customer service skills training courses

Our training courses in helping people and teams develop their customer service skills fall into two categories - courses for groups from a single company, and customer service development courses for individuals.

This page covers the background to our customer service focused training courses. If, after reading through, you are wanting to enquire or book one or two places (rather than a whole team) on an open customer service training course, please click here.

The common aspects of our work in delivering customer service skills training courses to teams are as follows:

• treating every member of the team, and the team as a whole, with the utmost respect. We never tell anyone the "right" way to do things

• creating a very honest, open, and caring environment where people feel free to share their concerns and perceived weaknesses with a supportive group of colleagues

• challenging people to imagine and experiment with new styles of customer service - trying them on for size

• giving everyone the opportunity to contribute, to feel good about themselves, and to understand their capacity for growth and development

• managing conflict, or potential conflict, in a way that diffuses the current situation but allows for exploration of the underlying causes

• ensuring that everyone is capable of leaving the course with new knowledge, skills and attitudes to dramatically improve their customer service

The way we cover customer service skills varies enormously, and depends heavily on a joint pre-courses assessment of what the needs are, and the flexibility during the course to change and adapt the approach as needed. As an indication of the areas we tend to get involved in, please take a look at the examples below:

customer service using NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)

NLP, it goes without saying, has a massive amount to offer in terms of developing a greater understanding of relationship building and building rapport with customers, because it helps show how our styles come across to others. By enabling us to take a very deep look at the language we use, we can deconstruct the "meant" meanings, the "implied" meanings, and the wide range of potential meanings to help us refine and develop our customer service skills.

It also can be massively helpful in gaining a greater understanding of other people, helping you to easily step into the world of the customer and see things from their side. Doing so will make you far more successful, and helkp to ensure that your customers are ambassadors for you and your organisation.

As with all our courses, we introduce the theory, use real-world, practical, and usually outdoors experiential learning to flesh out and internalise the knowledge gained, and then focus on reviews to really capture the essence of what has been learnt and ensure that it is translated into practical benefits back at work.

communication using practical experience

As part of our customer service training courses, we will give you the opportunity to actually "be" customers. By getting out of a service-provider/supplier mode and into the shoes of the customer, we can quickly change our perspective. Reviewing the jointly-held experience for both its good and bad aspects offers incredible insight into changes we all can make.

customer service using common sense

Sounds obvious, but common sense is missed far too often on training courses, overruled by the latest fancy theory and snazzy quotes from the "gurus". We don't miss this part, at all. By giving teams the opportunity to undertake challenges and tasks, and then simply reviewing with them what went well and what didn't, it's (no longer, to us!) astonishing what comes out.

Our skill here is in genuine, open facilitation, and in creating the environment for people to come up with their own answers - much, much more powerful than listening to a lecture.