Customer Liaison Skills Training for Managers and Professionals

The Art of Connecting with Customers

Skills

Improve Skills

Enhance customer liaison skills to unlock potential for relationship-building and effective communication strategies.
Confidence

Improve Confidence

Foster a positive, supportive atmosphere using advanced communication skills to manage tough customer situations.
EQ

Emotional Intelligence

Learn to calm difficult customers, inspire enthusiasm, and earn trust with expert coaching, for all skill levels.

Refine your communication skills by learning to harness your emotional intelligence with one of the UK's most acclaimed management training courses.

Why Choose This Training?

More Than Just A Course Of Lectures

What gets in the way of developing and holding on to new communication skills are old habits of thinking and speaking. Even if the advice is very good the reason why it rarely sticks are the mental habits people inevitably revert to, especially under pressure.

Unlearning those old habits and internalising a more effective and lasting approach to communication needs more than a short course of lectures on how to do it.

What Makes This Training Stand Out?

What makes this training stand out is the exceptional support through one-to-one coaching sessions and continuous feedback. Changing behaviour is not an easy task as old habits are hard to break.

With a 40-year track record we can help you cultivate practical skills, and build your confidence to so you can successfully navigate real-world challenges, ensuring lasting behavioural improvements.

Testimonials

Join thousands of participants getting results

"What I love about this course is that I didn't just learn about the topic, this course is about ME.  I'm confident I can reliably use my new skills, even when under pressure".

5 stars

A Project Manager At A Tech Company

"A lesson for life! The power of effective communication is incredible when one masters the skills "listening with empathy" and "speaking assertively"

5 stars

A Project Quality Engineer

Clients We Have Worked With

Well-known companies who have used this course again and again, over many years

  • Amgen 3
  • BBC
  • aunt bessies
  • Cargill 2
  • Heinz Logo 3
  • Civil service
  • NHS 2
  • Kelloggs Logo 2
  • IGT
  • JM 4 copy
  • Schweppes 3 logo
  • Castrol 3
  • Dewhirst 2
  • avon logo png
  • Nestle Logo
  • RSPB Logo 2022
  • Shell
  • UNHCR 3
  • unilever 2
  • BP 2
  • FBN 2

Course Summary

Training Objectives

This course is designed to help you ensure your customer liaison skills are good enough to deliver the highest standards of customer service. You'll learn how to support your customers when things go wrong, handle difficult customers, deal with complaints, and calming people down who are upset. Each time the course runs it is tailored to the specific needs of each organisation, so it'll be easy to accommodate your specific situations.

Develop Emotional Intelligence

You will learn a set of powerful emotional intelligence communication techniques so that you can manage difficult conversations, handle challenging situations, build relationships and set firm boundaries.

Transferable Skills

The goal of this training is to equip you with the tools they need to build strong, lasting relationships in your professional life, although because these skills are so transferable many clients report vast improvements in their personal relationships as well.

Develop Skills

This is a skills development rather than just a theoretical programme, so the emphasis throughout will be on you taking turn after turn, practising your skills, while receiving feedback and coaching about your effect on others.

Repeated Practice and Feedback

In your coaching sessions you will be helped to practise dealing with the kinds of situation you find challenging, again and again, until you are confident you can do it successfully.

Video Analysis

We'll combine practical, hands-on experience with video replay and analysis and discussion of the principles involved to help you gain both skills and understanding. Special attention is paid to your individual training needs, so you can practise your skills in real-life situations that you have to handle at work.

Sustained Change

That's why as well as your place in a small group, this training includes a generous amount of private and confidential one-to-one coaching sessions online, spread over several months, ensuring an exceptional level of support. This will ensure the changes you make are sustained over a longer period of time and any obstacles are overcome. Choose between online training available worldwide, or in-person face-to-face courses in the UK.

Course Dates and Price

For a list of upcoming course dates (for online coaching and face-to-face training), the locations of the next 3-day public courses in the UK and pricing Click here.

Free Initial Session

This initial coaching session serves as an introduction to the "Skills with People" course, allowing you to understand the course's relevance and effectiveness for your specific needs before committing to it.

Reserve Your Taster Session

 

Assertiveness, Listening Skills & Emotional Intelligence Training

What Makes This Customer Liaison Training So Effective?

The Keys to Successful Interactions

For more than 40 years this training course on how to deal with people has proven to be one of the most highly acclaimed. Over the years we've had thousands of managers and professionals through our hands. Many have said it's one of the best customer liaison training courses they ever attended. We have helped our clients develop their skills so they can communicate more effectively.

