This course was designed for busy professionals looking to improve their customer service skills through actionable knowledge and concrete examples. It’s the result of over a decade’s work of identifying the quintessential customer service skills and implementing an effective model for handling customer interactions.
By the time this course was published, I had been delivering some version of it for over 13 years, both online and in a classroom setting, to hundreds of customer service representatives in dozens of different industries. The idea for this hands-on, practical format came to me after my first few customer service training sessions, which were exclusively focused on general theory. At the end of each session, I’d have one or more participants ask me: “Ok, that makes sense, but what do I reply when the customer says (insert any specific scenario you can think of here)?”
This course starts with a brief overview of the current state and scope of the customer service activity, meant to set the foundation for handling customer interactions. The second section covers the core skills you’ll need to successfully deal with customer requests, namely emotion regulation, controlling the tone of voice, using positive language, empathic listening, and questioning skills. By the time you reach the third section of the course, you’ll be ready to fully leverage the extensive set of communication techniques included in our toolbox. There are over 20 such techniques, split into two categories: tools to help you perform your job effectively (or what I like to call the basic tools) and tools to allow you to exceed customer expectations and earn customer loyalty (which would be the equivalent of the power tools).
By the time you complete this course, you will be able to:
● Identify and utilize all key customer service skills in various contexts;
● Successfully handle most types of customer interactions;
● Determine which combination of communication techniques is best suited to resolve specific customer issues or requests.
