I train Customer Service Reps for a cable television provider, and need ideas on how to train them on troubleshooting customers' TV and digital box problems.
We have flowcharts for troubleshooting, but there are often issues with CSRs not being able to walk customers through fixing their issues and/or having trouble properly identifying what the issue is.
The one activity I do have is role play in pairs - 1 person is a customer (from the flowcharts they pre-select a problem they're having but don't tell the other person what it is), the other is a CSR who has to ask the right questions to identify the problem then walk them through fixing it.
Any other ideas? The people I train generally have a mix of technical know-how to start with - some are very comfortable with it already, some have no knowledge whatsoever and are learning from scratch.
One Response
Having been on the receiving end
Having experienced someone trying to talk me through a trouble-shooting flow-chart, one thing that stands out would be to use actual equipment in the role-plays so that the CSRs get to see what the customer actually is seeing at each step of the flow-chart.
Too often when you find yourself in this situation the CSR becomes lost as soon as you ask a question or the equipment does something that is not on the script they have. A little time experiencing the kit would make a massive difference and allow them to use more conversational language in supporting the customer.