Shifting customer service training online.
The ultimate guide to creating practical and dynamic online customer service training.
Training is vital for organizations focused on customer satisfaction. However, many modern and growing companies face the decision of whether to transition their customer service training online. This guide will explore the benefits of online training for your organization, the challenges involved, the topics to be covered, and whether to handle the training in-house or outsource it. We will also explore various considerations for planning an effective online customer service training program that gets results!

By Kevin James Saunders, Global Learning & Support
Last Updated On February 5, 2025
This article was written by a human.
If you haven’t admitted it yet, your customer relationship strategy should include customer service training. For decades, companies around the globe have invested in training their team members, as it contributes to long-term business growth.
From routine trips to the grocery store to significant purchases like a car, we all play the role of a consumer. Customer service is an integral part of our daily lives, often unnoticed. How much do you value a great customer experience? More than you might realize! You can likely recall both a very positive experience and a negative one. However, it’s not just service extremes that can create a lasting impression; even a mediocre experience can leave a customer unsatisfied.
Keeping your service top of mind for your team is essential. According to a PWC report, 73 percent of customers say an outstanding experience influences their buying decisions. It is clear why service training is essential for staff onboarding and continued development.
Given the crucial role of service, the question arises: Should you switch to a customer service training online platform? Will it work with your team dynamics? Will it deliver the desired results? How does it compare to traditional in-person training?
In this guide, we will explain:
What is online customer service training, and how can it significantly enhance customer loyalty, reputation management, and sales growth?
What is Customer Service Training?
Customer service training involves formally educating team members in essential skills such as effective communication, professionalism, product knowledge, conflict resolution, and interpersonal behavior. The training objective is to help prepare employees to engage customers using the organization’s business standards consistently.
Customer Service Training is also known as:
- Accessibility Training
- Client Service Training
- Communication Skills Training
- Customer Care Training
- Customer Experience Training
- Customer Support Training
- Guest Service Training
- Hospitality Training
- Receptionist Training
- Service Basics Training
- Service Excellence Training

What is Online Training?
Customer service training online is a training that takes place using the Internet. This training can be delivered in several formats: it may involve live sessions with a trainer (such as via Zoom), pre-recorded videos (like those found on YouTube or MasterClass), or personalized one-on-one coaching sessions with a trainer. Many programs use a hybrid approach, combining various delivery methods.
Online training options typically include video lectures, webinars, polls, quizzes, and other interactive elements.
The Pros and Cons Of Customer Service Training Online
Like all delivery methods, there are pros and cons to delivering customer service training online vs in-person delivery.
Advantages
Faster Preparation
Online customer service courses are generally shorter than in-person sessions and can be customized quickly.
Convenient Onboarding
Eliminate the worry about staff turnover and allow new employees to access materials at their convenience!
Drip Training
Address the learning curve by turning your training into a series and avoiding information overload.
Cost Effectiveness
Avoid travel expenses.
Scalability
Accommodate groups of any size and location, including various time zones.
Recording
Team members can assess your training content 24/7.
Reporting
Monitor participation and engagement. Review which learners were paying attention, participating, and how they are answering with a training engagement report.
Disadvantages
Attention Span
Customer service training online is generally shorter since maintaining attention is more complex than in-person. Depending on how many meetings learners have attended, training can be "just another meeting" and not be viewed as necessary.
Limited Activities
There are a limited number of activities that you can do online versus in-person.
Personal Connection
It's harder to build relationships with a screen!
Group Management
In large group settings, it is easier for individuals to tune out and get "lost" in the crowd.
Tech Issues
Not all team members will be tech-savvy and may experience login or access difficulties.
Minimum Development Considerations
Development
Based on an experience trend report from popular CRM Zendesk. Now is a great time to give your customers what they want, including a positive and memorable engagement with your team members.
Whether talking about customer service training online or in person, it’s fundamental to consider the minimum requirements of developing a successful program for your team.
Requirement
|
How
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Benefit
|
---|---|---|
Establishing Industry Benchmarks
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Start by examining your overall industry to understand the standards and baseline level of service you need to provide.
