How to Create an Effective Customer Service Onboarding Plan (Template & Practical Tips Included)

A customer service department can significantly impact how your customers view your company. 

When your clients come across a rude representative, they'll have a negative impression that could result in a higher customer churn. But if they talk to someone approachable and knowledgeable, they'll most likely keep coming back to the organization.

A robust and remarkable customer service department is a must-have for your organization. But great people come and go all the time. 

So, you'll only need to invest in new hires with a comprehensive customer service onboarding plan.

Learn the importance of onboarding your new customer service representatives and how to train them effectively through the 30-60-90 day plan below.

✈️ Why is onboarding important for customer service agents?

Onboarding new employees is a vital and effective process every hire needs to undergo: 

• It allows employees to see and clarify what's in store for them in the company. 
• It also familiarizes them with the policies and tools they'll use and 
• It brings new hires closer to the workplace culture and people.

When onboarding your customer service reps, you need to ensure the onboarding experience is specialized to fit the responsibilities and qualities of the company's support team.

Your new hires can influence:

• customer experiences; 
• customer satisfaction;  
• the company's reputation. 

That's why they must be approachable and knowledgeable about the brand's products, services, and policies. Otherwise, they can leave a massive dent in your relationship with clients.

Just like any traditional onboarding process, the onboarding experience for customer support team members revolves around role clarity and building skills to help clients solve their problems or answer their inquiries.

📝 Customer service onboarding 30-60-90 day plan template

The best way to increase employee engagement is to have strategies and initiatives to keep new hires happy. In this way, you can reduce staff turnover and retain any valuable assets in the workplace for the following years. It can also improve customer retention and create loyal customers.

Of course, the most practical way to begin is by enhancing their onboarding experience. Some companies use a comprehensive strategy known as the 30-60-90 day plan to achieve this goal.

A 30-60-90 day plan outlines what a new customer service agent can expect in their first 90 days in the company. It includes a set of specific, measurable, and achievable goals and basic metrics that guide recruits. In particular, you can have the following parts on your template:

• expectations;
• learning goals;
• learning actions;
• performance goals;
• performance actions;
• personal goals;
• key metrics.

This 30-60-90 plan also contains aspects of the work culture, role expectations, responsibilities, and deliverables. It also has three different phases once you have everything set up:

• learning phase;
• collaborating phase;
• leading phase.

Before Day 1 - Preparation phase

The first 90 days of a new hire can be intimidating, especially since they'll be adjusting to their workplace. They can get overwhelmed with the information and tools they'll be using. 

Familiarizing the company policies and operations can also be heavy.

These become a lot harder when you're in the customer service department. Since customer interaction and happy customers are your top priorities, you must know all the product features and services offered by your company.

☑️ So before you begin drafting your 30-60-90 day plan, ensure you have an overview of all the things your new employees would need. 

☑️ That means preparing all the necessary onboarding documentation, contracts, and paperwork. It's also important to order new hardware and set up their accounts and access rights beforehand (e.g. access to your chosen customer support tool).

☑️ Notifying the customer service department about their new member can reduce awkwardness and disconnect in the workplace. 

☑️ Updating company policies, training processes, compliance documentation, and role-specific content can ensure everything's in place.

Day 1 to 30 - Learning Phase

In the first 30 days, make sure to identify their 30-day targets. They must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). They're also knowledge-based and heavily focused on learning about the company product, policies, values, operations, and responsibilities.

Since the first 30 days are about learning, asking for feedback and guidance can help new customer service reps. 

Providing them with daily tips or an onboarding buddy can also ease possible worries and anxiety among them.

Tip: Consider sharing daily learning nudges on your corporate communication platform even after your new reps complete their formal training courses.

"Micro-learning makes digesting knowledge quicker and easier, giving the learner the confidence to utilize the learning in their daily tasks." Emma Carter, Customer Success Manager at ProsperoHub. 

Learning goals & actions

☑️ Become familiar with the company policies and corporate values.

☑️ Read and study the company's policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs). Focus on: support workflow and policy knowledge.

☑️ Complete compliance and security training.

☑️ Complete new hire product training. Your new customer representative needs to understands the following:

• how to use the product;
• the vision for the product;
• the product's unique selling points;
• compatibility with other products and services;
• customization potential;
• upcoming updates;
• the current customer base;
• what current customers appreciate most about the product;
• customer personas: the angry customer, the non-techy customer, the patient customer, etc. 
• recurring customer pain points.

☑️ Learn how to use the tools and software in the company (e.g. customer data platform, team knowledge base, learning management system (LMS), customer service software solutions).

☑️ Learn how to escalate a customer complaint.

☑️ Learn how to collect customer feedback and act on it.

☑️ Learn customer interaction best practices.

☑️ Participate in role-playing exercises. Focus on recurring customer issues and complaints. 

Performance goals & actions

☑️ Start building manager rapport.  

☑️ Attend a client meeting and take notes on the client interaction. 

☑️ Research about the client before the meeting.

☑️ Pass quizzes on your product, workflow knowledge, and on the key features of your enterprise help desk software.

Personal goals & actions

☑️ Get to know colleagues in the customer service department.

☑️ Invite one of your teammates to your lunch spot or a coffee date.

☑️ Bi-weekly buddy meet-ups. Focus on cultural integration and building deeper social connections. 

➡️ Don't know how to develop the skills of your new hires? Learn the best practices for training new employees in our guide.

Day 31 to 60 - Collaborating phase

During the next 30 days, new employees must be able to meet and collaborate with other remote teams or departments. In this way, they can experience what it's like to work with people in their workplace. It's also one way of allowing them to execute the things they've learned during their first 30 days.

