SARANAC LAKE — The Saranac Lake Area Chamber of Commerce is collaborating with North Country Community College to offer customer service training for area businesses.

With help from a Community College Workforce Development grant, the chamber is providing the low-cost training opportunities to employers with all kinds of position types. Employers can now schedule training sessions through the chamber.

“Whether you are a front-of-house employee in a restaurant or working the phones at a call center, or you are an electrician, this training will provide a foundational experience employees can utilize to help inform their decision making and enable them to provide increased value to the customer,” chamber Executive Director Patrick Murphy said in a statement.

The course will provide basic knowledge of the customer service experience and offer customer service tools to prepare workers for a variety of workplace situations. The course objectives aim to improve an employee’s customer service skill set and ability to respond to customer needs. As a result, the desired outcomes of the training are improved customer satisfaction and repeat transactions.

“We are thrilled to be able to partner with the chamber here in Saranac Lake to provide this important training,” NCCC Business Department Chair David St. Germain said in a statement. “We want to be a resource for our community, and working with the chamber to connect with local businesses is one way we can accomplish that goal. We hope that this training can help local businesses’ bottom line.”

The chamber recognizes how important the customer experience is in a region reliant on tourism for its economy and is prepared to provide additional training to area employees regarding important tourism and recreation information.

“Improving customer service experience in an area that relies on tourism means we need to see our whole destination, and its various businesses, as integrated,” said Murphy. “For visitors, the customer experience is tied to each employee and business that visitor interacts with.

“We hope that by providing a tourism and recreation component to the training, our employees can provide not only exceptional customer service within the context of a local business but within the context of the Saranac Lake area as a world-class destination.”

For more information, or to schedule a customer service training session, businesses and organizations can contact the chamber by emailing director@slareachamber.org or calling 518-891-1991.

The cost of the training is $10 per employee. Employers are required to provide their own match by way of paying the employees for their time during the training.