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Your business can not succeed or surpass the industry if it doesn't deliver the norms.
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Delivering Customer Expectations
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Examine your customer's expectations through reviews, surveys, and their requests. You can also start tracking feedback from team member conversations.
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You can't rely on the industry norms alone. Do your specific customers want more? You can attract more customers by filling existing service gaps.
|
Reputation Management
|
Audit your online reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, Better Business Bureau, and TripAdvisor. Search for patterns that you can address.
|
Understanding your service issues will allow you to address common concerns. Managing your reputation through training will promote positive online feedback.
|
Competitive Edge
|
Analyze your competitors to understand their strategies and identify ways to make a greater impact on customers.
|
Stand-out service works when it outshines the competition. Finding ways to do things differently from the competition will give you an edge.
|
Consistency & Efficiency
|
Creating guides, standard operating procedures, and rubrics formalizes operations to ensure a consistent and reliable experience.
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Make buying decisions effortless by staying top of mind. Deliver a consistent and easy experience.
|
Customer Loyalty
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Create a program that attracts your customer base. Focus on acknowledgment, personalization, and benefit perks to encourage customer loyalty.
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Retaining loyal customers is less expensive than attracting new ones. Loyal customers bring predictable revenue patterns.
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Increase Revenue
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Customer service training online can incorporate a sales component. This can include upselling, promoting repeat business, qualifying inquiries, overcoming objections, and providing support to your salesforce.
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Additional business revenue.
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Employee Satisfaction & Development
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Provide engaging onboarding training and ongoing development courses. Equip your team with the necessary skills for the job and the opportunity to advance.
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According to the earlier Zendesk report, only one in five agents is very satisfied with their training. Consistent, up-to-date training is key to reducing turnover, clarifying standards, and maintaining a uniform customer experience.
|
Establishing Industry Benchmark
How: Start by examining your overall industry to understand the standards and baseline level of service you need to provide.
Benefit: Your business can not succeed or surpass the industry if it doesn’t deliver the norms.
Managing Customer Expectations
How: Examine your customer’s expectations through reviews, surveys, and their requests. You can also start tracking feedback from team member conversations.
Benefit: You can’t rely on the industry norms alone. Do your specific customers want more? You can attract more customers by filling existing service gaps.
Reputation Management
How: Audit your online reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, Better Business Bureau, and TripAdvisor. Search for patterns that you can address.
Benefit: Understanding your service issues will allow you to address common concerns. Managing your reputation through training will promote positive online feedback.
Competitive Edge
How: Analyze your competitors to understand their strategies and identify ways to make a greater impact on customers.
Benefit: Stand-out service works when it outshines the competition. Finding ways to do things differently from the competition will give you an edge.
Consistency & Efficiency
How: Creating guides, standard operating procedures, and rubrics formalizes operations to ensure a consistent and reliable experience.
Benefit: Make buying decisions effortless and stay top of mind by delivering a consistent and easy experience.
Encouraging Customer Loyalty
How: Create a program that attracts your customer base. Focus on acknowledgment, personalization, and benefit perks to encourage customer loyalty.
Benefit: Retaining loyal customers is less expensive than attracting new ones. Loyal customers bring predictable revenue patterns.
Increase Revenue
How: Customer service training online can incorporate a sales component. This can include upselling, promoting repeat business, qualifying inquiries, overcoming objections, and providing support to your salesforce.
Benefit: Additional business revenue.
Employee Satisfaction
How: Provide engaging onboarding training and ongoing development courses. Equip your team with the necessary skills for the job and the opportunity to advance.
Benefit. According to the earlier Zendesk report, only one in five agents is very satisfied with their training. Consistent, up-to-date training is key to reducing turnover, clarifying standards, and maintaining a uniform customer experience.
Do you need training questionnaire
Does your organization need customer service training?
You might be thinking, “Do I even need training?” The answer is always yes, in our opinion! Training should be a part of continued employee development unless you fully automate your business with A.I!
We have developed a simple questionnaire to help you determine if you need training. If you answer yes to any of the questions below, we recommend incorporating training into your employee development strategy.
What are the 5 most important skills in customer service?
