Responding to a Customer Request

Overview

This branching scenario was created to help learners respond to a customer’s request for help on buying a product. I imagined that retail sales associates may have difficulty handling face-to-face requests especially after having gone through a complete shutdown during the pandemic.

Problem

Poor customer service interactions can cause companies to lose potential buyers. Implementing a variety of strategies for delivering great customer service can help ameliorate this problem. Providing great customer service requires people to have great interpersonal skills as well as being mindful of people’s cultural differences.

Solution

This scenario-based training provides a few strategies on how to deal with customers effectively. For instance, asking relevant questions can help sales associates gather more information about the customer’s needs. Treating the customer with respect and being helpful can potentially lead to a sale. Providing great customer service takes practice. Learners who do not pass this module are encouraged to go back and redo the scenario.

Development Process

I researched the different skills needed to provide great customer service knowing that I could not rely solely on my experience in sales. I spoke to a business consultant who stressed the importance of establishing relationships with customers and understanding what their pain points were. This helped me to develop a learning objective for this scenario-based training.

 

Storyboard

I created a storyboard to map out the scenes and to write down the learning plan for the branching scenario. In addition, I wanted to mimic the retail sales environment to help learners connect to the content, so I chose an image of a store found in the Canva website.

 

Branching Scenes

The different scenes within the scenario (created on Articulate Storyline) allow learners to choose from a variety of responses to demonstrate their customer service skills. Visual cues such as the customer’s negative and positive facial expressions provide feedback to users based on their selected responses. They can see how a customer might react to each of their responses. Written feedback is provided at the end of the scenario to give learners an idea of how they performed.