If you're in a customer-facing role then having good customer liaison skills are critical. Here's how we could help you leave this course with a deeper understanding of customer liaison skills, and a range of practical skills and strategies tucked up your sleave you can use to build stronger relationships and deliver exceptional customer service.

Benefit of this Customer Liaison Training Course

Aspect

Benefit of this Customer Liaison Training Course

Skill Development

Practice with role-plays, lots of rehearsal, and repeated practice with feedback until you're confident.

Communication Strategies

Active listening, empathy, and assertive communication.

Addressing Challenges

Handling customer complaints, managing difficult customers, and responding to aggressive feedback.

Customisation

Tailored to specific needs and challenges faced by each participant.

Developing a Customer-Centric Approach

Emotional intelligence, empathy, understanding customer needs, and building trust and mutual respect.

Training Engagement

One-to-one coaching, small group training, sharing experiences, and discussing work challenges

Learning Environment

A supportive, collaborative group suplimented by friendly private one-to-one coaching.

Video Camera

You can see yourself on camera for immediate feedback and analysis, then adjust your approach accordingly.

 

Build strong relationships

We'll help you develop the knowledge and skills you need to build strong relationships with your customers by putting you through your paces with role-plays, rehearsal and repeated practice with feedback.

Learn communication strategies

Learn effective communication strategies, including active listening, empathy, and assertive communication. These are demonstrated and practiced so you'll gain hands-on experience in using them.

Address common challenges

Address common challenges that customer liaison professionals face, such as handling customer complaints, or managing difficult customers and how to respond to aggressive feedback. All our is tailored to the specific needs and challenges you face personally, so you'll be learning strategies for overcoming the challenges and developing a toolkit of resources you can use in your daily work, rather than generic examples.

Develop a customer-centric approach

You'll develop a strong customer-centric approach. By developing your emotional intelligence, specifically your empathy, you'll be able to build stronger relationships with your customers. These techniques for understanding customer needs, building trust, will help you win other people round and make it more likely you'll be on track for delivering exceptional customer service.

Training engagement

You'll find our training engaging. The combination of one-to-one coaching and training in a small group will give you the opportunity to share your experiences, and discuss the challenges you face at work. We create a supportive and collaborative learning environment, so you can feel comfortable taking risks as you experiment with your new skills, without fear of being judged if things don't quite go according to plan.

A nurturing learning Environment

Learn in a supportive and collaborative group (in addition to private one-to-one coaching), allowing you to experiment with new skills without fear of judgment if things don't go according to plan

Using a video camera

You'll see for yourself how you come across to other people, be able to analyse the replay, and adjust your approach. Rinse and repeat until you're satisfied you are having the effect on the other person you intend.

People who feel understood are more receptive

Is This The Right Training Course For You?

Discover how quickly being able to tune in to other people's wave-length can have a powerfully reassuring effect.

  • It's my job to handle customers when things go wrong, and sometimes it's difficult because they can be very emotional.
  • I'm uncomfortable when they get emotional.
  • I try to calm them down, but sometimes my effect seems to be to wind them up. I don't understand how this happens. The most difficult part of handling customers is getting them to calm down when something goes wrong.
  • I feel out of my depth handling emotion.
  • One of the hardest parts of your job is handling customers' complaints, and you need to be able to do it well.
  • When dealing with customers you just do your best to be helpful, but you've never considered before that there might be a particular set of skills that could make all the difference to your success.
  • You'd like to know how to improve the customer experience.
Now by involving people he takes them with him

Meet The Trainers - Audio Clip (20 minutes)

Are you sick and tired of worrying about handling upset customers?

Audio Clip - a discussion between two trainers about dealing with angry or complaining customers

 

 

Now by involving people he takes them with him

What You'll Take Away From This Course

Might your need to be better at customer liaison be met by this London based management training course called Skills with People?

  • A high-powered set of customer liaison skills.
  • A very successful way of handling complaints when the customer gets emotional.
  • You'll be much more confident you can handle unhappy customers well when things go wrong. Customers, like everyone else, are easy to handle when things go well, but not so easy when things go wrong. But it's when things go wrong that you have a great opportunity to make the customer experience a positive one. So it needn't be a disaster - potentially it's very good for business if you handle it with skill.
  • Confidence when handling customers' complaints - a key part to play in creating the kind of customer experience that will make your company successful.
eople can't help arguing when they feel misunderstood

A Practical Guide To Customer Liaison Skills

How emotional intelligence can help you hone your customer liaison skills

Here are some guidelines for handling customer complaints or dealing with difficult customers

To follow these guidelines you need to use the two crucial skills you'll develop on this course, empathy and assertiveness. We'll give you sufficient practice and coaching for you to develop the confidence you can use this approach when dealing with a customer:-

  • First, calm the customer down by listening with empathy and allowing him to let off steam.
  • Then, be assertive in stating firmly and clearly:-
  1. How you feel about it (e.g., you regret it has happened, you're keen to do something about it).
  2. What you are going to do about it (e.g., ask him for more facts, go and talk to X, ring him back within Y amount of time).
  • Then do what you've said you'll do.
  • Finally check that the customer is fully satisfied.

