Day 1: A Winning Attitude

• List the benefits of delivering exceptional customer service to workshop participants, to their departments, to the overall organization, and of course to the customers
• Assess the abilities that they must communicate a positive attitude as a customer service provider
• Identify different types of attitudes, both the negative and the positive
• Describe the barriers to positive attitudes and how to minimize or remove these barriers from participants’ mindsets
• List the ingredients necessary to develop and maintain a positive attitude
• Adopt a customer-first mindset
• Explain their individual customer service “brand” – what level of service each participant would like to offer and what they would like customers to say about them
• Identify actions to make their personal brands happen (participant will turn these into learning objectives for the subsequent workshop sessions)
• Avoid letting personal assumptions or stereotypes get in the way of treating each customer with respect and treating each customer like an individual

• Identify the key indicators of a service culture
• Identify the characteristics of excellent servic
• Assess current strengths and challenges of customer service in their organization
• Explain their personal customer service purpose
• Take personal responsibility for customer satisfaction
• Determine and clarify customers’ expectations
• Anticipate and understand customers’ needs
• Identifying how knowing customers’ needs would help participants’ work easier
• Build strong partnerships with internal and external customers with 10 Building Blocks
• Treat customers the way participants would want to be treated

• Understand the relationship between effective communication and quality service
• Describe the 6-step process for effective communication, what can go wrong, and how to make it go right
• Manage the first impressions that they create in customers’ minds
• Recognize the most common verbal dangers
• Practice improving clarity of speech
• Identify words or phrases that are commonly mispronounced
• Create a personal action plan for better grammar, enunciation, and pronunciation
• Assess personal communication styles
• Create a positive communication climate with customer interactions
• Use effective, courteous communication to deliver excellent customer service
• Select appropriate words and phrases when responding to customers
• Assess personal active listening skills
• Identify the habits of poor listeners
• Practice excellent listening techniques when gathering customer information and data
• Effectively communicate with customers over the telephone
• Identifying telephone benefits, pitfalls, and customer annoyances
• Create telephone guidelines for superior service
• How to handle call holds and transfers with appropriate telephone etiquette
• Interpret telephone and face-to-face nonverbal communication
• Demonstrate a step-by-step process for managing each service interaction

• Describe the common barriers to problem solving creativity
• Demonstrate greater creativity when thinking about solutions to internal and external customers’ problems
• Recognize individual assumptions that limit thinking
• More clearly see problems from six thinking perspectives that easily combines and thoroughly examines logic, emotions, positive and negative information, creativity, and structure
• Assess personal problem-solving styles
• Create a problem statement that clearly defines the problem, in a manageable way
• Identify a problem’s root cause, to better understand why a problem exists
• How to create unique, on-target solutions that address the identified root causes
• How to create the action plans necessary to solve the problem
• Develop a personal action plan to improve problem solving

• Describe the differences between assertiveness and aggressiveness
• Assess personal assertiveness and develop a way to increase assertiveness
• Determine why someone might resist their influence attempt and how to address that resistance
• Design a strategy for dealing with resistance, based on an understanding of its root causes
• How to facilitate openness and understanding of the customer
• Tailor their communication skills to the customer’s preferences (to be able to “speak their language”)
• Use PowerTalk to demonstrate clear, confident, assertive messages to customers
• Deliver constructive feedback to customers, in response to both positive and negative situations
• How to openly receive feedback from customers

• Identify the causes of customer conflict
• Describe the 5 styles of responding to conflict, as well as their personal preferred styles
• Turn each style into a more productive problem-solving situation
• Make conflict constructive, rather than destructive
• Describe their personal “hot buttons” and how to exhibit control over personal emotions during difficult interactions
• Use an 8-step approach to constructively resolve conflicts
• Determine the necessary conflict resolution ground rules
• Reduce defensiveness and break the defensiveness chain
• How to invite someone to discuss what is in conflict between you
• How to better understand what each wants and why each wants it
• How to identify a mutually beneficial goal, based on identified common ground
• How to generate and select among alternatives that might meet the goal

• Assess their personal attitudes while dealing with difficult Moments of Truth
• Use a step-by-step strategy for working with others’ difficult attitudes
• Positive self-talk and the role it can play
• Practice multiple non-threatening questioning techniques when working with customers
• Use their empathy skills to demonstrate their understanding of customers’ needs and requests
• More confidently respond to upset customers
• Diffuse an angry customer
• More effectively handle customer complaints
• Effectively communicate what they can and cannot do for the customer, while maintaining appropriate flexibility
• Learning how to say “no” and “yes, but” to customers
• How to facilitate Service Recovery on the spot, for customers when things have gone “wrong”
• Calm angry customers before they can start spreading a “bad review” through word-of-mouth
• Win back unhappy customers without overpromising

• Exceed customers’ expectations
• List critical elements (knowledge, skills, abilities) necessary to provide customer service excellence
• Identify the key principles for excellent customer service
• Apply these key principles/tools to various customer service case studies
• Apply these key principles to creating personal vision for excellent customer service
• Apply these key principles to managing their personal job stress

Up to 30 students

• Virtual Classes will be a live, Instructor lead class in Zoom for Government, a virtual technical assistant VTA will be available to assist students with any technical issues, take roll, administer evaluations, and distribute certificates of completion. Course materials will be provided electronically.
• Onsite classes will be held at your location. The instructor will travel to you. Materials will be printed and shipped to your site. A sign-up sheet will be provided for student to enter their name (as they want it on their certificate) and the email address to send the certificate to. GSA travel costs will be added to the course fee. Contact us for a travel estimate.
• A minimum of 2 weeks lead time is needed for virtual classes, 3 weeks for onsite classes.

Questions? Contact our training coordinator via email or phone at (202) 843.5447.