Achieving Excellence in Customer Service

Complete Seminar Details

You Will Learn How To

• Provide exceptional customer service that achieves results and gets noticed
• Adopt the skills and techniques that routinely deliver positive customer experiences
• Maximize the customer value of your face-to-face, phone or Web-based interactions
• Deal effectively with difficult customers and turn complaints into opportunities
• Contribute to a customer-centric culture and achieve greater personal growth and customer satisfaction
• Demonstrate a positive, confident and professional approach with internal and external customers

Course Benefits

Providing outstanding customer service and positive customer experiences often make the difference between gaining and keeping a customer or losing one. This course offers the tools and techniques to ensure you build and maintain mutually beneficial relationships with your customers. As a result, they become loyal advocates for you and your organization.

Who Should Attend

Call center, help desk, hotline, front-line or support staff who deliver customer service in person, by phone or via the Web. This course also benefits those wishing to acquire the skills, tools and techniques to build effective customer relationships.

A media-rich environment immerses you in real-life customer service situations. Experiential activities, including role-playing, and simulated video and audio scenarios, allow you to practice the skills presented throughout the course. Activities include:

• Profiling your customer service skills
• Assessing your assets and opportunities
• Associating with the emotional aspects of the customer experience
• Modeling effective responses to typical customer service scenarios
• Jargon-busting and slang-slaying
• Practicing verbal and vocal skills
• Handling customer complaints and difficult situations
• Responding assertively to unreasonable requests
• Demonstrating empathy and building rapport
• Creating productive outcomes
• Delivering a Personal Statement of Commitment

Course Content

Customer Service Excellence: Why It Matters

• The importance of How
• Focusing on the how as well as the what
• Developing a relationship of mutual trust
• Exceeding customer expectations
• Influencing customer perceptions
• Calculating the lifetime value of your customer

Creating the Customer Experience

• Fostering long-term relationships
• Adopting a positive mental attitude (PMA)
• Applying the what and how to quality
• Small actions that ensure attention to detail
• Identifying the differentiators of excellence
• Taking responsibility for demonstrating customer care
• Navigating the customer through the process
• Instilling confidence with a personal approach

Communicating Effectively With the Customer

• Emotional aspects of the customer experience
• Making the initial connection with the customer
• Presenting a positive first impression
• What you say and how you say it
• Verbal and vocal techniques that work
• Avoiding the quirks and distractors
• Banishing jargon to create clarity
• Matching words with nonverbal communication
• What you can say to avoid upsetting customers
• Adopting a problem-solving approach
• Turning active listening into problem solving
• Employing questioning techniques that focus on outcomes
• Encouraging a spirit of inquiry rather than adversary
• Moving to a team approach with the customer
• Achieving results for the remote customer
• Customer reassurance in a clicks and mortar situation
• Comparing communication methods
• Five key rules for successful outbound calls
• Choosing and using appropriate media
• Applying best practices in call center etiquette
• Top tips for e-customer care

Dealing Constructively With Tough Situations

• Calming upset customers with active listening
• Demonstrating emotional intelligence
• Displaying empathy and showing neutral support
• Establishing rapport and defusing anger
• Techniques for dealing with difficult people
• Remaining objective in challenging situations
• Personalizing and depersonalizing messages
• Asserting your position through polite repetition
• Handling the obstinate customer
• Transforming complaints into opportunities
• Generating useful feedback and learning
• Turning a negative situation into a loyal customer
• Tapping into the potential advocate within your customer

Contributing to a Customer Service Culture

• Building awareness inside your organization
• Influencing the corporate culture
• Mapping the internal customer network
• Coaching your colleagues for success
• Strengthening weak links in the chain
• Measuring customer satisfaction
• Setting and monitoring performance standards
• Tracking progress with internal indicators
• Enabling customers to express satisfaction
• Committing to a customer service charter

Making Excellence a Habit

• The characteristics and practices of excellence
• "Sharpening the saw" to hone your customer service skills
• Projecting a professional image with internal and external customers
• Ten rules that epitomize success
• Monitoring your own development
• Seeing customer service as an attitude, not an accident
• Measuring personal growth and achievements
• Executing your personal action plan
• Implementing checklists, tools and templates
• Constructing personal development goals
• Committing to short- and long-term actions

Sponsor Background:

Learning Tree International is a world leader in Hands-on training for Management and Technology Professionals. Since 1974, over 1,700,000 course participants from over 13,000 organizations around the world have enhanced their skills through intensive hands-on exercises under the guidance of expert instructors with real-world experience.

