Customer Service Course
The Online Customer Service course offered by ONE Training Services supports in a highly effective manner, the requirement for those new to an organisation to receive introductory customer service training.
Aimed at large or small businesses and individual users, our Customer Service online training course content meets the criteria required for the Level 2 Award in Customer Service.
Customer Service Course Programme
The course content will include many of the exercises listed below, with additional supporting materials
What is Customer Service really like?
Here we look specifically at some of the problems front line customer service staff encounter. What kind of difficult and tricky customers they have to deal with, what the pitfalls are and where they get wrong-footed.
Defining Really Good Customer Service
First we need to define what Good Customer Service is: How do you feel when it’s good? How do you feel when it’s bad?
Communicating with Customers
Next we need to look at the fundamentals of communicating with customers. Whether face to face or on the phone, how you communicate is usually more important than what you say. Delegates will practise looking at what supports and what hampers good customer service, looking at body language, physical space and other verbal and non-verbal techniques (even on the phone!).
Linked to this is training to understanding physical boundaries and how to use them in difficult situations.
Working with The Customer’s Point of View
We will next look at how important it is to be sure we are all ‘speaking the same language’.
It is easy to misinterpret and misunderstand what your customers are saying and they in turn can easily misunderstand and misinterpret you.
We will spend some time looking at a typical customer scenario from differing points of view.
Assumptions about Customers
The assumptions we automatically make about customers affect the way we communicate with them.
There will be a brief group training exercise to highlight how easy it is to make assumptions about another person just by looking at them, focusing on their clothes, hairstyles, accents, etc.
Following this, we will look at some of the assumptions customers might be making about you.
Caught in the Line of Fire
When things are tough, most people take it personally (why wouldn’t you since it’s being aimed at you?) and then we want to just get it over and done with: “The sooner I can get rid of this customer, the better!”
We will introduce the idea that it is the customer complaint you are looking at, and that it can be ‘held’ between you as opposed to taking on board the customers problems and emotions.
We will look at how people can ‘elect’ themselves responsible in order to shift the dynamic between them and the customer. People may be looking for solutions, but we also know that many people just need a place to off-load their difficulties and their own frustrations.
Emotion vs. Objectivity: “So What You’re Saying Is…”
A pairs training exercise that allows people calm down an over-emotional customer without getting drawn in.
We will create a typical customer conflict scenario that ends up heated, with each person trying to convince the other that his or her point of view is the right one.
We then replay it with one person taking on the skill of being an ‘objective observer’ who is able to reflect back to the customer what they think is going on.
Listening and Responding with Empathy
This training exercise allows the other person to be heard and get their point of view across while allowing you to set clear boundaries and deliver a difficult or uncomfortable message.
‘You’ vs ‘I’
This exercise is to help delegates move situations forward and to shift a disagreement from one of blame (Yes you did, no I didn’t, kind of dynamic) to a more reasoned reflecting back of the reality of the situation.
Delivering Difficult Messages to Customers
A technique to help people distinguish between what someone does as opposed to who they are. This can be extremely helpful when you have to deliver news the recipient doesn’t want to hear.
Establishing Customer Empathy: Quick Fire Tips
Some of the things we will cover are:
Using their name
Deliberately using ‘I’, ‘You’, or ‘We’ statements
Understanding their situation
Self-disclosure
Compliments
Gaining Customer Confidence
An exercise that deals with a number of key issues:
Gaining confidence
Changing your behaviour instantly
Dealing with intimidation, manipulation and anger
Coping with other people’s upset
Feeling more in charge of the situation
The ‘No’ the Customer Doesn’t Want to Hear
People will work on their difficult customer service scenarios practising additional techniques on the Art of Saying No, and using other tools learnt so far. They will get coaching on what works best for them.
Defusing Phrases
Here we will introduce some of the phrases we have collected over the years that help defuse tricky situations. We will also ask delegates if they have any favourite phrases that they know work. At the end of the training programme we will collate these in a booklet and distribute them to everyone.
How Do I Let Go?
Having had one difficult customer service encounter, it can be really hard to let go of all the feelings, frustrations and residue of that, before you are able face the next difficult or tricky customer service situation with a clean slate as it were. We know that it’s very easy to metaphorically ‘kick the cat’.
Feelings: we have a brief ‘in your head’ exercise that demonstrates how powerful feelings can be, even when they aren’t verbally expressed. We also look at how our feelings influence our assumptions, where we make things up and then act as though what we made up is true.
Customer Service Course Summary and Personal Take Out
At the end of the course you will create a Customer Service Plan of Action looking at:
What you are taking away from the Customer Service Course, what specifically you know you will use and where you will practise.