Example

Below is an example of two conversations with a customer. The first is without the two crucial customer liaison skills. The second shows how the conversation goes when you use the skills.

It's usually very disturbing to a customer when something goes wrong, or seems to go wrong, with a product or service he depends on. Behind many complaints or calls for technical support there are strong feelings - anxiety, frustration, anger, disappointment, panic. And until the customer has expressed his feelings and let off steam it's very hard for him to calm down and think rationally. Customer liaison people, just because they're so eager to get stuck in and fix the problem, often make two mistakes:-

  • They expect the customer to engage in a rational conversation before letting off steam.
  • They take it for granted that he knows they intend to stay with him, get to the bottom of his problem and help him resolve it. Of course that's their intention, but in his highly charged emotional state he probably doesn't assume it.

Both these mistakes are illustrated in the example below. Nicola is the customer liaison person:-

Here's the conversation WITHOUT the two skills

  • NICOLA: Customer support. How can I help?
  • CUSTOMER: It's your ***** software. It keeps letting me down. I can't rely on it.
  • NICOLA: What exactly is the problem?
  • CUSTOMER: How do I know what the ***** problem is? I shouldn't have wasted my money on it. It's useless! What am I supposed to do now?
  • NICOLA: Please calm down and tell me exactly what the difficulty is.
  • CUSTOMER: Don't tell me to calm down! This is a crisis! My business depends on it - worst luck!
  • NICOLA: But if you don't tell me what's going wrong how can I help?
  • CUSTOMER: You don't seem to realise how serious this is! If you call this 'customer support' you must be joking!
  • NICOLA: I'm not going to take any more insults. Do you want me to help or don't you?
  • CUSTOMER: How can I trust you to help me if you don't realise how serious this is? (He may not actually say this, but it probably is how he is feeling.)

There's obviously a serious misunderstanding here. The customer urgently needs help, and Nicola is eager to give it. The reason why they totally fail to connect is that Nicola is not using emotional intelligence. She's not talking about either her own or the customer's feelings.

Here's the same conversation WITH the two skills

This time Nicola is much more communicative, and uses the two skills at the heart of emotional intelligence, empathy and assertiveness. These are the two main skills taught on the Skills with People course - and they're both crucial customer liaison skills:-

  • NICOLA: Hi. It's Nicola here. I'm on the customer support team. How can I help?
  • CUSTOMER: Hi. It's your ***** software. It keeps letting me down. I can't rely on it.
  • NICOLA (using empathy): From your tone of voice this sounds like a crisis.
  • CUSTOMER (lets off steam): Too damned right! My business depends on it. It's costing me time and money.
  • NICOLA (more empathy, plus clear reassurance): I can hear it's urgent. My job now is to identify and fix the problem to your satisfaction.
  • CUSTOMER (because he's been allowed to let off steam he rapidly calms down): That's a relief.
  • NICOLA (takes charge, but with empathy): First I'm going to have to ask you some detailed questions to identify precisely what the problem is. Are you ready for us to do that?
  • CUSTOMER (now feels sufficiently safe and calm to take part in a rational conversation): Please go ahead. (His blood pressure is now returning to normal.)

This time nothing is taken for granted. Everything is communicated. The customer rapidly calms down and is able to take part in a rational conversation. He feels understood and reassured - and this doesn't take long. Because of how the problem is handled his confidence in the supplier is restored.

The two skills make all the difference. One is Nicola's quick empathy. The other is the assertive reassurance she gives him that she intends to stay with him until the problem is fixed.

So don't argue. Don't ride roughshod over people's feelings. Don't rush them. Don't expect them to be reasonable before they've had a chance to let off steam. Don't assume they know your whole purpose and intention is to give them the support they urgently need - spell it out.

People used to be scared of him - no longer

Further Reading

Are you a manager, leader or a professional needing to handle difficult conversations more confidently?

For more information on this website relevant to customer liaison skills you might also find our page on communication skills and emotional intelligence relevant and helpful.

Get Started Now

Free exploratory coaching session

The first session is free so you're not committing yourself until you're sure this training is relevant for you. You will also learn something practical you can use right away that'll help you handle a difficult situation more successfully at work.

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