Training A Customer Support Team Member The Right Way

Measure a new support rep’s readiness by ticket type, not by days on the job: let them answer the most common, well-documented request types on their own early, and keep mentor review for refunds, escalations and anything outside the knowledge base. Before that comes preparation: product training, tone and limits, and shadowing a mentor. Here is the sequence we suggest.

Start with the product

Assign every new hire a mentor who is experienced, kind and knows your brand inside and out. Then start with a product demo from a teammate, so the new hire has a basic understanding of the product they will be supporting.

1. Product demo and the customer-facing knowledge base

Ideally, you already have a customer-facing knowledge base with getting-started guides and user manuals. After the demo, ask the new hire to read through it, and pair that with tasks they perform in your product, so they try the features first-hand.

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Knowledge Base Software for the tools you can use and what to include in a customer-facing knowledge base.

2. The internal knowledge base: common questions and troubleshooting

Once the new hire has a basic grasp of the product, train them on answering common customer questions and troubleshooting the issues customers often hit. Keep that material in an internal knowledge base, organized in a folder or as a step-by-step reading list, so they can learn the essentials before they handle customer enquiries. Include these guides:

• Common questions from customers and the suggested responses. A flowchart of questions to ask can also help them manage each call.
• Processes and software they should use to troubleshoot. For instance, how to ask permission to log in as the client so they can see what happened in the account, or software like FullStory where they can watch recordings of what the customer did on the website or app.
• How to file bug reports and feature requests. Train front-line staff to pass real customer feedback to the product team, or you lose product signals. See our Bug Report Template for reference.

Check out our Ultimate Guide on How to Structure Internal Knowledge Base for more examples of what to include in your support team’s internal wiki.

Teach tone, empathy and limits

Reps are often the first, and sometimes the only, people at your company a customer speaks to, and the first to hear about a problem. Spell out the tone and speaking style you want, how you want them to show empathy, and how to handle complaints and frustrated customers.

We recommend giving reps a written limit instead of leaving compensation to their discretion. For each kind of situation, say what a rep can offer without asking, such as a refund up to a set amount or a month of credit, and who approves anything above it. Open-ended discretion pushes careful reps to offer nothing and generous ones to offer too much, and a limit makes the refresher scenarios below easy to write.

Finally, say when soft-touch upselling is appropriate. Solving the customer’s actual problem always comes before the upsell, never after.

Shadow a mentor first

Before a new hire handles real customers, have them shadow their mentor for a few days. In many help desk systems, employees can see how colleagues respond to tickets, so the new hire can read real replies. On phone calls, have them listen to how the mentor handles questions and comments, and encourage them to ask whenever they don’t know how to handle something. Demonstrate the troubleshooting procedures for basic issues and how to pull the data needed to handle requests, so they are ready for their first calls.

We recommend adding ticket replay. Give the new hire about ten resolved tickets with personal details removed, including one that went badly. Have them write their replies without seeing the originals, then compare with what was actually sent and discuss the differences. It trains judgment on real wording and edge cases that a knowledge base cannot cover, and it needs no live customer.

Reply to real tickets under review

When the new hire is ready for real customers, consider the draft feature that many help desk systems have. It lets the mentor look over replies before they are sent, revise them and give feedback. Private notes, which many help desks include, are a good place for that feedback.

Reviewing everything for the first month turns the mentor into the bottleneck, and an all-or-nothing trial, fully supervised and then fully solo, leaves nothing in between. Split by ticket type, not by date. Let the new hire answer the five or six most common request types solo from day one, since those are usually well documented and low risk, and keep mentor review for refunds, escalations and anything outside the knowledge base. The review load then shrinks to the tickets that need a second pair of eyes, and you can measure readiness by ticket-type coverage instead of guessing from a calendar date.

Keep training after the first month

Your product keeps changing, and so does your brand, so offer refresher training. Hold group training for all your reps every 6-12 months, or as needed, to cover features you are considering, bugs that are now fixed and other updates, and to refresh the tone and style you want, using real scenarios from recent months. For example:

• A rep offered compensation when they should not have. Describe a similar situation and the action you want reps to take next time.
• A rep did not offer compensation when it would have made a real difference to the customer’s satisfaction. Describe that scenario and what reps should do from now on.
• Other examples from your reps’ actual conversations with customers, showing what they do well and where you see room to improve.

Also host training whenever there is a major product launch. At Kipwise, customer support training is part of our Product Launch Checklist, so the support team is ready for enquiries after a major feature launch. Between sessions, a shared knowledge base for all reps lets them keep learning and raise the questions and scenarios you may want to cover in training.

For more tips on onboarding a team member, see our Onboarding Checklist Template. If your support rep works remotely, read our blog post Remote Onboarding Best Practices.