Customer Service Excellence

Courses: Professional Effectiveness and Productivity
  • Course:Customer Service Excellence
  • Course ID:CUSTSERV Duration:2 days Where: Your Office (7+ Persons)
  • Available as a private, customized course for your group at your offices or ours and in some cases as a WebLive(TM) class.

  • Download Course Description (PDF)

Course Outline

  • Introduction to Course and Customer Service
    • Welcome and introductions
    • Course objectives and road map
    • Discussion: What is customer service
  • Introduction to Customer Service
    • Developing a customer-centric mindset
    • Focusing on serving customers
    • Who are your customers? Internal and external
    • When and where does CS take place?
    • The need for CS: Rewards and penalties
    • Group Exercise: Are you self-focused or customer-focused?
    • The self-focused company vs. customer-focused company
    • Developing a customer focused attitude
  • Communication Skills
    • Non-verbal communication
    • Verbal communication
  • Customer Analysis: Knowing Your Customer
    • Result oriented (assertive) working style
    • Detail oriented (analytical) working style
    • People oriented (amiable) working style
    • Role Play: Determining working styles
  • Calming Upset Customers
    • Reasons why customers become upset
    • Avoiding upsets
    • Understanding the five steps to calming upset customers
    • Calming yourself
  • Telephone Customer Service
    • Skill-set of a customer service professional
    • Mastering the telephone
    • Techniques for answering the telephone
    • Active listening: Questions, statements and objections
    • Guidelines for putting customers on hold and transferring a call
    • Message taking and guidelines for voice mail
    • Guidelines for closing the call
  • Internet Customer Service Skills
    • Discussion: The emerging Internet customer care market
    • Advantages and disadvantages of email
    • Email communication guidelines
    • Online chat
    • Additional customer care channels and Internet customer service skills
  • Time Management Strategies
    • Taking control of your time: Time analysis, task identification, task Analysis and time prioritization
    • Time wasters
  • Stress Management Strategies
    • Discussion: What is stress?
    • What causes stress? (emotional and mental)
    • Stress Symptoms: Identifying stress threshold and stress signals
    • Managing stress (or even eliminating stress)
Course Overview

Course in a Nutshell

Businesses are increasingly recognizing that, to be successful, they must place a high value on both their customers and customer care professionals. In this course, we will learn why customer care should be one of the top priorities in this increasingly competitive global economy. In this dynamic, highly interactive workshop, you will learn how to determine if your company is self-focused or customer-focused. You will learn to recognize which of the three working styles your customer prefers and how to use that understanding to serve that customer better. We will help you deepen your customer communications skills. Understanding why customers become upset and how to calm them will be a central focus of this workshop. Time management and stress reduction strategies will also be discussed. All in all, the workshop will help you develop a customer-centric mindset and acquire a set of customer service tools that you can put to use right after the class.

 

Customize It!

Customize this course at little-to-no additional cost to your specific needs:

  • To get the most out of this course, take it with your entire customer service team. This can help you define the common challenges and explore how to work together as a team to meet those challenges.
  • Tell us about any special issues faced by your team — such as below average morale, rapid turnover, high customer complaint levels — and we’ll help you address those challenges by working your issues into this workshop.
  • Schedule this workshop as a day a week for two weeks to allow time for introspection and application between sessions and to fit it more easily into your busy calendars.

 

Learn How To

  • Develop a customer centric mindset
  • Understand the rewards and penalties of customer service
  • Identify if you are self-focused or customer-focused
  • Deepen and enhance your customer service communication skills
  • Determine your customer’s working style (assertive, analytical or amiable)
  • Calm upset customers with a five step process
  • Sharpen Internet customer service skills
  • Take control of time and manage it effectively
  • Identify and reduce stress
  • Hone email communication skills
Audience / Prerequisites

Aimed At

Customer service professionals, supervisors, and managers

 

Prerequisites

There are no formal prerequisites.