Top 5 Service Concepts
While there are many foundational customer service skills to develop within your team, if we were to select five key areas to focus on, we recommend the following themes that are more likely to resonate with your customers.
The Fine Art Of Listening
The little details matter, so actively listening to customer feedback and clues is key to success.
Adapting To Needs
People are not the same. Adapting to customers' needs, demands, and demeanor is key to crafting a memorable experience.
Connecting & Personalization
No customer wants to be a number. Add some personality to your service. Developing relationships leads to loyalty and repeat business.
Exceeding Expectations
Add some "shock" to your service. Find ways to stand out with your customers and exceed their expectations.
Consistency
Craft a dependable, consistently excellent experience that your customers can rely on from all team members at any time.
Skills & Topics
What Are Some Skills A Customer Service Training online should cover?
Once you have completed an analysis of your current needs, it is time to think about the topics you would like to cover in your training.
Less Is More! Don’t make the mistake that many organizations tend to make. You might have a big wish list, but less is more when it comes to training. Select one or two areas to work on and have a plan to follow up. Remember that great training should present:

- WHAT: An introduction to the standard.
- WHY: Why it is important, including research or statistics.
- HOW: An explanation of how it should be executed.
- WHEN: A discussion of scenarios and real-life examples, including exceptions.
- TECHNIQUE: An opportunity to practice, and
- RESISTANCE: A way to respond to questions and resistance.
If you overwhelm your learners, they may forget everything, which does not yield a great investment return for your customer training training online program. Use the learning curve to calculate the time needed to incorporate a new idea.
We recommend starting with the most essential issues. Sometimes, that can be the basics for new hires or handling complaints, for example. Once you feel your training is a part of daily habits, you can then add further subjects.
Your customer service training online should cover some of the most popular courses since they review the foundations of excellent service.
Active Listening
Do you truly listen? Learning to listen with intent is an excellent tool in and out of the workplace. Train your team members to craft better experiences, handle conflict, and connect just by paying attention.
Adaptability & Creativity
Give your teams the tools and freedom to think outside the box and adapt service to suit different audiences and situations.
Autonomy
Ensure your team members can work independently to execute your vision.
Conflict Resolution
Let's face it! Complaints are inevitable. Your customer service training online should define the steps and nourish confidence when handling any challenging situations.
Cultural Awareness & Sensitivity
The world is diverse, and so are your customers. Teach your team how to be respectful and welcoming to everyone.
Effective Communication
Team members should understand how they express themselves, be precise, professional, avoiding ambiguity and unnecessary jargon.
Empathy, Kindness & Patience
Dealing with emotions is a powerful component of customer service training online. Provide tools to boost emotional intelligence and act with care.
Managing Expectations
Some customers can arrive at your location with pre-set expectations. That's okay! Ensure your team members can deliver and manage when expectations do not match reality.
Proactiveness
Reactionary service is not going to win any awards! Prepare your team members to act and think proactively.
Product Knowledge & Building Value
Reinforce the idea that knowledge is power and the value of being an expert in your field.
Refinement & Professionalism
Introduce the words and body language that add polish to any experience.
Relationship Building & Connection
Loyalty is built on relationships. Provide tips on how to make genuine, long-lasting relationships.
Sales & Upselling
Provide your team members with the knacks to appropriately market your products and services.
Service-Centric Mindset
It's not just about what you do but how you do it. Discuss the importance of a service mindset and attitude.
Key Program Support Components
What to incorporate in a customer service training online program?
You can record some videos or PowerPoint presentations, upload them to the cloud, and then send them to your team, but that may not be the best strategy if you want to see actual results. You should include some key training features when developing a program with purpose.
Free Preparation Checklist
To make this easier, you can use our free customer service training online checklist to ensure your program is robust enough to make an ongoing impact.
Free Training Preparedness Checklist
The Importance of Continued Management Involvement
Online, especially automated training programs can simplify training, but that doesn’t mean management can be hands-off. To ensure success, all managers must continue to support learning efforts. It’s easier than you feel.
