Customer Service Academy
Take your customer service to the next level with this fun, interactive Customer Service Academy! In order to create continued learning and growth, this series infuses a solid foundation of communication skills training that is woven throughout the entire eight modules. Each class incorporates a self-discovery phase to help participants maintain awareness and insight into their individual customer service experiences with relation to the organization as a whole. Participants will not only develop a greater understanding of themselves but also of their coworkers, because a secondary gain of this training includes teambuilding. Trainees can expect: skill building exercises, reflective/self-discovery exercises (many of these will be part of the after-class assignment), games, case studies, role-plays, and mixed media. They can also expect to exercise their creativity and to have some fun! Supervisors are encouraged to create coaching relationships with staff members in order to support the learning process. At the beginning of the series, class participants will be given the assignment to contribute specific, verbatim and challenging statements they hear from customers. These statements will be included in various exercises throughout the training.
NCR now offers a cash register that prompts cashiers to say, "Hello" and "Thank you". Has customer service been driven to an all-time low with a deficiency in these very basic skills? The Customer Service Academy (CSA) will not provide smile training, yet it will offer reasons for your reps to smile.
Click on a title or contact us to learn more about our 4-hour modules.
Description: **This class is most effective for a group that works together and will be doing the series together**
This introductory class for the Eight-Module program gets the group warmed up to understanding their individual purpose behind customer service. It answers the question, "Why Bother" and "Who do we serve?" The class participants focus on personal values and how those relate to the organizational values. Included is a Customer Service assessment that helps to create a benchmark of current CS performance. This assessment will be administered again at the conclusion of the training to show any changes that may have occurred as a result of the training and of the trainees’ efforts.
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- Setting guidelines for each meeting and guidelines for a CS philosophy (including the role of accountability)
- Why bother with customer service?
- Understanding the role of Coaching in Customer Service
- Creating a Customer Service Vision - this is the beginning of an on-going process that will evolve throughout the training and will be revisited during session eight.
Description: Are there times in which your Reps don’t know how to respond to a customer’s inappropriate comments? Do they have difficulty giving instructions or dealing with customers because they’re feeling flustered? Improving customer communications, both internally and externally, is necessary for successful customer relations. This class challenges customer Reps to gain a greater understanding of how they create their own communication barriers through judgments, assumptions and perceptions. Participants will learn new tools for asserting themselves in order to most effectively open dialogue with customers — in a diplomatic, proactive and constructive way.
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- Identifying and overcoming communication barriers
- Facts versus Assumptions: Understanding the effects of our judgments and perceptions on communication
- Courageous conversations - Employing assertive communication techniques
- ‘I’ Messages - delivering the real message with diplomacy and accountability and without defensiveness or blame
Description: Do your Reps ever feel defensive when talking with others or do you notice others getting defensive around them? Dynamic listening is a tool that allows the customer to vent while the CSR maintains control of the dialogue. This is the tool that will get CSR’s through those times when feeling stuck while in dialogue with both internal and external customers. This class uses practical examples and exercises to help CSR’s become dynamic listeners and demonstrates how, by listening, one can move through those stuck places while creating a more proactive outcome with the customer. The trainees have an opportunity to embrace the role as coaches to customers through the Dynamic Listening model.
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- Nonverbal communication
- Vocal Qualities
- What message are you communicating with your tone of voice or your facial expressions?
- Dynamic Listening
- The impulses that prevent listening
- The five key techniques to Dynamic Listening
- Learn how to feel less defensive during interactions with others!
Description: Customer objections and complaints offer valuable feedback to an organization and offer an opportunity for Customer Service Representatives (CSR’s) to master their communication skills. An organization’s most unhappy customers can be the greatest source of learning and can present the best opportunity to build customer loyalty - when the CSR’s make efforts and a show of support to the customer. This module provides three types of tools and over twenty techniques for CSR’s to use with Tough Customers.Class participants will enjoy a detective game and Jeopardy challenge during this class!
** Prerequisites Module #2 and Module #3 **
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- Tough Customers
- Three Types
- Reasons for their behaviors
- Collaboration for complaint recovery
- Collaboration Essentials
- Must-do techniques for all customers
- Four types of questions to control the dialogue
- Fast and friendly finish
- Gratitude with latitude
- Collaboration Backups
- Additional options for partnering up with customers
- Empowerment through education
- Employing empathy
- Proactive ‘No’
- Savvy refocus
- Collaboration Extraordinaire
- Additional techniques for negotiating and maintaining control of the dialogue
- Language changes
- Creating a path to YES
- Limitations and expectations
- Behaviors to avoid
Description: This class takes Module #4 to the next level by incorporating exercises to help trainees absorb and assimilate the tools and techniques for Coaching Tough Customers. It includes tips for dealing with hostile customers and practical experientials including writing recovery lines to Tough Customer Statements.
** Prerequisite Module #4 **
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- What went awry?
- Class participants identify the collaboration mistakes and determine what changes can be made to improve the scenario.
- What to Say?
- Recovery lines to help trainees feel more prepared and empowered with Tough Customers.
- Dealing with Tough Customers - How do I respond?
- Practicing techniques from Module #4 in role-play format based on real life examples from your organization
- Tips to deal with hostile customers
Description: Module #6 takes an emotionally intelligent and cognitive psychology approach to helping the trainees give themselves and others a break by finding ways to overcome the anger they may have in reaction to tough customers (both internal and external).
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- Discovering what triggers anger and how to prevent anger from getting the best of you
- Understanding the difference between aggressive, assertive and submissive behaviors and taking action on being more assertive
- Understanding how our thoughts play an integral role in determining our behaviors in relationships
- ‘Catching’ those thoughts that are maladaptive or irrational
- Reframing the thoughts into something that feels clearer, healthier and not personal
Description: Showing a proactive attitude to customers begins by adopting a positive attitude toward oneself and one’s situation. This class follows the Fish! Principles and helps training participants understand how to put each principle into action: Be present, Play, Make Their Day and Choose Your Attitude.
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- Taking a proactive approach to customer relationships and issues
- Being in the moment with the customer
- Answering the question: What shapes a person’s attitude?
- Necessary steps to choosing an attitude
Description: Exceptional customer service requires great skill both technically and interpersonally. This class offers tools for helping CSR’s unlock their great skills and take ownership in changing any negative reality they are experiencing with the customer.
The assessment that was given during Module #1 will be given again during this class to show any changes that may have occurred as a result of the training and of the trainees’ efforts.
Duration:4 hours
Learning Points:
- Reviewing and identifying the triggers of a dissatisfied reality and how to avoid slipping into old behaviors
- The Customer Service Vision – revisiting and fine–tuning
- Customer Service Champions
- Pulling together all the principles of the Customer Service academy that most resonate, the trainees can get started on Creating a New Reality
- Creating a new reality
- SMART Goal development
- Action planning
- Creating an intention – an inspirational message – by which to succeed with Customer Service
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Customer Service, Fun?