Our promise at Best Reception has always been to provide outstanding customer service on every call. We believe that employing great staff is the first step in providing the best customer experience for our clients and their callers. To achieve this, from their first day, all of our receptionists are individually trained on every client before they start taking calls for a client.
Working with a telephone answering service involves a lot of trust from our clients. Our clients trust us with being the voice of their business and often the first experience a prospective client will have. To understand the process of training within Best Reception, we sat down with one of our trainers, Beth, to discuss how she became a Best Reception trainer and what the job involves.
Tell us about your own training experience at Best Reception?
My training here has been great! It was very difficult joining a new company during the pandemic, especially when most of the staff members were still working from home. We were able to do face to face training (whilst upholding safety protocols, using perspex screens) as well as remote training. Not only are you fully supported with training when you start, you are also set aside training slots throughout the week to make sure you are always progressing. Even when you take all of our clients calls, there are always more things to learn, such as new diary software, and new clients joining. I’ve found the training here has a good structure, it is organised and monitored well, and there is a central diary that you can access to check when you next have a training session. This allows trainees to monitor their progress and trainers to plan for training sessions ahead of time.
There are lots of different career pathways to choose from at Best Reception, what made you decide to take the training pathway?
I love helping people, and watching them learn and develop, not only in their career but as individuals as well, so I knew that training was a role that I would thoroughly enjoy. Having had such amazing trainers myself, I wanted to join their team, by following in their footsteps, and using their fun techniques and quirks to help others grow and progress, whilst also contributing to the team by bringing my own experience and skills to the role.
What steps did you have to take to become a trainer?
Could you talk me through briefly what an average training session would look like?
Training sessions usually have a three part break down: our weekly quiz, main training, and goals before next training sessions. We have a weekly quiz that is based on checking in about any updates our clients have made to their processes or any internal information we should know. Then, for our main training, we will check which client the trainee is working on, and show them any software the client uses, and train them on what the client has asked us to do. We take our time with training, we are thorough; explaining diaries, appointment types and cancellation policies etc. We will then finish the session with a few minutes to spare for any questions the trainee may have, and to run through their personal goals before the next session.
Our company ethos means that we strive to give our clients, and their callers, exceptional customer service, on every call.
How do you overcome any issues within training? For example, if someone is
struggling to understand?
As with any professional services, learning and development can have its challenges. Sometimes we have to try and find alternative ways to train someone or to explain things depending on the teaching style that our receptionists respond to best. I will always double check that a trainee understands what I am trying to explain to them, and will follow this by asking them to show me how they would handle a call if a certain question is asked or needing to book/handle something. I like to check as much as I can with my managers and other trainers to see if there are things that I can improve on, and how the trainees feel towards myself as a trainer and my training style.
What part of training would clients be most interested to know?
Our company ethos means that we strive to give our clients, and their callers, exceptional customer service, on every call, so we always take the time to highlight and explain any quirks that the client would want us to implement. For example, for our booking clients, we might have instructions to squeeze a new patient appointment into 45 minutes, rather than a full one hour appointment, to ensure we are securing a booking for a client (and potentially future follow up appointments), and helping the patient who is in pain too. This ensures our clients are getting excellent value for money for every call, as usually one booking covers the cost of our service for a month, and their patients will experience outstanding experience on every call, which is what Best Reception is all about.
