Posts Tagged ‘customer service training’

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Explore the wonders of Britain – why your country needs you !

Friday, January 9th, 2009

A slightly offbeat subject for today’s blog. And not even related to training ! But then if Clarkson can get away with rambling about all sorts of different subjects in his books, I’m sure you’ll forgive me this once.

It’s that time of year when you may be starting to think about your summer holiday.

And as we all know this year may be very different for many people. With uncertain conditions ahead, reduced hours, job losses and pay cuts, the choice for many this year may be very different to normal.

So here’s a thought – by taking your holiday in Britain you will ultimately be taking steps to protect your own job ! If we all spent the £29 billion that we traditionally spend in Britain this summer, that will be money going into food, leisure, entertainment and then from that into packaging, financial services – and so on and so on – you get the picture.

And after all, you can forego that constant sunshine for just one summer can’t you ?!   

Wherever you end up, write in and let us know what sort of customer service standards you get.

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Customer service training issues – the first point of contact is vitally important

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

On a recent trip to the States I was keen to find out about their level of customer service across as many areas as I could observe. Overall the standards were excellent. I will post more of my observations over the coming weeks, but lesson number one was unfortunately a negative one.

It is extremely important that whoever represents your business at the front line is ‘on message’ and diplays a positive, enthusiastic and professional approach. The very first person we met representing the United States was at immigration control (the extra bit you have to go through with your visa, where they take a picture of you and take your fingerprints.) The guy there clearly had some issues, he was surly, didn’t make eye contact at all, and didn’t smile at all – or even offer any positive phrasing such as “have a nice stay” or whatever.

Now you could argue that this matters less in his role, but if this was a commercial organisation, you could quite understand why someone wouldn’t want to go back. It doesn’t matter how good the quality of your products or services is, and how clever your marketing and sales activity is if the person interacting with your customers doesn’t present a positive, cheerful attitude.

So regularly check by calling into your own company or asking your customers what they think to ensure you offer exceptional customer service. It doesn’t matter whether you are in Birmingham, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Leicester, Northampton, Solihull, Lichfield or Peterborough – you are dealing with human beings and they like a bit of personal contact. 

Our customer service training covers this http://www.tomarket.co.uk/customer-service-training.php and a host of other top tips on communication with customers. 

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Posted in communication skills, customer handling, customer services, telephone techniques | 1 Comment »

Spelling is important – really !

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

As you may notice from the To Market website, we carry out team audits for clients, where we will sit and observe their team for a couple of hours while they make live calls. http://www.tomarket.co.uk/teamaudits.php

One thing that comes up frequently is the quality of spelling. Now you could argue that it makes no real difference when the information stays in your in-house database. However information such as company names, and addresses will normally be used for mail merging and so any input error will be transferred on to the front of your highly expensive brochure, exotic flyer or simple letter. And just consider the impact if you’ve spelt their name wrong ! 

One client we worked with recently on telesales training in Birmingham couldn’t understand why whenever they did geographic searches on town name the numbers of available records that came up were small. But we have 10,000 live records they cried ! On closer inspection they were horrified to discover that the problem was their team’s awful spelling. Towns like Gloucester, Norwich, Leicester, and even Milton Keynes seemed to pose challenges.  

So spend a little time checking the quality of the infomation in your database. It is well worth it in the long run. Remember the old computing adage “garbage in, garbage out.”   

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Good customer service is easy – use your eyes and ears !

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

The easy thing about ‘teaching’ exceptional customer service standards is that all of us are customers in our every day lives when we’re not trying to deliver exceptional customer service.

So whenever you interact with a business, take a few seconds out afterwards to stop and consider how the experience made you feel and what the key things were that made you feel like that. Identifying these things will help you work out the key parts of good and bad customer service.

Then simply “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Easy really !! 

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Customer Service training courses tips and blog

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Customer Service courses tips and a customer service blog are available from Leicestershire based training company To Market. Training can be in-house on your premises or open courses are run at  local venues including Leicester, Northampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Peterborough, Solihull, Lichfield, Cambridge, Warwick, Milton Keynes, Nottingham and Derby as well as Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Birmingham. More details can be found by clicking straight through to the To Market website.

Customer Service training is designed around how to how to exceed customer expectations, offer exceptional customer service, handle conflict and deal with difficult and demanding customers.

To Market will show you the secrets to exceptional customer service. There is a To Market customer service blog too where you can pick up tips and advice on all customer service issues – and comment on customer service training issues.

Finally you can have your customer service team benchmarked via To Market’s team audit. One of the To Market trainers will give you a report based on observing your customer service team dealing with customers live. Find out more by clicking on the team audits page on the To Market website.

Customer service training programmes are led by our senior trainer Andrew Seaward and cover customer care courses, customer service phone training and full programmes in training for customer service. 

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Telephone skills training – new one day course

Monday, November 24th, 2008

The courses To Market runs for telephone skills training are normally 2 day and are highly interactive. There are customer service training couses, telesales and telemarketing training available on your premises. They are also run at central venues in the towns of Leicester, Cambridge, Kettering, Milton Keynes, Birmingham, Solihull, Peterborough, Nottingham and other parts of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire Northamptonshire and beyond.

However To Market www.tomarket.co.uk is looking at putting on some ‘basic’ one day courses. These would be held at different venues around the country including Manchester, Birmingham, Preston, Cambridgeshire, Warrington,Huddersfield, Plymouth, Oxford and Lincoln.

There will be 3 versions. One is telesales and telemarketing training for those of you responsible for outbound new business development work. The second is for reactive teams so it is customer service training. The third one day seminar on offer is more general telephone techniques so this is aimed at all people who deal with customers so this may include training for receptionists,sales teams,helpdesk personnel as well as many others. Do you think this would be of interest to you or your company.  If so let us know which town you’re in and your company details either via e-mail on the www.tomarket.co.uk website or by posting a thread on this message and To Market will let you course dates in your area�

 

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Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
The following tip is plain good sensible advice. But it needs saying nevertheless. Diane Hall submitted this tip after a retail customer service course in Northampton.   She wrote “My tip is treat everyone as you would wish to be treated yourself. This has stood me in good stead since the course and it is making dealing with the public so much more rewarding.”   Can’t argue with that ! The training courses cover this in more detail. They are held across the Midlands : Birmingham, Leicester, Northampton, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough, Solihull. You can find out more about course dates by following this link http://www.tomarket.co.uk/courses.php

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Positive attitude – develop one !

Friday, April 25th, 2008

It’s really important to have a positive attitude in your dealings with your customers. In customer service training this is one of the most important points that comes out of our training. So if the customer service personnel think it’s key – it’s key !

 

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