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Customer Service Training Classes:

Our customer service class teaches by doing with less than 15% lecture and 85% hands on activities. Participants learn by Doing and not by being told. Exercises are practical, realistic, fun and are skill based.

To maximize your customer service teams effectiveness we suggest our custom, private customer service classes offered in house at the location of your choice, usually in groups of 6 or more.

Contact us for a free consultation on how we can best service your training needs in a customer service training class customized for you!

Class Objectives:

In our Exceptional Customer Service one-day class participants will:

  • Understand how to handle inquiries and/or complaints in ways that create improved, lasting relationships with your customers or clients.
  • Learn to promote positive "chemistry" between your company and your clients by recognizing and responding to the needs of each individual.
  • Learn how to handle doubt, misunderstandings, and objections.
  • Acquire techniques for seeing issues from clients' perspectives, creating value-adding options for clients, and making sure clients recognize the added value they are getting.
  • Learn how to gain agreement from clients and reinforce mutually satisfying long-term relationships.

Customer Service Training:
Leadership Lessons for Teaching Customer Service Classes

If you believe that one of the primary roles of a leader is to teach those that you lead; and if you believe that your reputation for customer service can be the difference in your success or lack thereof; then it stands to reason that as a leader, you should be teaching customer service.

Do It, and Do It Often

Whatever vehicle you use to communicate with your people -- customer service staff meetings, town hall meetings, video addresses, or worst case, email -- you can add teaching moments to your regular communications agenda. If you want to have others help you, that's fine. But don't make the mistake of simply delegating this to a customer service staff member. Your team needs to know that the teaching is coming from you.

How exactly do you teach customer service? Nothing could be easier. Your business is giving you case studies every day, so use them.

Story telling is so powerful, especially when the stories are true. Use real examples, both good and bad. The good stories represent opportunities to create a wow moment for your audience. They hear the story, and the light bulb goes off as they realize they too can delight customers.
The bad customer service stories provide an opportunity for you to engage people in analyzing what happened and how it could have been better handled.

Better Yet, The Recovery Story

What's a recovery story? This one takes place in a hair salon.

The salon was running an occasional promotion. On slow days, the manager would put a sign outside the shop offering haircuts for 30% off. A customer came in, got his hair cut and was erroneously charged full price by the stylist. He should have said something, but he did not. An hour later, he realized how upset he was and he fired off a letter to the salon owner.

In the letter, the customer described what had happened, and concluded the letter by saying he could have gone back and made a stink. Instead, he decided that since this business had so little integrity, he would never come back again.

The owner investigated and found that the stylist had made an honest mistake. So he found the customer's phone number and called him. He acknowledged the customer's letter and thanked the customer for alerting him. He then explained that the stylist had made a mistake, and apologized. He told the customer he was sending him a full refund along with a coupon for a free cut on his next visit.

The Lessons Learned

The customer was surprised and not surprisingly, quite pleased. The salon owner turned this into two key teaching points.

First, he taught his managers that while they had the discretion to implement the 30% off sales on slow days, it was critical that together they come up with a way to execute without breaking down. It didn't take them long to figure out how to update their POS system to support such a sale and automatically price services correctly.

Second, and more important from a customer service perspective, was the lesson of turning a big loss into a big win. When a customer becomes dissatisfied enough to write a letter and say they aren't coming back, you can bet they will be telling other people. Bad news travels fast.
When you can recover such a customer, you generate the opposite effect. The customer realizes they had gone too far in their conclusions (this business had no integrity problem, they made a mistake) and he is motivated to tell positive stories about the business. Now the customer considers this business to be a top notch customer service provider.

Stories like this don't get old. Customer service provides more teaching moments than any other aspect of most businesses. And smart leaders use those teaching moments at every opportunity.

Source: Tom O'Dea: link

Article Content: Customer Service Classes

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