Course Outcomes

This course for people delivering customer service over the phone will:

  • Offer best practices for greeting customers and setting a positive tone.
  • Provide suggestions for active listening and effectively questioning others.
  • Give practical advice for dealing with difficult calls and callers.
  • Recommend techniques for wrapping up calls and measuring customer satisfaction.

Course Overview

If your organization’s telephone presence is less than top notch, people will likely judge your employees as rude, uncaring, unprofessional, and uninterested in their business. Do the people who answer your phone appear empathetic? Friendly? In control? Do they listen well? Do they understand what makes the person on the other end of the telephone tick? During this program, participants will learn the basics of customer service, how to project a polished phone image, demonstrate proper telephone skills through practice activities, and leave with the tools to present an image that reflects confidence, credibility, and capability.

Program Objectives

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

  • Explain the importance of a positive attitude in delivering good customer service.
  • List the benefits of providing outstanding customer service to both internal and external customers.
  • Identify barriers to providing high-quality customer service.
  • Apply techniques for dealing with angry or upset customers by successfully answering case studies.
  • Effectively deal with dialects and accents on the telephone.
  • Demonstrate the proper way to greet, transfer, and place callers on hold.
  • Understand and identify different behavioral styles and adapt as necessary.
  • Rephrase blunt communication for better results.
  • Effectively manage job stress.
  • Develop an action plan to improve customer-service 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 the participant materials prior to the session(s).

Workshop Outline

What an Attitude!: Where Service Excellence Starts

A positive attitude on the part of the customer-service provider goes a long way toward creating an excellent experience. This introductory lesson covers the factors that produce great service and those that ruin an interaction with a customer.

Tools of the Trade: The Telephone

In this unit, participants will learn phrases that convey professionalism, warmth, and helpfulness. They will learn how to screen calls without putting people off; find out what to say instead of, “Hold, please;” practice taking accurate and effective messages; understand questioning techniques that get to the root of customer concerns.

Accents and Dialects: Tips for Handling Tough Calls

A thick accent or regional dialect can make a telephone conversation difficult. This component focuses on ways to better handle those with heavy accents and dialects along with skills for reducing the speech markers of your organization’s staff.

It’s Not What You Say: Rephrasing for Better Relationships

The lesson in the saying “it’s not what you say but how you say it” is one that takes some people years to learn. In this section, participants will learn how to use language so that their messages will be better received during customer interactions. Special emphasis is placed on learning to say “no” in ways that reduce conflict and eliminating phrases such as “that’s not my job” and “I don’t know.”

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Dealing with Difficult Customers

Not all customers are easy to deal with. Using real-world case studies, participants will learn in this portion of the training how to interact effectively with angry customers, complaining customers, customers who try to take advantage of the organization, and other troublesome people.

Do Call Again: Leaving Positive, Lasting Impressions

This discussion teaches participants how to leave a lasting impression that makes callers want to call again. Points covered during this session include managing talkative callers without being rude, making statements that indicate a conversation is over, and leaving effective voicemail messages that prevent telephone tag.

Customer-Service Stress: 15-Minute Mini Spa

Dealing with customers’ needs, wants, and frustrations can lead to unnecessary stress and frustration. The training session concludes with a presentation of stress-management techniques that ensure participants will stay refreshed and alert while delivering exceptional customer service.

At the program’s conclusion, participants will have an understanding of what makes a good customer-service experience, how to deliver excellent customer service over the telephone, how to deal with difficult customers, and how to take care of themselves while helping others.