Course Description

This half-day course provides a practical introduction to delivering excellent customer service. Through discussion and hands-on exercises, participants will develop the communication skills and techniques needed to manage customer interactions confidently, build rapport, and leave every customer with a positive impression – even in challenging situations.

Target Student

Customer-facing staff, frontline teams, and anyone who deals with customers in person or over the phone and wants to develop their customer service skills.

Pre-requisites

• None

Core Learning Objectives

• Identify excellent service behaviour
• Recognise and use techniques such as matching, pacing and signalling to control the conversation
• Use effective questioning techniques to clarify customer requirements and expectations
• Demonstrate the importance of taking responsibility to achieve customer satisfaction
• Recognise the importance of language indicators and adjust your conversations accordingly
• Handle challenging customers in person calmly and confidently

Course Outline

1. What is Excellent Customer Service?

• What is a customer and what does excellent service look like?
• The dos and don'ts of effective customer service

2. Communication Skills

• The call handling structure
• Elements of communication: words, tone of voice, body language
• Building rapport – what it is and how to do it
• The difference between empathy and sympathy

3. Listening Skills

• What gets in the way of us listening effectively?
• Ways to develop your listening skills
• How to show the customer we understand their message

4. Questioning and Language

• Developing and using high quality questions
• Positive language and helpful phrases
• How the use of positive language is more encouraging than negative words and phrases

5. Handling Challenging Customers

• Tools and techniques for dealing with more challenging customers
• Ensuring the customer leaves with a positive impression

6. Personal Action Planning

• Developing a personal action plan to apply back in the workplace