Interacting with Customers
Effectively communicating with customers increases customer satisfaction and projects service excellence. This course provides valuable advice on how to improve client service (CS) by building customer relationships with better customer conversations.
It covers how to improve conversations with customers by speaking effectively, using vocal cues, listening actively, and using paraphrasing to convey your understanding of the customer’s needs.
0.5 Hours
- Classify examples of communication as formal or informal
- Identify methods to overcome barriers to effective communication
- Recognize the skills required for effective speaking
- Match positive and negative vocal cues with examples
- Identify the factors that contribute to effective listening
- Match the mirroring behaviors involved in active listening to their characteristics
- Identify the benefits of using paraphrasing techniques
- Use verbal communication skills effectively in a customer support environment
Communicating Effectively with Customers
Effectively communicating with customers is essential to the success of any customer-oriented business. Adapting to the different communication styles and emotions of customers will help you build customer relationships through better customer conversations. Improving conversations with customers enables an efficient, high quality client service (CS).
This course explains how to adapt to the different communication types and identify the common emotions that customers experience when contacting a support center. It also explains how to adapt your writing skills to communicate through e-mail and to document incidents.
0.5 Hours
- Distinguish between techniques for meeting a customer’s psychological and business needs
- Match techniques for understanding customers’ emotions with their descriptions
- Identify the strategies used to build rapport with customers
- Identify the strategies for adapting to a customer’s competency level
- Recognize how to relate to the different communication styles
- Sequence the stages of the call-flow process
- Recognize best practices for writing professional e-mails and reports
- Apply effective communication skills when dealing with customers
Controlling Conflict, Stress, and Time in a Customer Service Environment
Working at a customer support center or help desk environment can be challenging. Customers can sometimes be demanding and unreasonable, leading to conflict and stress. The customer service representative (CSR) who aims for service excellence can improve customer relationships by understanding the emotional needs of each customer and adapting to how they communicate.
In this course, you’ll learn how to identify and resolve conflict, negotiate with customers, and develop strategies to better manage time and stress, and you’ll explore how a positive approach and attitude can benefit client service (CS).
0.5 Hours
- Recognize the warning signs of potential conflict
- Identify ways to reduce conflict with customers
- Identify skills for negotiating effectively with customers
- Recognize strategies of assertive communication
- Recognize ways of demonstrating confidence when speaking to a customer
- Identify strategies for reducing stress
- Identify strategies to manage time
- Recognize strategies to manage conflict, stress, and time effectively
Dealing with Customer Service Incidents and Complaints
Without a diverse workforce, organizations run the risk of viewing things from a very limited perspective. The organization provides the structure for operation, but it’s the individuals within that organization who carry out the mission of the organization. To get the most innovative solutions from the individuals in your business, you need to create a workplace that embraces inclusion and avoids bias and stereotyping.
This course focuses on what diversity is and how to leverage the diversity within the organization. You’ll also explore the barriers, such as unconscious bias, that must be overcome to create a diversified and inclusive working environment.
0.5 Hours
- Recognize the typical steps in the process of dealing with a customer
- Recognize the four actions in documenting an incident
- Sequence the steps in the incident management process
- Match incident measurement metrics with examples of what they measure
- Identify techniques for dealing with abusive or irate customers
- Match customer issues with the appropriate escalation approach
- Identify the elements that need to be included in customer feedback
Polishing Your Skills for Excellent Customer Service
As a customer service representative (CSR), creating a support culture that focuses on your customers’ needs is key.
In this course, you’ll learn how to enhance your interactions with customers to project service excellence. You’ll explore how to establish effective customer relationships that involve customers in problem solving.
Finally, you’ll discover how to improve communication for a better client service (CS) in a cross-cultural customer support center or help desk environment.
0.4 Hours
- Recognize examples of customer support provided with an excellent service attitude
- Identify personal methods of projecting an excellent service attitude
- Recognize examples of techniques for establishing effective customer relationships
- Recognize the steps to encourage customer involvement in problem solving
- Match the methods used for effective cross-cultural communication to examples
- Recognize how language barriers can impact your communications with customers
Rapport Building in Customer Service
Strong customer relationships are key to projecting service excellence. Building rapport is essential and requires knowing your customers, understanding their situations, and providing an empathetic ear for them to voice their concerns.
In this course, you’ll learn how to improve client service (CS) by building rapport with customers. It covers paying close attention to customer needs, connecting with the customer, and being positive.
You’ll also learn how to empathize with customers by relating your own experiences, reflecting their emotions back to them, and normalizing their difficulties.
0.5 Hours
- Recall how to demonstrate to customers that they have your full attention
- Recognize strategies for connecting with customers
- Identify strategies for being positive and friendly in customer service
- Recognize guidelines for empathizing with customers by relating your own experiences
- Identify how to show you understand customers’ feelings by reflecting their emotions
- Recognize guidelines for normalizing customers’ difficulties
- Recognize guidelines for building rapport with customers
Providing On-site Customer Service
When you meet customers on their turf, your initial meeting forms the basis of their overall impression of you, your abilities, and your company. You can enhance customer relationships by improving the impressions you make in the field using a few tried-and-true techniques.
