Brilliant customer service!

Brilliant customer service! Overview
This course has a simple objective: to raise customer service standards by instructing, equipping and inspiring participants to delight customers at every opportunity.
Training objectives
Participants will acquire essential tools, skills and methods; discuss specific organisational issues; and identify areas for improvement. They will discover how to:

• Achieve excellence in a customer-focused organisation
• Establish the standards, systems and skills that can make every customer, both internal and external, feel special and valued
• Make customers feel welcomed and cared for at every contact, especially for composed and confident first contact on the telephone and face-to-face
• Use skills for questioning and listening effectively and to enhance an understanding of what customers really want and expect
• Make every customer feel like your most important customer
• Serve customers efficiently and develop a reputation for reliability
• Understand customer expectations and deliver more than you promise, managing expectations where required (including breaking 'bad news')
• Turn problems into opportunities - for either sales or greater customer satisfaction

Format
A highly interactive one-day course involving practical exercises, role play and case studies.
Special features
The course can be tailored to include any specialist topics such as advanced telephone skills, dealing with complaints, internal planning, etc, according to organisational need or the skill level of the participants.
The expert trainer
Graham specialises in providing high-quality consultancy, coaching and training in sales, sales management, customer service and personal productivity. He has a long career in sales and was a top-performing IT and solutions sales professional and sales manager. His most recent full-time role was as Managing Director of Sales Productivity and Development for Thomson Financial, helping develop a large European sales force.
His work has taken him all over the world and involved him in working closely with hundreds of different organisations from all business sectors, his client list including such organisations as BT, Vodafone, AT&T, Orange, Pfizer, GSK, Boots, Unilever, American Express, Thomas Cook, Apple, Sony, Motorola, Cisco, MFI, Barclays Bank, LIFFE, Abbey National, Prison Service, Home Office, Law Society, BBC, Daimler-Chrysler, Citroen, Weetabix, Nikon, Shell and many, many others. In addition he has written over twenty books published in several different countries, including Companies don't succeed - people do!, 90 Brain Teasers for Trainers, Customer Service Games for Training, Sales Training Games, Telephone Tactics and Working Smarter.
Known internationally as both a trainer and a popular motivational speaker, he believes that effective learning has to be interactive and challenging. All his learning events are built around practical exercises, role play and case studies. His training style focuses not on just explaining new ideas or developing new skills, but also on motivating people to use them and to develop themselves as individuals. This approach gets results, as the following comments from course participants show:
'Brilliant course, really interesting and very focused to my job role and day to day work.'

'Took away some very good ideas that I can use every day... good examples too.'

'Very confident in the subject, and amusing too. Made the course very interesting. A very clear sales model to use going forward.'

'Full of useful hints and tips which I will apply to my job.'

'Extremely well presented and structured'

'A very intensive course and a lot of concrete tools provided.'

'Useful data, tools and insights; engaging and interesting as always.'

'Very good... contained everything we do on a regular basis and problems we have come across... the exercises made it very interesting too.'
Course outline

1. Introduction to Customer Service Excellence
   • The four main trends that have changed the way people buy today - and will buy tomorrow
   • The main types of service offered today - how do you rate?
   • Why customer retention is the only sustainable long-term strategy for business growth
   • The difference that makes a difference - examples of good and bad service situations
2. The Customer Service Excellence model
   • The seven qualities that make customers feel SPECIAL
   • Defining what is customer service excellence - knowing what your customers really want and expect from your business
   • Thought-leaders and market-shapers in customer service - a useful summary
3. The people factor
   • The qualities of customer service superstars
   • Setting standards of performance and developing best practice
   • The magic ingredient - 'attitude' - staying positive
   • Managing individual customer expectations and needs
4. Communication skills that delight customers
   • How to quickly 'tune in' to your customers, so that you can serve them more easily
   • Gestures and speech patterns that put customers at ease
   • The questioning-listening-responding-leading approach
   • Tapping the power of leading questions to understand customers quickly
5. Telephone techniques that really work
   • Why the telephone is so important to winning and keeping customer satisfaction
   • Creating an good first impression - every time
   • Telephone skills best practice - case studies and real life examples
6. Dealing with customer dissatisfaction
   • The four reasons why customers complain - and what to do when they do
   • The correct way to respond to a customer complaint or dissatisfaction
   • Ways to calm customers and regain goodwill
7. Putting Customer Service Excellence to work in your business
   • Creating standards, systems and procedures to support Customer Service Excellence
   • The ten commandments of customer excellence every day, for every customer
   • Pro-active follow-up systems
8. Summary
   • Personal action plans