Customer Care

Your level of Customer Care is affected by your thoughts, values, beliefs, attitudes and perceptions.  In other words, it is how you view and what you believe about a situation, circumstance or event involving the customer that will eventually produce a positive or negative customer care outcome.

Customer Care cannot be reduced to a checklist of actions and standards.  Customer Care is the result of specific values, beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and attitudes.  It is not just what you do, it is also how you do it and with what intent.

A major focus of this three-day Customer Care Programme is the shifting and changing of the Customer Care Beliefs, Values, Perceptions, Attitudes and Thoughts of the individual participants.  It starts from the INSIDE–OUT.

The proposed content to initially set up the importance of the INSIDE-OUT approach to customer care will be as follows:

Why Advertising, Marketing Slogans, Expensive Impressive Premises and Professionally Designed Marketing Materials are not the most important keys to retaining, developing and gaining customers.  It is Attitudinal Marketing and Servicing and the Face to Face Marketing and Servicing that has the most impact with present and potential clients.

Participants explore this concept to clearly understand why they themselves are the most important part of Customer Care and Marketing within the organisation.

Within the Customer Care person himself/ herself lies the competitive advantage of the company.  Even within the Customer Care person their own Customer Care Excellence starts from the INSIDE – OUT.

The Personal Excellence from the Inside –Out Learning Model becomes one for the main models for building the individual’s customer care competencies.

Each participant explores the “How To’s” of improving their Customer Care servicing with :
– Their Real Internal Self
– Their Communicating Self
– Their Organising Self
– Their Intellectual Self
– Their External Self

Awareness precedes choice!
Choice precedes Action!
Action precedes Results!

Awareness of the fact that exceptional customer care can only come with the right values, beliefs, perceptions and attitudes is the starting point for positive improvement for individual Customer Care Personnel.

A series of awareness type exercises help each individual internalise this understanding preparing them for actual actions that can improve their customer care from the inside – out.

The Model:

The conclusion to the teaching of the above INSIDE – OUT Model is that Customer Care is:

– Not a department!
– Not a program!
– It is a lifestyle … to be lived on a daily basis!
– It must be internalised personally!
– It must come from the INSIDE-OUT!
– It must give Complete Customer Satisfaction!

“Customer Care is everybody’s responsibility in the business”.

The above material helps set up the INSIDE-OUT Customer Care “mind set”:

The following topics, processes and how to’s will help transform the INSIDE-OUT thinking into tangible customer care actions and behaviours.

– Clarifying the difference between External Clients and Internal Clients and why both are equally important.

– What both External and Internal Customers want from Sales Support Personnel.

– Identifying what Exceptional Customer Care really looks like and working with that information for improved customer care

– Models and examples of Exceptional Customer Care from the INSIDE-OUT and how to use them as Models of Possibility for building your own customer care principles and strategy.

– Clarifying what the benefits of Exceptional Internal and External Customer Care are for:

– The Client

– The Company

– Yourself and other staff

– Assessing whether you and your company, office or division are customer focused or self focused and how to shift from self-focus to a customer focus, customer care approach.

– Identifying and benchmarking yourself against the winning qualities of Exceptional Customer Care individuals.  These qualities, traits will be categorised under the following:

– The Real Internal You

– The Communicating You

– The Organising You

– The Intellectual/ Knowledgeable You

– The External You

Individual participants will fill out a personal assessment on their INSIDE-OUT customer care qualities and attributes.

– 12 Proven ways to positively adjust and / or change your values, beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and reactions so that your behaviours will eventually change resulting in even better Customer Care results.

Each participant will put together an action plan utilising these “change methods” to impact their values, beliefs, perceptions etc.

– It is not only important to look at the positive traits and behaviours of Exceptional Customer Care individuals.  It is equally important to be aware of the deadly behaviours and pitfalls that annoy both External and Internal Customers.  This awareness can help avoid potentially dangerous customer care behaviours that could result in the loss of a customer.  Seeing both the positives and negatives of customer care helps give a more rounded picture.

– Up to this point of the programme Attitudinal Servicing and Marketing, which is Power zone #1 of Personal Excellence from the INSIDE-OUT, will have been well covered.  Power zone #2 is The Communicating You.  The following topics and learning’s will be covered under the heading of Communicating Effectively With Your Customers:

– Greetings and approaches that make people comfortable and more open.

– How to quickly and effectively build rapport.

– Listening and effectively gathering information by questioning, requesting and self-disclosure.

– Effectively dealing with awkward customer situations.

– Recognising different types of customers both difficult and easy to deal with and how to interact with each of them.

– Handling customer complaints and problem situations.

– Customer Care Telephone Techniques
Outbound calls
Inbound calls

– Effectively communicating information, procedures and both positive and negative messages to External and Internal Customers.

– Organising yourself and your surroundings for Exceptional Customer Care (Power zone #3).

– How to continually gather, update and use Customer Care Information, Knowledge and Resources as  well as setting up and implementing your own Customer Care Monitoring Programme (Power zone #4)

– Professionally Presenting Yourself (the External You) and your Customer Care Environment. (Power zone #5)

– 20 Innovative ways to make Customer Care fun for you, the customer and your associates.

– Understanding and utilising the ABC’s of categorising both Internal and External Clients and applying that knowledge when handling Old Mutual Clients and your Internal Customers.

– Applying the “Frequency of Contact” philosophy within Customer Care and combining it with Data Base Servicing Tools that align with the Financial Advisors “Income Builder Process”.

– Utilising the 5 Stages of Relationship Development with both External and Internal Customers.

– The benefits of “How To’s” of keeping commitments to yourself and others.

– The studying of several Case Studies and Examples of Champions of Exceptional Customer Care to round off what Exceptional Customer Care really is.

At the end of the three days each participant will complete a 30 Minute Snapshot of both their External and Internal Customer Care “Supporting and Opposing Factors”.  Once the 30 Minute Snapshot is complete they will develop a 1 year Customer Care Storyboard Action Plan for implementation over the next year.  Real world samples of a 30 Minute Snapshot and a Storyboard Action Plan related to their positions and roles will be given to them as examples to follow.

The participants will also be left with the Attitudinal Customer Care Reminder titled The Servant.