Context
We provide the customer service training in the following contexts:
Successive and additional sales
Customer service
making contact, “little history” of interlocutor, proposals and solutions
- Loss of sales opportunities. Mistakes in customer service directly threaten the “successive and additional sale”: ill-treated customers will, of course, give up further purchases/orders or restrict them to the minimum. Acquiring new customers is almost always associated with high costs. During the training, we teach the basics of customer service to eliminate situations in which customer dissatisfaction or anger results from employees’ inability to listen and speak.
- Dealing with difficult customers. In our work, we often hear about the so-called difficult customers. Many times, we are expected to present magical prescriptions and standards that will enable to “tame” aggressive, suspicious and insistent people. Our answer is always the same: there are no magic scripts; only well-prepared people can deal with difficult people. During our training, we do not teach fixed formulas; instead, we improve skills that require mindfulness and deliberation. Every customer, even the most difficult one, has his/her “little history”: he/she wants to be listened to and he/she needs solutions.
- People without experience in customer service. We dedicate our training particularly to people who start their work in customer service. In this version of the training, we focus more on teaching the most basic skills. Our schools and families do not prepare us for work related to handling 50 to 300 calls a day; we make simple mistakes: instead of listening and talking about solutions, we repeat e.g. “no”, “unfortunately”, “if”, “but” many times.
- Complaints and negatives. It happens that our training is carried out in a situation when the company is struggling with the number of negatives and complaints that is higher than before. Misunderstandings and conflicts with customers directly threaten the brand image and, indirectly, in a short period of time, may adversely affect sales results. In such situations, our activities focus on the practice of listening and dealing with objections and reservations.
Programme
Selected issues taught during the customer service training:
- Establishment of contact. In this part of the course, we discuss with participants the factors that influence the automatic assessment that customers make about them within the first 20 seconds of contact. This short time may determine whether we will win the trust of our interlocutors or not. If we are deemed as a good and empathic person, everything we say will be credible. If, however, after 20 seconds, our assessment turns out to be negative, our words will be treated as lies and excuses. Part of these factors can be controlled almost immediately (e.g. bizarre clothing), while controlling others requires effort, exercises and change of attitude (e.g. uncontrollable contemptuous smile).
- Recognition of needs. Each customer has his/her own “little history” that he/she often stubbornly tries to pass on to your employees when contacting the company. People lacking proper training have serious difficulties carefully listening to such statements. They mostly focus on procedures, regulations and systems. They hear their own assumptions and emotions; they cannot accept interlocutor’s perspective.
- Formulation of solutions. At this stage of the training, we teach phrases and expressions that enable to talk about ideas, possibilities and solutions. During the exercises, we show participants what the effects and consequences of conversations oriented on justification, explanation and information may be. Many people that we work with know the words and phrases we suggest, but almost never use them in their statements and very rarely hear them in their environment.
- Dealing with objections and reservations. The most frequent mistake made in customer service is not being mindful of needs and emotions of interlocutors. Participants of our training courses often hurry up very much: they would like to “tick off” individual conversations as soon as possible; unfortunately, the more the customer feels unheeded, the more objections and reservations he/she formulates and the longer the entire contact lasts. During the training, first of all, we teach how to anticipate possible objections and reservations: when they have been expressed directly and with anger, we have to deal with additional problems and negative emotions.
- End of conversation. It happens that a summary of the most important findings and proposals at the end of a conversation with a customer poses a lot of difficulties and problems. Sometimes, there is no summary at all; at other times, it is spoken using such words as “as soon as possible”, “later”, “as if”, “something”, “somewhere”, “sometime”. During the training, we practise words and phrases that guarantee the clear-cut nature of statements that are formulated at the end of contact with the customer.
Methods
During the training, we use the following methods and tools:
Analysis of statements
During the customer service training, we focus in particular on the analysis and practice of key words. We sensitise participants to those language forms that directly involve evoking negative emotions and activate discussions and quarrels. We practise phrases and expressions guaranteeing that your customers will feel important and listened. The Whitefox Statement Coding System was created on the basis of an analysis of over 3,000 transcripts recorded during AC/DC sessions, exercises and simulations; it includes 152 language forms.
Analysis of facial expressions
Customer service conversations usually last from a few seconds to several minutes. In such short social interactions, our facial expressions have an even greater impact on the emotions of the people we talk to. During the training, we teach participants how to identify 7 basic emotions (joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, contempt and disgust) and practise techniques to monitor and control their own facial expressions. In exercises, we use computer software dedicated to facial expression recognition.
Psychological models of adult human development
Whitefox specialises in analysing the language characteristic for particular stages of adult human development. Following favourite grammatical structures, phrases and words, we describe the logic of action of the person with whom we work. During the training, we help participants discover what they focus their attention, thoughts, emotions and actions most often on. Noticing and naming preferred attitudes and patterns of action is usually the starting point to go beyond the resulting restrictions.
Behaviour training
The training is of a practical nature. The lecture part is restricted to the minimum. We do not use slides. Classes rely almost exclusively on performing exercises and simulations.
Open Training
Method
-
Action Logic
In our work, we meet people characterised by extremely different Action Logic. Some think ...
-
Emotions and motivation
Analysis of facial expressions, facial action coding system, Paul Ekman 70'...
-
Strategy and innovation
Markets are conversations, client, competition, trends, action plan, communication, change...
-
Language forms
Psychology of language, narrative and paradigms, propositional calculus, parts of speech, ...