Building and Retaining Customer Relationships

Overview

Course duration: 1 day.

This one day course will enable you to understand the root cause of customer complaints, manage customers expectations of you and your organisation and develop relationships that becomes long lasting. 

This course helps you examine the root cause of customer complaints and what words and actions are required to ensure that your customers stay loyal to your organisation’s goods, products and services.  By examining the process, you understand how to satisfy their complaint, retain their custom for the future and secure testimonials like “You’ll never believe what they did to put it right!” You will take away a process mapping template to use with your teams to improve your customer service process.

Is it right for me?

If you are a Customer Service Manager, Team Leader or Supervisor and if you want to hear your customers exclaiming “you’ll never believe what they said and did to put it right!” then this is the course for you. It will help you realign your customer service process for your team to focus on the things that are really valued by your customers. This course will help you develop your own and your team’s performance for managing customers’ expectations, especially when things go wrong for the customer. It will show you the skills and techniques to use and a robust process to put in place to build customer relationships that lead to lasting loyalty.

What will I learn?

• Understand why your customers complain. 
• Analyse your customer service process and improve its value to your customer.
• Use a variety of techniques to develop a customer-focused culture. 
• Apply an effective approach to handling difficult situations and people in an effective and professional manner. 
• Understand how to say ‘no’ but still retain your customers’ custom. 
• Increase the credibility of how you communicate with your customers. 

Pre-course Activity

To gain the maximum benefit from the course, before attending the course you will be sent a questionnaire to complete which asks you to consider current expectations and challenges of both your customers and of you. This will help you set the context of the course and will be used on the day as part of the course activities.

What will it cover?

Why customers complain

• Cause and effect 
• Your role and responsibilities
• Creating a customer-focused culture 

The customer service process

• Top 10 essential steps 
• Right first time complaint handling
• Managing and handling conflict and difficult situations 

You’ll never believe what they said!

• Best practice tips – words to use 
• Saying ‘no’ without risk
• It’s the way you do it that counts 

Understanding Customer Expectations

• Identifying your customers’ real needs and issues
• Managing complaints and reducing escalation
• Achieving ‘right first time’ standards 

Building customer relationships that lead to loyalty

• Customer relationship management 
• Getting it right; Process, Product, Value and Relationships 
• Setting performance standards and key performance measures

Personal Application Plan

• What do my customers expect from me tomorrow?
• Planning for change