.

When it comes to providing excellent customer service, it is the agent who is depended on. Without persistent and effective training, chances are the quality of customer service a customer receives will suffer greatly. If you were to become a fly on the wall, it would be easy to see the difference in a media center that provides excellent training and a media center that provides mediocre training.

When it comes to media center customer service training, the outcome of a good or bad agent rests on the shoulders of the trainer.

For example, if a trainer comes into work everyday tired and grumpy, it will show. Because their interaction with newly hired agents is usually the first that an agent will experience within the company, this can easily inhabit the outlook a new agent may have about the company they are beginning a new career with. After all if a trainer does not care, why should an agent?

It’s also extremely important for trainers to effectively interact in a positive manner with trainees to ensure a positive experience. If someone is being trained for a new position but doesn’t understand something that has been taught, or has an issue with something, they need to feel good about being able to talk to the trainer about it.

If a trainee feels they cannot go to someone with questions or issues, chances are they won’t feel supported and they won’t stick around long. Don't under estimate this: the cost to train a single new customer service agent is high, so the importance of keeping them around is great.

There is more to media center service training than just providing a positive experience for trainees: product knowledge and procedure guidelines. When a trainer doesn’t take the time to make sure they are effectively communicating these things, an agent certainly will not bring the right attitude or knowledge to the job function they were hired to perform.

And when the customer service agent cannot perform, bad things start to happen...

Customers become dissatisfied and this defeats the purpose of training all together. Dissatisfied customer simply won’t stay with a company if too many problems arise for them.

Management usually creates a metric to usually monitor agents. If media center agents are not giving correct information or interacting appropriately with customers, there is a chance that the customers will leave and not return.

This can all be nipped in the bud with good training!