Course Description

In today’s most successful organizations, excellent customer service has shifted from a bonus to a necessity. Customer standards and expectations are rising, as are the demands on your workforce. The speed of business sometimes causes teams to sacrifice service to meet deadlines, but another more inspiring option awaits.

In this course, participants revisit the basics of excellent customer service and learn new tools to keep companies competitive. Participants practice real-world scenarios to examine facets of customer engagement such as tone, body language, empathy, and relationships.
Participants learn how to help difficult and angry customers, and how to serve internal customers such as colleagues and executives. Throughout the day, participants will work on a living document called the Culture of Service where they define what attitudes and behaviors they want to implement in their team or organization. Rise above the rest with the power of excellent service!

Course Outline

Lesson 1. Understanding Customer Service and Framing the Culture of Service

• Explore the benefits of customer service to the organization and individual
• Recognize the importance of internal customer service
• Identify how customer service benefits the individual
• Excel with customer service
• Discuss and select real-world scenarios to work with throughout the course
• Culture of Service living document: Participants learn how to create this set of attitudes, behaviors, and guidelines for service in their organization

Lesson 2. Identifying How Customers Define the Success of Your Organization

• Recognize trends in customer service
• Identify criteria for customer satisfaction
• Revisit Culture of Service living document

Lesson 3. Increasing Customer Satisfaction

• Personal touch in customer service
• Excellent first and last impressions
• Revisit the Culture of Service living document

Lesson 4. Providing Excellent Face-to-Face and Remote Service

• Identify categories of face-to-face contact
• Understand critical success factors in face-to-face customer service
• Identify characteristics of Active Listening (techniques, benefits and guidelines)
• Identify remote customer service communication channels
• Apply remote customer service best practices
• Revisit the Culture of Service document

Lesson 5. Engaging Difficult and Angry Customers

• Serve difficult customers
• Manage difficult customers
• Deal with difficult or unhelpful colleagues
• Revisit real-world scenarios
• Revisit the Culture of Service living document

Lesson 6. Increasing Customer Loyalty

• Optimize moments of truth
• Recognize the value of customer complaints
• Recognize the stages of the service recovery process
• Revisit the Culture of Service living document

Lesson 7. Synthesis and Application

• Review Culture of Service document and prioritize high-impact items
• Tie to organizational and individual values
• Action planning
• End of course survey

Learner Outcomes

After completing this program, participants will be able to:

• Identify and enhance the basics of customer service excellence.
• Practice various customer service scenarios to analyze the root causes of success and opportunity.
• Apply customer service best practices to internal and external customers.
• Create a framework for a Culture of Service from classroom learning.
• Tie the Culture of Service to organizational and/or personal values.