How to Use Effective Customer Service Training Videos for Smoother Onboarding

In his celebrated TED talk, customer service expert John Bocuzzi states that treating customers well can do wonders for marketing your brand. He has an excellent point – an amazing customer service experience can indeed result in a loyal client for life.

That’s easier said than done, though – especially considering that that experience will rely primarily on your representatives. How can you ensure they know enough about your products or services to assist clients? Can they really interact with customers while embracing the company’s values?

To make sure your employees can represent your brand well, it’s crucial to train them right the moment they set foot in your company. And here’s when customer service movies and videos come in handy.

Being both stimulating and understandable, video can be the worthiest addition to your company’s onboarding process.

Today, we’ll help you make the most out of this powerful medium. We’ll tell you how to make good customer service videos for training newcomers and give you tips to level up your overall customer service game.

Let’s get started!

Why Use Customer Service Training Videos?

There are very valid reasons why you should consider creating customer service videos, namely:

• Video is a great teacher. The audiovisual format makes trainees pay more attention to the content and process and retain the information better.
• Good customer service videos are more cost-effective in the long run. They entail a big initial payment, but it’s a one-time investment that pays off over time. On the other hand, a traditional onboarding process is more economical on its own, but you have to endure its cost every time you hire someone new.
• Video allows new employees to learn independently. Your staff can watch customer service training videos anytime or place as long they have an internet connection – the perfect deal for remote teams with time zone differences or flexible working hours.
• They can be adjusted to different learning curves. Customer service movies and videos can be paused and rewatched whenever the viewer needs to go over specific information, allowing trainees to learn at their own pace.
• Video ensures a consistent onboarding experience throughout the company. In-person training lessons frequently differ from each other since trainers tend to highlight or skip different topics. With video, you can make sure all employees receive equal information, leaving no room for future misunderstandings.

All in all, onboarding videos are ideal for every type of team, especially remote ones. The best customer service videos allow new hires to have a quality and consistent onboarding experience while saving you money in the long run. An absolute win-win.

7 Essential Tips to Make the Best Customer Service Videos

Now you know about customer service training videos’ potential, it’s time you learn how to take full advantage of it. So, let’s go over some valuable tips you should put into practice:

1. Plan the content beforehand.

Disorganized or confusing material will damage your staff’s learning process. So, before setting out to produce your training videos, you’d better make a detailed plan of the information new hires should receive during the onboarding.

To help you with the planning process, here are a few ideas of topics that any good customer service video should address:

• Company policies and procedures.
• Workplace culture and company values. Culture videos can do the trick!
• Technical skills. You can offer tutorial videos explaining how to handle the company’s digital channels and tools.
• Customer interactions best practices.

2. Mind the quality.

The onboarding is one of the first impressions new hires will have of your company. In this sense, making amazing customer service training videos will not only level up employees’ onboarding experience but will also prompt them to hold your company in high esteem.

So, check that your videos’ image and sound quality are up to standard and that the script is understandable and on point.

3. Use storytelling.

Let’s make this clear: creating a good customer service video for training purposes doesn’t mean filming an onboarding coach against a whiteboard. That sort of content won’t let you absorb the full potential of the audiovisual format.

To make your videos refreshing and memorable – and, therefore, more effective learning-wise – you should use a minimal amount of talking head videos. Instead, display stories that your customer service staff can learn from.

Animation is probably the best customer service video production style for this purpose. It allows you to narrate stories and synthesize information in a fun and clear way without going through the burdens and expenses of a live-action production – namely, filming in the workplace, selecting a cast, hiring a camera crew, etc.

Take this video about our production process, for instance! Although it’s not a customer service movie, it’s still an excellent example of animation’s didactic power.

4. Create Concise Customer Service Training Videos.

I hate to break it to you but, similar to the entire World’s population, your new employees’ attention span is probably short. In this context, long videos will make your staff’s minds wander off before the end. This is the reason why the best customer service videos usually last under 10 minutes.

Don’t get me wrong: I know your entire onboarding content won’t fit in such a short video. The idea is to segment all the information in a series of brief pieces. This way, the onboarding experience will run smoother for new hires.

5. Update the content regularly.

Company policies and procedures may change every now and then. Giving new hires outdated content will make them waste working hours studying useless data and relearning the correct information. In the worst-case scenario, it can even lead them to make mistakes due to misinformation.

So, every time change occurs inside the customer service department, it’s essential to revise the onboarding videos and modify them accordingly. This will be easier if the videos are animated.

6. Make your videos always available.

To make the most out of your amazing customer service training videos, make them accessible to employees at any time, even when the onboarding is over. For example, you can store the videos in a shared folder or display them in your company’s internal wiki. This way, the staff will be able to brush up on a particular topic or clear out their (or clients’) doubts. This will help not only them but also your customers, as they will receive better assistance.

7. Ask for feedback.

No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to objectively see your onboarding videos from the eyes of new hires.

At the end of the day, your customer service training videos should be useful for them. So, don’t be afraid to ask for their opinion. See if they found the content helpful and understandable or if they thought the information was incomplete. With this in mind, you’ll be able to level up the onboarding process for future employees.

Covering the Basics of Amazing Customer Service

We won’t be able to sum up all customer service best practices into this small section. Still, we can simplify those tips and tricks as much as possible and answer some questions you may have in mind. Let’s see:

What are the 5 steps of customer service?

These are the 5 steps that any customer service representative should take when assisting a client:

1. Empathize with the customer and go the extra mile in search of a solution for their issues.
2. Use Customer Relationship Manager software. This type of tool provides context to the customer’s complaint and helps to personalize the assistance.
3. Own responsibility. Acknowledge the company’s mistakes instead of placing the blame elsewhere.
4. Anticipate what the customer will need. Ease the client’s journey by providing the right information before they ask for it.
5. Be respectful. Even if the devil himself contacts the customer service department, it’s vital to remain civil and polite.

Pst! Consider mentioning these steps in your customer service training videos. Your new hires should know about them!

What are the 3 most important things in customer service?

Many skills are necessary for delivering an amazing customer service experience, but these three things are especially important:

• Effective listening, to be able to get to the core of the customer’s problem.
• Knowledge about the company’s product or service to provide clients with the necessary information.
• Good communication skills to assist customers in a clear and confident way.

How do you train customer service representatives?

Here are some useful practices for training new customer service representatives:

1. Plan a smooth and clear onboarding process with all the information new hires will need.
2. Test trainees’ knowledge through quick examinations, like close-ended questions at the end of a customer service training video.
3. Make employees practice with simulated tickets and correct their answers.
4. Until newcomers are ready, let more experienced representatives supervise them when assisting customers in real-time. For email and live chat assistance, make these mentors review trainees’ responses before sending them to the client.

Customer Service Training Videos: The Takeaway

As John Bocuzzi states in his TED talk, customer service can make a client choose your brand again and again. At the same time, a poor customer service experience can do the opposite: it can hamper the relationship with the client and lead to negative reviews and fewer customers.

To deliver an excellent customer service experience, you first need to ensure a smooth and comprehensive onboarding process for every new representative. Today, you’ve learned that there’s no need to break the bank for that: by using good customer service videos for training employees, you can educate all new hires equally while respecting their learning curves and schedules.

You can capitalize even more on these videos if you follow the tips you’ve read today. These valuable tricks are simple, but they can transform your employees’ onboarding experience and, therefore, help build an amazing customer service team.