Core Skills in Customer Service Excellence

Achieve the highest levels in customer excellence and superior patient experience

Aimed firmly at front line staff, Core Skills in Customer Service Excellence is designed to encourage exceptional skills in and continuous attention to creating a superb patient, public and service user experience irrespective of your service type. This comprehensive programme covers the importance of an excellent experience, through skills development, right to embedding it as an enduring culture. What’s more, all team members exit the programme with an unambiguous picture of how a superior experience translates into security and success for them.

Content

• Understanding the importance of the ‘customer’ in modern healthcare
• Implications of poor customer experience in a competitive market
• The cause and effect relationships of seemingly simple things
• Defining the customer – who are they really?
• Differentiating between users and payers
• Internal versus external customers
• What matters to patients?
• What matters to carers & relatives?
• The GP or other service as customer
• Where and how ‘potential’ customers learn about you
• How you can learn from published information
• How to measure customer experience – an overview
• The reliability factor – what’s your perception
• The propensity to refer – the ultimate measure?
• Loyalty and how it affects your se3curity
• Creating a high baseline for dignity and respect
• Developing behavioural flexibility to individualise experience
• Using active listening techniques & reflection
• Telephone excellence in the clinical environment
• Enquiry handling – marrying efficiency with experience
• Resolving problems and the extra mile effect
• People under stress – how you can help
• The right face in face-to-face exchanges (and other body language issues)
• What’s your atmosphere – understanding the group effect on experience
• Projecting positive self image and values
• Unreasonable experience expectations and how to manage them
• Balancing patient & staff needs
• What to do if you are faced with a complaint
• The complaint as an opportunity
• Handling emotions positively
• Become a CPE (Champion of Patient Experience)

Course type and teaching methods

The course is very practical, designed to provide participants with working methodologies and clear instructions to enable them to apply the new skills directly on return to service. The format consists of lectures, case studies, discussions, individual and group exercises all designed to embed core principles in customer service excellence.