The Vital Role of All Customer-Contact Personnel
You are familiar with your organization as an “insider,” but your customers judge you by their contacts and your “up-front” operations.
- Your organization through the eyes of the customer.
- How to handle the inherent frustrations of heavy customer contact.
- Why the choices you make with each customer contact are so important.
How to Use Teamwork as a Powerful Force
The very best customer service personnel can’t be effective without internal support. By promoting team-building techniques, you can reduce stress, increase staff satisfaction and offer your customers the highest level of service.
- Four ways to build a strong team
- How to get the support of managers, coworkers and staff
- Tips for improving cooperation between departments
Smart Techniques for Better Communication
What you say may not be what the customer hears; the best intentions can be misconstrued through poor communication skills. You’ll learn guidelines to communicate your message clearly, avoid misinterpretation and project a positive image of your organization.
- How to prevent misunderstandings
- Ways to make a winning first impression
- The secrets to good rapport with customers and associates
- Easy techniques for crystal-clear, positive communications
The Critical Art of Listening
Are you hearing your customers clearly? Listening is not a passive activity, but a skill that requires concentration and practice. You’ll learn how to really understand what your customers are saying.
- 12 poor listening habits and how to avoid them
- 11 creative techniques to sharpen your listening skills
- How listening can surmount a tense situation
Strategies of Customer Goodwill and Trust
Every customer must place a certain amount of trust in the people and organizations they do business with. You’ll learn how to win your customers’ trust and build their feelings of loyalty for a long-term, satisfying relationship.
- How to make customers feel important, and why you should
- The power of using names, with five easy tips to remember them
- How to express appreciation
- Effective techniques for building customer loyalty
- Five ways to reduce costly mistakes
Winning Telephone Techniques
Often, the only connection with a valuable customer is the telephone. You’ll learn how to combat the depersonalization of phone communications and be as effective on the phone as you would be face-to-face.
- How to avoid making a bad telephone impression
- Five ways to improve your over-the-phone persona
- Telephone greetings that set a positive stage
- Three simple rules for answering another person's phone
- How to speak concisely and make every word count
- Strategies for contending with rude or abusive callers
- Innocent statements that can drive customers away
How to Deal with Complaints and Angry Customers
An otherwise positive day can be destroyed by a single difficult customer. Worse, the difficult customer can break your concentration, raise your stress level and rob you of your effectiveness with other customers. You’ll learn how to deal with the difficult while maintaining your professionalism and sanity.
- How to keep from becoming upset and unraveled
- Practical tips for managing dangerous anger
- The right and wrong ways to say "no"
- Techniques for handling complaints to the customer's complete satisfaction
- How to keep your cool in the toughest situations
