In today’s post, Sam Taylor, Customer Service Trainer, shares the many tasks he tackles in his role, how he makes an impact on GetYourGuide and our customers, and his advice for those looking to join the team.

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Can you please give us a brief summary of what your job entails and why you enjoy it?

I work as a Customer Service Trainer on our Customer Service team. As a Training team,  we’re most known for training new Customer Service Representatives working both internally and for our outsourcing partners across the world, but we do much more than that.

We also develop and deliver onboarding to other departments like our B2B and Supply Operations teams, and we work closely with the Team Leads, the Customer Service Excellence Team, and the 2nd Level Support Team to identify knowledge gaps in our current Customer Service team and develop new, or improve existing, procedures. Of course, once we’ve developed a procedure, we then need to create a workshop or training to teach it to others.

The Training team also keeps the internal Customer Service Knowledge Database up-to-date.

Not all changes to procedures or articles require training; this is where our Training Newsletter comes in handy. Any minor changes to procedures are written up and sent out to the department every Wednesday at noon sharp.  Through this newsletter, the entire department can keep an eye on all we’ve been up to.

Within our team, we dive into data analytics to analyze the effectiveness of our trainings on both the trainees and our customers, to improve the enjoyment and learning retention of future trainings, and to improve our own skills as trainers.

We’re also involved in a whole host of other projects, for example:

• Creating our train-the-trainer program to build up internal talent, train outsourcing trainers, and onboard new trainers
• Investigating learning management systems to incorporate e-learning and blended learning into our trainings
• Researching new training tools and methodologies to improve our existing and future trainings

To name a few.  

My job is to constantly learn about the department, our company, and our customers, turn these learnings into effective procedures, and find creative and enjoyable ways to transfer this knowledge to others. The freedom we get to do so is limited only by our own creativity, which gives me a great sense of ownership and satisfaction from the entire process.

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How would you describe your team’s working style and dynamic?

Dynamic, varied, and complementary. We all have different backgrounds, which complement each other nicely. Our varied backgrounds mean we each approach topics from different angles, bringing different opinions to the challenges we face. Couple this with our love for open and direct feedback and you have a dynamic team that tackles challenges in unique and innovative ways. Add in our fantastic sense of humor on top of that, and you can get a small sense of how special our team is.

What impact does your team's work have on GetYourGuide as a business and its rapid growth? How do you see this impact?

As mentioned, one way we impact GetYourGuide as a business is by helping create the customer service procedures, such as our cancellation or complaints procedure, which directly affect the customers’ experience.

On top of this, we impact 2 main customer metrics: customer satisfaction (CSAT), how happy customers are with the service provided, and the service level agreement (SLA), the promise we make to our customers to respond within a set time frame.

The better the procedures we create and the better we train our team to internalize these procedures, the more seamless the experience is for the customer. As for GetYourGuide’s rapid growth, we train all of our Representatives on how to handle a huge volume of customers.

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What is the most challenging and most rewarding aspect of your role?

Let me paint a picture: it’s 8:45am and you have a class of 20 people waiting patiently for their day of training to begin. You open your computer to prepare the day’s material and… the building’s WiFi isn’t working. You have 15 minutes to replan an 8-hour training without internet. How do you react?

Preparing and adapting for the unknown is one of the biggest challenges we face, not just in a training room, but also in an industry that is constantly changing. When I joined, we were teaching face-to-face classes in one office. Now we travel and train in several offices around the world. This, of course, brings with it a new set of exciting challenges, and the challenges themselves are a huge reward.  

The biggest reward, however, is the people we train. We spend our days interacting with so many brilliant people. They teach us as much about ourselves and our profession as we teach them about our company and procedures. Seeing people I’ve trained grow and develop within the company is also a rewarding experience.

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What advice would you have for someone who would like to work as a Trainer at GetYourGuide?

If you’re in the office, come and chat with us! We can answer your questions, arrange a shadowing session, and make sure you get to know the job first-hand. More generally, take more risks and do things that make you feel uncomfortable to prepare you for those quick, on-the-spot decisions. Speaking up at meetings, doing a Friday Update, or joining a local Toastmasters club can all help hone your public speaking skills.

Finally, never stop learning. As trainers, our job is to learn new material quickly and facilitate the transmission of this knowledge to others, whatever the topic. Often, as experts in our own fields, we run the risk of pitching a topic at too high a level. By becoming a beginner again and having to learn something from scratch, you will start to recognize and combat this habit in your own trainings.

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What is your favorite thing about working at GetYourGuide?

The company culture, the atmosphere, and the people. As a company, it’s great to see how dynamic and diverse we are. I’ve never worked in an environment like this, and I’m very happy to be part of it.

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Interesting in joining our Customer Service team? Check out our open positions.  

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