Identifying and Serving the Customer provides skills that enable participants to identify their internal and external customers and to discover what their customers want and how to deliver it. They practice effective communication skills in order to better serve their customers in routine as well as difficult situations. This course, enhanced by video examples, closes the gap between customer expectations and the value-adding service the organization or the individual provides.

Course Overview

Identifying and Serving the Customer is an applications-oriented workshop. Each skill is discussed in general terms and then applied to the participants' own work environment. The course begins and ends with a self-assessment that allows participants to see how their knowledge increases as a result of the course.

First, participants identify how they and the organization benefit when customers are satisfied. They define and apply terms such as "customer focus," "customer satisfaction" and "serving the customer." They identify the organization's expectations and understand the need to align themselves with those expectations. In addition, they identify what the organization tells customers to expect through advertising and promotions, and they apply this to their specific customer relations.

By flowcharting their customer/supplier relationships, participants identify in detail their internal as well as external customers. Through group and individual activities, they identify and explore the specific needs and expectations of their customers. They develop a personalized customer survey to ensure a continuing close match between customer needs and expectations and their own value-adding activities. This survey becomes an action plan to be followed after the course for improved customer satisfaction.

The Customer Service Action Planner is another important tool that helps participants immediately apply information from the course. This instrument enables participants to determine a customer's behavioral style and plan for more effective service strategies that match the customer's preferred way of interacting.

Participants learn the importance of listening as the key to understanding the customer and solving customer problems. This critical skill is often overlooked as people focus on what to tell the customer or what to do for the customer. In Identifying and Serving the Customer participants learn and practice three active-listening responses to demonstrate to customers that they are listening and to reach clarification and understanding.

Participants learn to use I-statements which help them to take responsibility in the customer interaction and to avoid defensiveness. This skill is used to explain to customers what can be done for them rather than what can't.

Exercises related to nonverbal messages increase participants' awareness of how tone of voice, facial expression, and body language communicate a message of their own. The three-step customer satisfaction response, exercises on difficult customer situations, and how to take positive steps for making restitution conclude the skill activities. Through these simulations of both routine and difficult customer interactions, participants practice the communication skills that will win appreciation, loyalty, and repeat business from customers.

Course Objectives

Specific objectives for course participants are:

• Recognize the value of "serving" customers
• Identify specific customers and their needs and expectations
• Acquire skills to communicate effectively with customers in routine and difficult situations
  

Includes:

• 1 Leader's Guide

LENGTH: 1/2 DAY or 1 DAY