Defining customer service excellence

• What does great service look like and feel like?
• Sharing our own experiences of good and bad service
• Responsibility for customer service
• Stepping into your customers’ shoes
• Individual and group exercises, facilitated group discussion

Handling customer enquiries

• Customer contact model and service standards
• Creating lasting first impressions
• Building and maintaining rapport
• Using positive language and tone of voice
• Demonstration, facilitated group review, pairs exercise with group review

Establishing customer needs and responding to requests

• Effective customer communication:
• Questioning
• Active listening – including taking notes
• Summarising
• Practical exercises in pairs and trios with group discussion

Handling work based customer requests

• Identifying challenging customer requests
• Responding to challenging customer requests assertively
• Group discussion, short practice sessions in pairs with feedback

Service recovery

• Turning disappointment into delight; improving customer relations
• Identifying the nature of customer complaints
• Responding to customer complaints
• Introducing colleagues to resolve customer service issue
• Group discussion, presentation, exercise with group review

Complaint handling practice

• Practice brief
• Practice sessions
• Complaint handling practice sessions with feedback, group review

Building customer relationships

• Relationship triangle – trust and loyalty
• What differentiates us from our competitors?
• Identifying ways to add value and exceed customer expectations
• Following up
• Presentation, revolving flipchart exercise in small groups, group review