Customer Care on the Telephone

Do you sometimes hear your staff or customer service teams on the telephone dealing with unhappy customers and cringe a little, wishing they had handled the situation better?

Customer service is vital to a company’s reputation. It’s not just a question of reacting to customers, it’s about understanding and defining what they really want – even when they’re not sure themselves.

By attending this course, attendees will develop the outstanding customer service standards modern customers expect. You can sit back with the peace of mind knowing your delegates are treating customers with the very best of care.   And that can only be positive for your own reputation.

Topics covered:

Customer Service in Business – Here we look at the benefits of being customer-centred. Focusing on how we perceive customers now in order to understand the importance of customers for the business.

Understanding Customer Needs – Service is a very personal thing, and our opinions about the service we receive are individual to us. To be in with any chance of succeeding, we at least need to know what our customers expect from us.

How We View Things – Understanding that everyone’s reality is different. Responding to the needs of our customers without letting our own emotions cloud our judgement.

Being Assertive – Focusing on how assertive we are and recognising that being assertive is the key to dealing with customer situations. Looking at five steps to assertiveness.

Three Key Communication Skills:

Rapport – Identifying how to build and maintain it.

Active Listening – What are the barriers? How do we overcome them? Testing our ability with a fun exercise.

Effective Questioning – Moving away from Open/Closed and looking at four key questioning methods.

Voice and Language – Looking at ways to improve our tone of voice over the phone.

Words and Recognition – Identifying ‘Negative’ statements we use and hear day-to-day and reframing them.

Different Types of Customer – A chance to look within ourselves and examine our behaviour with customers and adapt it to improve communications.

Meeting Customer Needs – Using the three steps to recommendation.

Not Another Complaint – Examining the reasoning behind complaints through discussions.

A Pig of a Complaint! – A fun exercise with an important message. This part of the session is summarised with a specific process for dealing with complaints.