Virtually every major company and government agency has relied on Learning Tree to provide its managers and employees with the skills they need to succeed in their job functions.

10 Reasons to Choose Learning Tree

... over 1.7 million professionals have trained with Learning Tree

1 Benefit from 32 Years of Training Excellence

Learning Tree International has trained over 1,700,000 IT and management professionals and managers from more than 13,000 organizations around the world. Virtually every major technologyoriented organization and government agency has trusted and relied on us to provide their employees with the training they need to master the latest technologies and management skills.

2 Learn from Expert Instructors

Learning Tree instructors are active practitioners who average more than 20 years experience in their field. Because they use the very technologies and skills they teach, they've already solved the same problems you are likely to encounter, so you and your organization gain the knowledge from their years of hands-on expertise. In addition to their extensive real-world experience, our instructors only qualify to teach Learning Tree Courses after completing our rigorous industryleading screening and training program.

3 Experience Superior Course Design

Learning Tree Courses are developed through a stringent, time-tested process that ensures every course is practical and relevant. Our development teams include multiple subject experts drawn from our worldwide network-and our courses are constantly updated to ensure what you learn is always up to date.

4 Courses are Available Anywhere, Anytime

In addition to our Education Centers located in North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim, Learning Tree has the infrastructure and logistical capabilities to assemble, customize and deliver world-class training anywhere in the world. Whether it's a single course at your own facility, or a complete curriculum you need to present in different locations around the globe, location is not a problem.

5 Acquire Practical Skills with Hands-On Instructor-led Training

Each of our intensive hands-on courses is designed to help you gain the skills you need-quickly and in depth. Our courses are taught in a collaborative, supportive classroom-based environment, not on a Web site where you get instruction in a vacuum. And when you return to work, you can apply your new skills, tools and techniques right away, so you and your organization reap the benefits immediately.

6 Retain New Knowledge and Skills Longer

Learning Tree Courses are developed around the principles of Active Learning, the most advanced and effective method of adult education. You are immersed in your subject through individual and group activities that significantly increase your understanding, retention and ability to apply new knowledge and concepts to maximum effect.

7 Learn in a Superb Training Environment

Our modern, comfortable Education Centers are designed to ensure the comfort, ease and maximum effectiveness of your learning experience. We provide state-of-the-art equipment featuring MagnaLearn(tm), our proprietary Instructional Enhancement Technology-which helps you learn more quickly, in greater depth and with increased retention.

8 Achieve Professional Certification

We offer 45 Certification Programs that give you professional recognition and document your expertise. Achieving Learning Tree Certification demonstrates your mastery of the essential skills required to excel in your role.

9 Earn College Credit or Continuing Education Credit

Learning Tree Courses are recommended for college credit to more than 1,500 Universities and Colleges by the American Council on Education (ACE). Our courses are also eligible for PDU credits from the Project Management Institute, as well as CPE credits from the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy.

10 Vendor-Independent Training

Learning Tree was, is and will continue to be independent of vendor influences. That means you get training that is unbiased. We present an objective, evenhanded treatment of the pros and cons of new products, techniques and technology. You even learn about third-party alternatives that the vendors themselves would never tell you about.

Learning Tree Management Training

For over 32 years, Learning Tree has been dedicated to meeting the professional development needs of people like you. Now, more than ever, superior management, leadership and interpersonal skills are critical to individual and organizational success. And it is equally critical to be able to apply those skills in complex, technology-intensive environments.

Experience the Quality...of Learning Tree Hands-On Training

Learning Tree is committed to providing the most effective high-quality education for IT professionals and managers. Our high standards for Course Development, Instructor Training and state-of-the-art facilities provide a learning experience that ensures your training investment produces the results you and your organization expect.

Active Training Ensures That "You Learn by Doing"

For over 32 years, Learning Tree has been a pioneer in the application of Active Training, which is the most advanced and effective method of adult education. And today, we are still leading the way.

In our courses, you learn by doing. Our instructors do more than just lecture--they actively involve you in your training. Brief lectures are followed by hands-on exercises so that you master new skills right away.

Get Real-World Solutions from Expert Instructors

Learning Tree instructors are active practitioners who work full time in high-tech companies, R & D labs and other business environments where they use the very technologies and skills they teach. Because they have already solved the same problems you are likely to encounter, our instructors are equipped to share their real-world experience and practical solutions with you. Everything you learn is practical, relevant and up to the minute.