- Show up! For any program to succeed, a manager must show up and understand the program’s ins and outs. At Oculus, we see a lot of managers who set the standards but don’t attend the training. Worst still is the manager who shows up for the first ten minutes and then disappears. What type of message does that send to your learners? Management must get involved if you want your content and new standards to be taken seriously.
- Practice What You Preach. Managers should know any training programs inside out. They should be able to demonstrate to their team members that everyone, including them, is being held to the same standard. If you work with an outside training company, they can only deliver the message. Continually pushing training efforts forward will fall on management.
- Schedule regular meetings with trainers or training providers. This can include train-the-trainer or working with the provider to continue to refine and customize the customer service training online. For example, at Oculus, we recommend our clients schedule a monthly meeting with us to review their requirements.
- Regularly review results from online training reports, audits, and customer feedback and create training goals to work on with team members.
- Schedule one-on-one meetings with the learners to discuss performance challenges and celebrate successes! According to a survey by Quantum, most employees prefer weekly one-on-one meetings.
- A random practice like a role-play, listening to audits, and reviewing comments can be a great way to reinforce a training program.

Benefits of Customizing Your Customer Service Lessons
Before signing up for a pre-made boxed customer service training online, reconsider the benefits of customizing your options. Pre-made, boxed customer service training online programs might work for a quick fix to introduce the basics, but being able to customize your training is important to ensure you target your needs. Here are some things to look for when purchasing an online program:
Research
As we mentioned earlier, the program should include data, but it should also include local, national, and industry standards. Understanding the minimum service standards for your location and incorporating those into your program is essential to being competitive.
Relevance
You should always have the option to eliminate components from pre-made training that don't align with your operational needs. Don't forget culture and community norms. When using pre-designed resources, do they incorporate a cultural element and address your customers' expectations? The goal should be delivering service that your customers welcome, nourishes relationships, and increases revenue. Only include standards that make sense for your business.
- Are all of the elements necessary? Can some be eliminated or changed?
- Do our customers enjoy the concepts? What should be added or removed?
- Will this increase sales, online reviews, etc? Is there a return on the investment from including the service concept?
- Can your current staffing levels handle the new standards?
- Can managers follow up on the program and provide additional coaching?
Drip Training
You should also be able to drip concepts and content over time. We have already established that "less is more" in terms of training. You need a program that allows you to introduce concepts over time slowly.
Competitive Edge
If you can buy a pre-made program, your competitors can also do so. To get an edge on the competition, you must find a way to deliver a service that stands out. Look for a program that can include research from your competitors using tools like audits, surveys, etc. When you know what your competition is doing, you can focus on ways to be different and do better!
Branding
A custom program should have the option to incorporate your branding and any corporate brand standards.
Pivot
Look for the ability to pivot your training when the need arises. Changes will happen in your market. Can your customer service training online quickly adapt? There should be options to update your content quickly to address new market needs and customer concerns.
Train-The-Trainer & Management Support
Search for training options that provide support to managers. This can be management training, coaching, or reporting options.
Once you have completed an analysis of your current needs, it is time to think about the topics you would like to cover in your training.
Less Is More! Don’t make the mistake that many organizations tend to make. You might have a big wish list, but less is more when it comes to training. Select one or two areas to work on and have a plan to follow up. Remember that great training should present:
Outsourcing Your Training Vs. Designing In-House
The benefits of working with a training partner.
You may believe that you cannot afford to outsource your customer service training, but there are hidden internal expenses to consider beyond the initial costs. Partnering with an external training provider can offer several advantages that may lead to long-term savings. Here are some key benefits of collaborating with an external company to develop your training program.
Focus On Customization
Completely Customized
Approval
Experts
Delivery Options
A great program must address all your team members’ learning styles and scheduling needs. An external partner may be better to address those challenges. For example, at Oculus, we offer products that allow for self-paced learning, trainer-led live options, and a mixed service.
- Trainer-Led Webinars: This online customer service training option is scheduled at a set time(s) with a trainer leading the discussion and responding to questions in real-time.
- Recorded Webinars or E-learning: Any webinar can be recorded for future playback. This can be from a live webinar or recorded in a studio without an audience.
