While I was working in the contact center industry, I have always been amazed by the fact that customer service or sales representatives are trained on the tools, the products, and some soft skills (if they are lucky!), but never on one of the most powerful tools in customer service: the voice!
There is a quote that says, “It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It.”. The way an agent or a sales representative talks to a customer or a prospect over the phone, the words they use, and the way they say those words all have an impact on the interlocutors’ perception of the service they have delivered or the emotional connection they have established.
It’s in that context that I designed a training on voice for sales representatives.
To make it more impactful, I decided to deliver one topic each week to the sales team. They would then practice to improve this particular point the following week, and we would debrief each week to assess their progress. The training was delivered over a period of 10 weeks and had a real impact on the confidence of the sales agents.
I then developed a specific version for the newly recruited customer representatives that I included in the one-week onboarding training. The presentation included practical exercises, YouTube videos, role plays, and self-study exercises. This voice training is now an integral part of the onboarding training.
Generally, training in the workplace focuses on teaching hard skills—the skills required to perform tasks. Soft skills are often overlooked during training and are more difficult to teach because they depend a lot on the personalities of the trainees and not on their qualifications or technical skills. The challenge was to create very engaging content to inspire all types of trainees that they have to do more than just deliver content or perform a task; they have to convey an intention.
The whole training included a section on how to prepare the voice (breathing and relaxation exercises) and a section on how to establish rapport with the client (mirroring technique, active listening, paraphrasing, funnel technique, and positive wording).
I also created practical sheets to hand out after each session so they could practice throughout the week.
Here is the section on how to improve the voice:
Improve your Voice, Improve your Service!
Here are examples of two practical sheets:
Practical sheet 2
Practical sheet 3
Contact me if you want to see more!
Cath Assist Service 