Customer Service:

The Art of Giving and Receiving Good Service

Participants will evaluate their current customer service skills to create individual strategies for improvement. We will focus on reviewing positive skills, creating an action plan for improvement, developing measurable service standards, and attaining continuous improvement in customer service skills.

Topics include:

  • Sending the right message through body language and voice control
  • Saying no when you can't say yes
  • Winning over a difficult customer
  • Managing stress instead of stress managing you
  • Recognizing your customers' working styles
  • Developing good service habits

Seminar tips:

  • By allowing angry customers to vent their feelings without interrupting them, you provide an opportunity for them to vent their frustration and anger.
  • Always spell your name to customers without them asking you to do so. It is a polite introduction on your part and a way to disarm their plan to take the offense.
  • Always empathize with the customer's complaint. This reinforces your similarities and minimizes your differences.

Additional Customer Service Seminars Available

Effective Communications through Enhanced Customer Service

This course is a half-day seminar designed to improve customer service skills of personnel who communicate with clients by telephone and e-mail.

Telephone Component:

  1. A Flash of the Obvious - Introduction :
    Customer wants and needs - an experiential exercise
  2. Common Customer Complaints:
    Words and phrases that irritate customers
  3. How Do You Sound:
    Telephone voice self evaluation
  4. A Way with Words:
    Developing "can-do speak" Re-phrasing exercise
  5. Meeting Challenges:
    Dealing with upset, angry, dissatisfied, misinformed, demanding or surly customers
  6. Addressing Problems (opportunities):
    Seven progressive steps to problem resolution
  7. Why Customers Become Irate:
    Experiential discovery exercise
  8. The Importance of Listening:
    How to hear what is not said and confirm what was heard
  9. Voice Mail and General Tele-standards:
    Departmental greetings Desk telephone greetings
  10. Telephone Image:
    Experiential exercise of re-stating common telephone responses

E-mail Component:

  1. Six Principles of Effective E-mails:
    An overview
  2. The Organization of an E-mail:
    How to organize your information so it's "reader-friendly"
  3. Ways to be E-mail Savvy:
    How to respond to customers with sensitivity and political correctness
  4. Following E-mail Etiquette:
    How to avoid committing an e-mail faux pas
  5. The Elements of an E-mail Message:
    How to make the most of an e-mail's three components
  6. How to Edit your E-mails:
    How to evaluate your e-mail's content and organization to achieve a professional appearance
  7. Using a Spell Checker Program:
    What can Spell Check do-and what can't it do

Seminar Tips:

  • Read your e-mail more than once, and be sensitive to the possibility of various interpretations.
  • When talking to a customer, avoid thinking of what to say next while the other is speaking.
  • State your main idea at the beginning of your e-mail-readers want to know what you are writing about as soon as they start to read.
  • Don't assume you know what the customer is going to say and let your attention lapse.
  • Keep your e-mails narrow in scope-follow the adage, "One e-mail/one topic.

Dealing with Angry and Difficult Customers

Successfully Turning Around Customer Complaints

Sharpen your customer service skills and build confidence in your ability to turn an angry complainer into a satisfied – and loyal – customer. This dynamic workshop is designed to help solve customer problems and build goodwill.

Participants will learn the most effective strategies for the following:

  • Staying calm and confident when pressure is on
  • Dealing with angry or upset internal and external customers
  • Focusing on fixing the problem – not placing the blame
  • Making empathic responses to customer concerns
  • Convincing the customer that you are ready, willing, and able to help them
  • Making the customer your “partner” in finding a satisfying solution
  • Dealing with the cumulative frustration and stress that are an inherent part of the support professional’s job

The following topics will be addressed and discussed:

  • Customer Service Standards and Goals
  • The Art of Customer Relations
  • Disarming complainers. Helping them feel good about themselves and you
  • Empathy or sympathy? The big difference
  • Understanding Customer Needs
  • Searching for the facts; probing without offending
  • Identifying personality types and anticipating their reactions
  • Looking at the problem from the customer’s angle
  • Developing effective strategies to keep problems from escalating
  • How to keep your own reactions under control
  • What to do when a customer tunes you out
  • When to turn a complaint over to your boss or another department
  • Handling Difficult Customers
  • What to do to turn down the heat and disarm the difficult types
  • Actions to take when the customer is angry
  • Strategies that position you as a helper – not an adversary
  • How to keep the long winded brief . . . the loud quiet . . . the grumblers happy. . . the abusive polite . . . the angry calm
  • Taking Care of Yourself
  • Dealing with negativity
  • A positive approach to stress
  • Leaving work at work

Note: We recommend using real case studies from client organizations in this workshop. Names, file numbers, and other identifying information can be changed to protect confidentiality. We can also include your organization’s customer service policies in the handout materials.

To Schedule this Training

For groups of three or more participants
Cypress Media Group presents this seminar as an on-site offering at your work location or at an off-site location of your choice. We can customize this training program to suit your precise training needs.

For economic reasons, this seminar is only offered to groups of roughly three or more people with the same training needs. If you have a group with similar training needs, please e-mail Kirk@cypressmedia.net to discuss your interest.

For fewer than three participants
We do not offer this course as an open enrollment public offering for individuals. If you have fewer than three participants who are interested in this course, the cost will be the same as for a larger group. Please e-mail Kirk@cypressmedia.net to discuss your interest. Individuals may also want to consider the following online training options:

Online learning options for individuals
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