Managing customer service

Course summary

This is a practical training course for managers responsible for customer care - it looks at planning and implementing improved customer care across an organisation, department or team.

Good customer care is vital for all organisations. But leading or managing the customer care function for an organisation can be a headache. Customer care is a core activity with huge implications for the performance and reputation of your organisation and you will be expected to develop strategies and procedures. However, you may not have line management responsibility for many of the staff whose behaviour and consistency is the key to excellent customer service. How do you square the circle?

This training course will help you manage the customer service function effectively.

This course looks at both the strategic aspects of customer care - establishing standards, benchmarking, developing policies, and also at the practical issues involved in managing the function and motivating staff on a day to day basis.


Course outline

This 1 day training course is designed to give you an overview of customer service and the customer care function. It will provide practical approaches to customer care strategy and lots of tips and advice to help you make a success of your role in managing customer service in your organisation.
It covers:

• the role of customer care in achieving your organisation's vision and mission
• customer service and customer care - two sides of the same coin
• reputation and brand management - the link with customer care
• developing aims and objectives for customer care in your organisation
• evaluating your organisation's strengths and weaknesses in customer care
  • collecting data
    • customer consultation
    • surveys
    • focus groups
    • establishing a customer network or panel
    • monitoring complaints and other feedback
  • other methods for collecting information
    • mystery shopper
    • recording customer contacts
• analysing data, trends and acting on the results
• developing a customer care policy and strategy
  • writing an organisation-wide customer care strategy
  • resourcing the strategy
• developing customer care standards
  • benchmarking your customer care
  • involving staff and stakeholders in developing standards.
  • establishing standards - what standards do you need?
  • how to draft standards to ensure they are measurable
  • promoting standards to staff and customersgetting management and staff ownership for standards,
  • developing a training programme
  • on-line resources
  • inducting and motivating staff for excellence
  • on-going training to maintain standards
• maintaining standards
  • maintaining standards where you do not have management responsibility
  • managing customer care on other sites (including homeworking)
• monitoring standards: consultation, feedback and complaints
• setting up a customer feedback system
• tracking and celebrating success
• what to do when things go wrong

Who is this course for?

This training course will be valuable for anyone who has responsibility for overseeing customer care and customer service in their organisation or department. You may have lead responsibility for establishing a strategy, putting in place standards and developing training intiatives and monitoring procedures.


What will this course help me do: learning outcomes?

This training in managing customer care will give you the skills to put in place a customer care strategy or plan and the confidence to see through the responsibility of putting it into practice. It will help you recognise the difference between customer service and customer care, develop a policy and strategy, understand what standards are appropriate, how to motivate staff to maintain the highest levels of customer care and monitor and celebrate success.