☑️ Here, you can have role-training sessions. 

☑️ You can expand their training further to help them get used to their new job. 

☑️ Checking in with their onboarding buddy can help social integration.

A typical 60-day plan will look similar to this:

Learning goals & actions

☑️ Understand the onboarding documentation and processes in the sales team or department.

☑️ Meet with the heads of the other department.

☑️ Job shadow a senior customer support rep. Focus on sharing techniques for handling customer complaints. Review together a set of live tickets. 

Performance goals & actions

☑️ Resolve at least one easy client problem.

☑️ Respond to common questions from customers.

Personal goals & actions

☑️ Have a positive work relationship with your immediate supervisor.

☑️ Participate in weekly one-on-one meetings with your immediate supervisor.

Day 61 to 90 - Leading phase 

Finally, in their last 30 days, they should already be aware of the company's processes. That means they can work independently from their supervisors and managers. 

In fact, some of these new employees (of senior levels) can already lead a meeting or a team on their own.

It's also nice to collect new employee feedback and to check in with their onboarding buddy to adjust your strategies and 30-60-90 day plan accordingly.

Learning goals & actions

☑️ Lead a successful customer service team meeting.

☑️ Prepare for the team meeting beforehand.

Performance goals & actions

☑️ Identify effective responses to customer service questions. 

☑️ If noticing any gaps in role knowledge documentation, take the initiative and draft it. Share insights with the team.

☑️ Solve multiple easy client issues and at least one medium-difficulty client complaint. 

☑️ Customer satisfaction check with the manager.

☑️ (For senior employees) Lead a team meeting. 

Personal goals & actions

☑️ Fill in the first self-evaluation, reflecting on onboarding goals and performance.

☑️ Start collaborating on the first employee development plan.

➡️ If you need other templates, we have you covered. Feel free to check out our onboarding templates for a more efficient and better onboarding experience.

👀 What does an effective customer service onboarding process look like?

An effective customer service onboarding process briefs new agents with the best qualities, skills, and values they must embody in front of potential clients. It also dives into the ins and outs of the workplace culture, operations, and policies.

If you carry out the four phases of onboarding effectively, here are some of the qualities that new customer support team members will have:

• improved technical skills;
• better communication skills;
• enhanced product or service knowledge;
• increased company knowledge.

Improved technical skills

Customer service agents need to acquire the right technical skills for their roles.

They need to learn how to use the existing tools and software that the company has to respond to questions from their customers (e.g. help desk software). 

Better communication skills

It's safe to assume that customers will always have questions and clarifications. 

Although there's a tendency to get frustrated, customer service agents should always stay calm and look approachable.

They must exercise active listening and reply on available placements (or alternatively via your chosen call center software for customer service) while upholding the company's core values.

Enhanced product or service knowledge

A good and efficient onboarding will allow new and experienced agents to see and ask questions about what the company offers. They'll be more knowledgeable about the materials used for their products or the prices and discounts of their services.

Increased company knowledge

Other than understanding the company's products or services, customer service agents must also know the organization's operations and policies. They must know the tools to use and the people they need to contact if they cannot resolve an issue on their own.

➡️ Don't forget about engaging your new hires. We share 11 ways to engage new employees starting from day one.

⚙️ Why do you need to automate your customer service onboarding process?

There are many benefits associated when you onboard employees correctly. You'll have free advertisement through word-of-mouth. And getting it right can also save you from all the stress that may come with it.

Luckily, an effective way to make the most out of it is to automate your entire customer service onboarding process. 

Check out how popular brands such as Alasco and Storyblok optimized their resources and operations with Zavvy's help.

Here are some of the top reasons why you should automate your employee onboarding process.

Save time

You can save time once you've transitioned from the traditional onboarding process to an automated hiring process. You won't have to schedule emails or reminders to everyone involved manually. Instead, you can accomplish everything with just a few clicks using a centralized platform.

Boost productivity

If you automate employee onboarding, you won't only save time from the entire process. You can also accomplish more things on your plate. You'll have more time to be productive and do other tasks that are also urgent.

Create better experiences

A structured and engaging employee onboarding process creates a better and more wonderful experience for employees. They'll be more knowledgeable and welcome in the workplace. But this will also benefit customers who may have questions and clarifications regarding the company's products and services.

Smooth preboarding

You can take it further by scheduling a preboarding with new customer service agents if you want to keep them engaged. It prepares them for their first day and drives excitement for being part of the company. It can involve sending out welcome packages, welcome messages, open forums, or simply showing them their schedule, starting date, and location.

➡️ Discover how to organize an effective preboarding with your new employees using our template.

➡️ Set up your customer service new hires for success with Zavvy

Successful onboarding is a great way to maintain employee engagement and enablement right from the start. And this becomes so much easier with the help of employee onboarding software.

Zavvy is a proven and tested onboarding software that includes features for onboarding, training, and developing employees. Regardless of your team's setup, Zavvy is embedded with multiple templates and features to make your life easier.

We have already partnered with many fantastic growing businesses to unlock their people potential. Here are some key wins they've achieved with the help of our suite of tools:

• Remote-first company Awesomic now achieves an average of 95.5% completion rates due to our designer onboarding program.
• Storyblok has saved 15 hours weekly during orientation, plus 1.5-2 hours during preboarding.
• Alasco has slashed time-to-productivity rates by 50% thanks to a fun, structured onboarding plan.
• Taktile's HR team saves 8 hours every week by automating feedback and performance review cycles for their new hires.

Sign up today and get a free demo of its onboarding and preboarding software.