Course Outcomes

This coaching and supervision skills course for customer service managers will:

  • Explain how to set goals, standards, and hold people accountable for meeting customer service expectations.
  • Suggest daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual processes for ensuring strong management.
  • Offer models and templates for coaching conversations and counseling sessions.
  • Provide ideas for keeping employees engaged in their work.

Course Overview

The company paid for training, the staff loved it, service improved for a while, but then everything went back to “normal.” Unfortunately, in organizations large and small, that plot repeats itself time and again. Why? Customer service training can educate staff, but it alone is not enough to maintain a culture of service. Managers must manage front-line employees if they want to get the best from them and perpetuate a service culture.  This course focuses specifically on the skills customer service managers, supervisors, and team leaders must have in order to drive staff performance and improve the customer experience.

Program Objectives

At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

  • Describe the supervisor’s role in delivering first-rate customer service.
  • Create an environment that is conducive to delivering exceptional service.
  • Schedule time to supervise.
  • Perform management tasks with regularity.
  • Set SMART goals and delegate tasks at the right level to the right people.
  • Coach employees for growth.
  • Provide constructive feedback and follow up on goals and workgroup targets with direct reports.
  • Counsel employees who are not performing up to expectations.
  • Use proven tactics for dealing with difficult behaviors.
  • Employ low-cost and no-cost strategies to engage their teams.
  • Develop an action plan to improve their supervision skills.

The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of participant materials prior to the session(s).

Workshop Outline

What Strong Supervisors Do: Identifying Targets

A strong customer service supervisor can mean the difference between a staff that provides a consistently great service experience and a group that is hit or miss. This program begins with a discussion about the manager’s role in the service experience, what great managers do, and pitfalls many managers often encounter.

Working a Plan: Putting a System in Place

Even if a manager knows what should be done, finding the time to take care of the necessities is sometimes a challenge. Worse still, when supervisors fail to make the time to manage, they often find their problems increase. In this part of the course, we will examine the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual actions strong supervisors take. 

Eight Days a Week: Best Foot Forward Monday Through Monday

Strong managers follow certain daily rituals. In this seminar segment, we will examine such actions as conducting shift huddles, providing one-on-one coaching, offering praise, and modeling ethical behavior. Next, we will discuss what those actions look and sound like and determine which make sense to put in immediate practice. 

Four Times a Month: Weekly Tasks

While some tasks occur daily, others happen on a weekly basis. In this part of the course, we will explore delegation, goal setting, and one-on-one meetings. We will practice each of those activities through a series of role-playing activities and exercises.

Coaching and Performance Feedback: Anytime Activities

Performance feedback should not only happen during an annual review. It should be part of the normal working relationship between managers and those they supervise. This segment explores the steps of giving both positive and negative feedback. Using case studies and real-life examples, participants will have the opportunity to practice skills and receive coaching.

Monthly Moments: Messaging, Measures, and Motivation

Teams work best when they are working toward something, it’s being measured, and the environment allows for people to succeed. In this part of the workshop, we will talk about communicating vision, measuring and sharing performance statistics, and encouraging employee engagement and initiative. During this course component, we will also talk about what to do when something is not working as expected.

Pull out Your Pompoms: Becoming a Cheerleader without Being Cheesy

When managing customer service staff, it’s important to remember that little things mean a lot. In this final part of the program, we will talk about low-cost and no-cost actions supervisors can take to keep employees engaged and excited about their work.

By the end of this training, participants will be better able to supervise and manage those who work directly with customers. From coach to cheerleader, participants will understand what it takes to keep front-line employees motivated and performing at their best.