- Trainer-Supported Recorded Webinars: We also have trainer-supported options where learners can watch a webinar but ask questions through chat, text message, WhatsApp, or even schedule a video call to review concepts for clarity.
- Logs: An external company may have a department and the technology to manage learner engagement and completion.
- 24-Hour Training Delivery: Do you have a team that works around the clock? Unless you plan on adding a team of people for coverage, an external partner will be able to address scheduling requirements since their sole existence is training.
Post Training Support
Training is not a one-and-done scenario. People need some additional assistance and push to adapt to required changes. Addressing the forgetting and learning curves is crucial. An external training company, like Oculus, can provide you with additional resources to help reinforce training like
Resources
Custom online resources like functional "to-do" or practice checklists and downloads are essential to a great program. Does your internal team have the skill set to design and manage them? An external partner will have these resources built in.
LMS
How will you host your recorded training? Will there be quizzing and evaluations? How about access to downloadable resources? An external partner will probably have a learning management system.
Train-the-Trainer
Your management team may be experts in what they do, but are they training experts? An external partner can support train-the-trainer to ensure your training efforts progress.
Measurable Outcomes
An external partner can help set up measurable follow-up components to ensure your team members are implementing their new service skills. This can include:
- Online Checklists
- Mystery Shopping
- Practice & Evaluation Calls: Coaching calls with a trainer who can professionally evaluate and coach your team on skills.
Technology Integration
Having the best and most up-to-date training technologies showcases your commitment to training. If your technology isn't up to date and neglected, it can affect how seriously your team members look at your message. An external partner can include modern technologies like:
- Online portals with quizzing, games, and certification.
- The ability to drip training over time and keep the momentum going.
- Training and audit reports with coaching tips are available for download.
- Data and performance statistics to reinforce training habits.
- The inclusion of AI components.
- Messaging options like chat, email, text, or WhatsApp
Cost Advantages

Considering the above requirements, partnering with an outside vendor like Oculus is often a more cost-effective option.
According to business.com, virtual training with a live instructor costs can range from $1,500 (for up to six people) to $2,250 for up to 24 people. That may be true for many external companies, but if you partner with the right company, the costs can be more reasonable.
For example, here at Oculus, our webinar training sessions start at $498 plus $14 per learner including all design and customizations.
Summary
Guide Summary
Moving your customer service training online can be a smart move for your business. It provides you with increased training flexibility, cost-effectiveness and the can take advantage of modern technology to meet learner preferences.
SUMMARY
Considerations and actions to move your customer service training online:
- Research industry and customer patterns to determine which standards will resonate.
- Audit your reviews and customer feedback.
- Customizing your program helps you gain a competitive edge and not deliver an experience that already exisit in the market.
- Place a focus active listening, adapting, connecting, exceeding expectations and consistency.
- Ensure there is management buy-in and continued involvement to reinforce learning.
- Weigh the overall cost benefit and consider an external training partner.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I find free online customer service training courses?
Finding a free customer service course may be tricky. You can piece together some tips from various sources or even some details on LinkedIn.com or YouTube, but finding a comprehensive course may be difficult, if not impossible.
Even if you can find a free option, you must ask yourself if it will provide the necessary training. Given that customer service is essential to business success, we recommend that you spend some resources putting together a custom course that addresses your specific needs and goals.
Can retail customer service training be customized in an online format?
Absolutely! Implementing an automated approach to your retail training program is a highly effective strategy. An online training platform can feature tailored content that includes real-life customer scenarios and in-store requirements that your employees will encounter daily.
Transitioning to a digital format not only helps with the onboarding process but also ensures that all team members accesses the same extensive training across all of our locations and brands.
How do I get certified in customer service?
Certification is meaningful only when it aligns with business criteria. Since every business has its own customer service strategy, understanding their goals and standard procedures is important. A general certification may not offer you an advantage if a business has alternative goals in mind.
For example, at Oculus, we certify learners through our mystery shopping auditing program, evaluated webinars, and online testing. Once a learner demonstrates understanding of the service concepts, they become certified service experts.
Our custom training options can cost less than designing your own!
Speak with the expert! Schedule a meeting with one of our training experts.