Service at heart
A one-day workshop (virtual or face-to-face)
This is an experiential programme.
It asks front-line staff to stand in their customers’ shoes – whether those customers are internal or external. It emphasises the value of personal experience in understanding what customers want and need. It covers communication skills and social styles. It focuses on moments of truth. Above all, it gets participants to examine how they deliver service and to identify incremental improvements that can be aggregated to significant effect.
And we recognise that what we do ‘in session’ is just one part of the process of helping you improve customer service, so we offer support in ‘pre- and post’ activities that will help the programme really ‘land’ and make the impact you’re looking for.
Learning objectives
This workshop will help participants:
- Strengthen their existing customer service skills through alignment of mindset and some of the key communication principles
- Equip themselves for a changing and challenging business environment through better understanding of customer journeys and expectations of service
- Identify and commit to marginal gains to take their teams to an even higher performance level
Audience
This session is most effective when run for an entire team. It is intended for all front-line staff in any type of team – it is equally appropriate to those dealing with internal customers as to those helping external customers.
Format
A highly practical, enjoyable, stimulating – and effective! – one-day workshop for a group of up to 12 people.
This session can also be run virtually, of course, preferably via Zoom.
‘Pre- and post’
For maximum impact, and depending on the number of participants in the programme, we recommend a separate advance briefing session for managers. We can also support your internal comms to ensure that the programme is appropriately positioned. And a pre-workshop survey on social styles is worth considering.
We’ll make some recommendations as to how line managers should embed the learning in the three or four months after the workshop(s).
Workshop outline
1 Welcome, aims and introductions
- Why are we here?
- Exercise – ‘Brain gym’
- WIIFM? – what’s important to the customer?
2 Customer experience
- What does great customer service look like?
- … and bad?
- Case study – Little Britain
- Net promoter scores
- Exercise – What score would you give yourself – and your organisation? And what score would your customers give?
- Case study – The Library
- Technical quality v functional quality
- How to improve customers’ opinions by improving functional quality
- Exercise – service and brand
- Why we need to understand what our customers think of us before we can offer a truly customer centric service
3 Communication skills for great customer service
- What do we mean by ‘communication’?
- Why is it vital to the customer experience?
- How to enhance your impact – words, tone and body language
- Phone and email
- How and when to push back with respect
- Skills practice
- ‘Going above and beyond’ – who says?
4 Social styles
- The four styles – and two behavioural dimensions – and one key skill
- Exercise – what’s your style?
- Recognising other people’s styles
- Exercise – ‘teach back’
- How to manage relationships based on different social styles
5 Moments of truth
- ‘Touch points’ and the ‘customer journey’
- Journey mapping for customer experience enhancement
- MOT activities
- The MOT business plan
6 Action planning
- Personal commitments to action
- Activity – capturing actions