Customer Service Training Course for Managers and Professionals

What you'll take away from this customer service training

This customer service training will increase your confidence at dealing with customers who become difficult to satisfy when things go wrong. It'll help you develop the understanding and skill you need to calm them down and win their trust when they're disappointed, suspicious or angry. With these skills you'll end up confident you can turn unintended problems into opportunities to win even more respect and trust from your customer.

How the skills you'll practise on this course will make your customer service much more successful

What's the hardest thing about providing customer service?

The hardest thing about customer service is handling negative emotions. The customer has spend hard earned money buying goods or services he needs to be able to rely on. When something goes wrong it's only natural for his to be upset. His immediate reaction is to feel disappointed, let down, in a panic, angry, or worried, and while in this state it's unrealistic to expect him to be able to be calm and reasonable. The trouble is, as you know from your own experience, you're unlikely to deal successfully with the problem while the customer is in an emotional state.

What some customer service people don't realise is that the very first thing the customer needs to be able to do is let off steam, get it off his chest. Until he has done this it's not psychologically possible for him to take part in a calm, reasonable conversation.

But listening to someone getting negative feelings off his chest can be a very uncomfortable experience. The natural tendency is to try reasure him, get down to the detail, ask questions, and try to get him to listen to reason before he's ready. Unfortunately, instead of calming him down this approach is in danger of winding him up and making him even more tense.

What's the most crucial skill you need for providing customer service?

If you want to give good customer service you need, above all, to be able to listen patiently and with empathy. It's the first thing you need to do when something goes wrong. It shows the customer that he has your undivided attention, and that you appreciate how serious the problem is for him.

Nothing calms the customer down more quickly and builds his trust in you better than the quality of your listening. That's why this customer service training focuses on enabling you to be a master of the art of listening with empathy when you're dealing with customers in an emotional state. 

What other skills will this customer service training give me?

As well as listening with empathy you'll learn how to speak to the customer clearly and firmly about everything he needs to know in order to trust you and cooperate with you in overcoming the problem. It's very easy to make the wrong assumptions about this.

For example, it's easy to assume the customer knows you're keen and determined to stay with him on the problem until it is fixed. Because you take it for granted he knows this, it doesn't occur to you to spell it out to him. But because his confidence in you has been shaken by what went wrong he may not actually know it. So he becomes more difficult to deal with just because you didn't spell out to him and reassure him about this. Such misunderstandings are common. The way to avoid them is to develop your ability to speak firmly and clearly. We call this the skill of speaking assertively. 

A blend of listening with empathy and speaking assertively is what you need in order to handle difficult situations with customers with confidence and grace. They're the two core skills you'll develop on this customer service training course.