Certificate in Customer Service Management

Good customer service can be considered as the big differentiator between firms. While competing products are often similar and can anyway be easily duplicated, good customer service is a holistic system, requiring a sustained organization-wide effort, driven by the top and permeating all aspects of the organization culture. The resulting customer-centric organization becomes a formidable competitor whose model cannot be easily copied. In this course, we look at what it takes to build a customer centric organization.

Course Methodology

Case studies, self-evaluation exercises, application of service quality tools, video clips with debriefs, oral and written questions resulting in debates and more are all used in this course in addition to brief consultant and participant presentations.

Course Objectives

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

• Develop a wholistic customer care approach by taking into consideration seven different aspects of the definition of customer service
• Create objectives and programs to maximize internal customer satisfaction
• Evaluate the design, implementation, and analysis of customer satisfaction surveys
• Use customer complaints as the springboard for service improvement
• Write Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure clarity and conformance
• Assess the service aspect of the organization or department through well-chosen Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Target Audience

Executives, managers, and decision makers who are keen on improving performance by taking their customers to higher levels of satisfaction, as well as customer service managers and supervisors interested in advanced customer service tools.

Target Competencies

• Customer orientation
• Conceptual thinking
• Balanced decision making
• Quality orientation
• Understanding of prospects’ motivation
• Persuading others

Course Outline

• Defining and appreciating the customer
• Definition of customer
• Definition of customer service
• The internal and external customer
• Importance of the internal customer
• The need for motivated employees
• The need for qualified employees
• Silo mentality
• Destroying the silos
• Customer service as a strategic imperative
• From ‘suspect’ to ‘partner’
• Going up the ladder
• The 'KANO' model
• ‘Basic’ attributes
• ‘Performance’ attributes
• ‘Delight’ attributes
• The customer centric organization
• Customer service as a strategic imperative
• The 7 practices of customer-centric organization
• Customer satisfaction surveys and other vital tools
• Understanding your customers
• Importance of segmentation
• Principles of customer segmentation
• Focus groups
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Key terms
• Major survey methods
• Questionnaire examples
• Customer survey guidelines
• Types of satisfaction surveys
• Basics of sampling
• Attributes to measure
• Customer satisfaction index
• 'RATER' in depth
• Service quality (servqual) gaps model
• Customer complaints and service recovery
• Facts and their implications
• Symptom versus cause
• Root cause analysis
• Failures do happen
• The recovery paradox
• The strategic initiative
• Tactical activities
• The ‘WOW!’ factor
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• SLA definition
• Characteristics of effective SLAs
• Key elements of an SLA
• Steps in SLA development
• Quality versus cost
• SLA metrics
• KPIs for customer service
• Monitoring performance through key performance indicators
• The 4 perspectives of the balanced scorecard
• Impact of the customer perspective
• Characteristics of good KPIs
• Building customer service KPIs