In this course, you’ll learn about guidelines and techniques for each stage of an on-site client service (CS) visit: preparation, arrival, service, wrap up, and follow up. You’ll also learn how to project service excellence by making a good impression in the field, through starting on a positive note, setting clear expectations, listening actively, and working to improve customer understanding.
0.5 Hours
- Recall guidelines for preparing for an on-site customer service visit
- Identify actions to take when arriving at a customer’s home and performing a customer service
- Specify rules for wrapping up an on-site customer service visit
- Recognize techniques for starting customer service visits on a positive note
- Identify examples of customer service pitfalls that can be avoided by setting clear expectations
- Recognize statements that reflect active listening
- Recall guidelines for increasing customer understanding
- Use techniques for ensuring effective and efficient on-site customer service
Providing Telephone Customer Service
When you’re providing customer service over the phone, without face-to-face interaction, it can be challenging to establish the right customer relationships. There are many techniques that can help you consistently deliver service excellence over the telephone.
In this course, you’ll learn basic etiquette tips for answering, managing, and ending client service (CS) calls. You’ll also learn how to make a good impression by listening, using questions to probe for more information, minding your tone, and empathizing with the customer. Finally, you’ll learn ways of reflecting or adapting to your customer’s style.
0.5 Hours
- Recall guidelines for answering calls and putting customers on hold
- List techniques for transferring and closing customer service calls
- Recall techniques for maintaining a positive tone of voice on customer service calls
- Identify examples of active listening techniques
- Recognize examples of customer-focused language
- Identify approaches to helping resolve customer problems
- Recall techniques for mirroring a customer’s language
- Use proper etiquette and techniques when providing customer service via telephone
Providing Effective Internal Customer Service
When you do things to help other people within your company do their jobs better, you are providing internal customer service. The quality of that service often has a huge impact on the overall quality of client service (CS) delivered to external customers.
In this course, you’ll learn about types of internal customers and how to identify internal customer relationships. You’ll also learn about the importance of getting to know your internal customers, identifying their expectations of you, and taking action on those expectations.
Finally, you’ll learn guidelines for providing internal customer service excellence.
0.5 Hours
- Recognize internal customers and internal customer service providers in a given example
- Recognize the importance of identifying your internal customer service relationships
- Recall benefits of identifying and getting to know your internal customers
- Identify examples of techniques for identifying mutual expectations with internal customers
- Recognize examples of guidelines for taking action and gathering feedback from internal customers
- Recall guidelines for providing internal customer service
- Recognize actions that demonstrate an internal customer service attitude
- Use guidelines and strategies to identify and assist your internal customers
Facing Confrontation in Customer Service
Achieving service excellence is very challenging when dealing with angry customers. By following a few simple techniques to avoid confrontation, you can manage difficult customer relationships and project a high-quality client service (CS).
In this course, you’ll learn about typical trouble spots in dealing with angry customers and guidelines for avoiding conflict. You’ll also learn how to handle a customer complaint by defusing the tension, investigating the problem, and coming to an agreement on a solution.
0.4 Hours
- Recognize examples of guidelines for taking responsibility for customer complaints
- Match boundary-related customer service mistakes to strategies for preventing them
- Match types of customer service rudeness to strategies for avoiding them
- Recognize guidelines for defusing a customer’s frustration
- Identify strategies for investigating customer complaints
- Recall guidelines for coming to a problem-resolving agreement with a customer
- Recognize strategies for properly addressing and handling customer complaints
Designing a Customer Service Strategy
There are several defining moments, or moments of truth, that can make or break every service transaction. To successfully navigate these moments of truth in customer relationships, it’s important for service organizations to add value to a customer’s experience by creating and implementing strong, clearly defined client service (CS) standards.
In this course, you’ll learn about techniques used to shape the direction of customer service in an organization, including mapping, researching, taking action on, and evaluating moments of truth. You’ll also learn how to develop and implement a customer service strategy to achieve service excellence.
0.5 Hours
- Recall the importance of managing moments of truth
- Recognize how to map and research moments of truth to improve the customer experience
- Identify examples of guidelines for taking action on and evaluating moments of truth
- Recognize examples of effective customer service standards
- Identify examples of steps in the customer service standard development process
- Recall the process for staying tuned into customers’ needs
- Recognize techniques for developing a customer service strategy that improves your customers’ experience
Embracing a Customer-obsessed Mentality
Today in the Age of the Customer, competitive advantage has been redefined. Customers are in control. They have more choices than ever before resulting in sky-high expectations. The only source of competitive advantage is the obsession with understanding, delighting, connecting with and serving customers. Organizations need people who are customer obsessed.
People who are so interested and committed to the people they are creating and designing for that they are willing to spend time, take risks and admit that they personally might be wrong.
People who are so customer obsessed that they never settle but are continually trying to understand what else they can do for their customers.
0.4 Hours
- Identify statements that describe what it means to be customer obsessed
- Recognize the benefits of using a customer-obsessed approach
- Identify methods for staying focused on what your customer values
- Identify behaviors that demonstrate a customer-obsessed attitude
- Identify strategies for becoming customer obsessed
- Knowledge Check: Using a Customer-obsessed Approach