2 ways to train your customer service reps

There are so many industry training opportunities, it only makes sense to get your entire team involved.
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It’s March 2018: Are all your troops marching to the same song and at the same cadence? You especially don’t want to forget your “Front Line Troops” — your customer service representatives, or CSRs. You need to ensure they are giving out the correct information about your service offerings. More importantly, they should be able to retain customers who want to cancel. Arming your CSRs with specific pest and product knowledge is really important when it comes down to saving a customer. Here are two ways you can make sure your CSRs are ready for the oncoming busy season.
 

1. Take advantage of industry training.

Most pest management industry manufacturers and distributors will not only provide your sales and technical teams with product training, but your CSRs as well, so they can feel confident when they answer customer questions. Sometimes, when a customer wants to defect, saving the account might be as simple as having a knowledgeable CSR on the line to let the customer know just how important their service is and what it would mean if they did not have the ongoing protection that keeps pests at bay.
 

2. Certify your CSRs.

Most of Johnson Pest Control’s CSR team is certified in Tennessee. We keep up their certification points every year, just as we do for our technicians and sales staff. We started this long ago so that if sales were made over the phone, we would be legal in Tennessee. But it also provides a great advantage to have CSRs in the know and familiar with the application methods, products used and laws and regulations that affect our industry. Many hours of studying are needed to take the certification test; it is quite a bit of learning. The more knowledge about pest management your front line troops have, the better.

Spring is the time to refresh your knowledge. Review with your staff what they already know. I have learned something new from something old too many times to count. We can never stop learning. We must be sharper than the competition because they are working hard to stay ahead of us, too.

You can reach Ray Johnson, a past president of the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), president of Sevierville, Tenn.-based Johnson Pest Control, and founder of ACES for Business at ray@johnsonpestcontrol.com.