Coaching for ‘Brilliant Customer Service!’

Coaching is sometimes seen as a luxury done by managers who have time on their hands. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Coaching for customer service is about getting things done and improving effectiveness. It’s a vital skill for contact centre managers, help desk managers, customer service team leaders and all those managing customer-facing staff.

When done correctly, coaching benefits the individual, the team and the organisation. Customer service coaching involves specific activities designed to help customer-facing staff improve and maximise their potential by learning from day-to-day tasks.

A successful manager or supervisor in a customer-facing environment needs to combine three core competencies:

1      Above-average customer skills and knowledge

2      Personal drive and ambition; motivation and positive attitude

3      ‘Customer intelligence’, ie, specialist product, customer and application knowledge

This unique course addresses how a coach or mentor can improve performance in these three areas – specifically as they are reflected in their staff’s behaviour in, and preceding, a customer call, request or contact.

Training objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Identify customer contact coaching and mentoring opportunities in day-to-day situations
• Understand the customer contact coaching process and model
• Identify the skills needed to coach effectively
• Develop the appropriate skills to coach successfully
• Recognise the obstacles to successful coaching and mentoring
• Monitor and improve poor performance without damaging the relationship or the person’s self-esteem and confidence
• Show how to make every customer feel SPECIAL through understanding customer expectations and delivering service excellence

A unique feature of the course is that it addresses both the standards and the skills people use over and above their technical knowledge. The course features the SPECIAL model:

Speed and Time

Personal and personalised

Expectations – manage and exceed

Competence and courtesy

Information

Attitude

Long-term relationship and follow-through

Each of these points is related explicitly to the jobs the course participants do and their interaction with customers on the telephone, via email or face-to-face.

Audience

All managers and team leaders who are managing staff who support or work with either internal or external customers.

The course is suitable for all sectors – large and small organisations, private and public sector, not for profit, UK and international.

Format

The course is highly participative, drawing on the learning needs and experience of participants to highlight principles. Very clear and specific skills, models and techniques are covered.

It includes a Coaching Tool-kit for participants to use following the course.

The course covers all the key elements required for effective customer service coaching:

• Expertise, skills and knowledge
  • Understanding of key concepts and models for main training modules
  • How to prepare for a coaching session
  • How best to give feedback and information leading to improvements in customer contact approaches
  • Able to analyse performance issues by behaviours, attitude/motivation, skills, and knowledge (BASK)
• Behavioural change
  • Conduct regular (monthly) and more effective customer contact coaching and performance reviews
  • Use more persuasive and influential methods in correcting and improving customer contact performance
  • Use coaching as a motivational tool as well as for performance improvement
• Strategies, models and tools
  • Coaching planning toolkit
  • Performance diagnosis tool
  • Customer contact and service standards analysis
  • BASK customer contact performance model
• Learning exercise highlights
  • Pre-course assignment
  • Planning sessions
  • Case studies
  • Coaching role-plays
  • Post-course follow-up

The course includes regular discussion, planning and other practical exercises to develop and practice the skills and methods presented. Presentation and exercises can be tailored to specific situations from participants’ work. The style is up-beat and motivational.

Special features

The course can be tailored to include any specialist topics such as advanced telephone skills, dealing with complaints, internal planning, etc, according to organisational need or the skill level of the participants.