Introduction

In today's highly competitive landscape, delivering exceptional service isn't just an added benefit—it's a necessity. Service excellence is the cornerstone of building lasting customer relationships, fostering loyalty, and distinguishing your brand from the competition. This course is designed to equip you with the strategies required to consistently exceed customer expectations and create memorable experiences that will keep them coming back.

More and more people demand quality, that means, the service delivered, like the product purchased, must conform to the customer requirements. But the way we perceive the quality of a service differs fundamentally from the way we perceive the quality of manufactured products. The differ in the way they are produced, delivered, consumed and evaluated. Unlike a tangible product, a service can be difficult to monitor and measure so ensuring that the service conforms to customer requirements can be a challenge for a service company because, every service delivered could be unique. So how are we expected to deliver satisfaction to all of our customers, consistently and sustainably?

Measuring the level of satisfaction with a service is a complex process but, fundamentally, at the point of consumption it has two prime dimensions: one, the customer’s expectation of the service and two, the customer’s perception of the experience delivered. The challenge for the service provider is to match the customer’s experience with their expectations. The strategies for doing this is the subject of this course.

Aims

The aim of this 4-day course is to develop the skills needed to improve understanding of all the aspects of customer service that lead to satisfaction and loyalty. This will include: understanding what influences customers’ expectations together with the perception of their experience; how and why gaps arise between customer expectations and the customer experience; how to close those gaps; how to use measuring tools and techniques to maintain an understanding of the customer experience; how to use tools to improve customer delivery processes and how to manage customer complaints at a strategic level.

Objectives

By the end of the programme delegates will be able to:

· Recall how to develop customer-centric culture based on a comprehensive understanding of customer expectations and customer experience

· List the dimensions of customer service

· Recognise how customer expectations arise

· List the four gaps that are potentially the causes of customer experience not matching the customer expectation.

· Demonstrate and ability to:

- use tools to help understand the factors that influence customer and potential customer perceptions of a service provider

- analyse the gap between customer expectations and customer experience

· Recall strategies for closing the gaps between customer expectations and customer experience

· Recognise the steps to be taken to develop a strategic complaints management system.

· Demonstrate an ability to deploy process improvement tools to improve customer delivery processes

· Recall leadership processes that motivate employees to deliver superior customer service

Methods:

It is our intention to give you an opportunity to understand the nature and practice of operations management. In order to do so we will present you with a range of learning experiences including presentations, case studies, exercises and simulations.

Duration: 4 days

Who it's for:

This course is designed for you if you work in customer services, customer relations, marketing, sales, service quality, client relations, collections, operations, complaints handling and customer support roles in all sectors of the economy, including: manufacturing, finance, health, retail, government departments, etc.

Course Content

Day 1

Administration, introductions, course objectives and methods.

· The programme for the day

· Personal introductions

· Course objectives, content and methods

· How to improve knowledge retention, the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

· Access to course material

· Support and follow up

Session 1: The Business Case

· The business case for developing service excellence – potential impact on the bottom line

· The need to protect the organisation’s reputation

· The business case for developing a culture of measuring and monitoring the drivers of customer service to deliver a superior customer experience.

Session 2: A Customer Centric Culture:

· How to develop a customer-centric culture based on a comprehensive understanding of customer expectations – listening to the voice of the customer

· The importance of understanding customer expectations as well as customer experience.

Session 3: Understand the gap between customer needs and expectations:

· Exploring how customers perceive and evaluate a service experience

· Identifying the determinants of service quality

· Exercise: using an Affinity Diagram to develop insights into the dimensions of service quality

· Review of exercise.

Session 4: Analysing the gap between customer expectations and experience:

· An outline of the research into service quality

· The Gap Analysis Model – identifying the potential gaps in your service delivery system

Session 5: The Knowledge Gap – the gap between customer expectations and your understanding of customer expectations:

· Exercise: Exploring potential reasons for the existence of a Knowledge Gap

· Review of Exercise

· Common reasons for the existence of a Knowledge Gap

· Exercise: Exploring potential strategies for closing the Knowledge Gap

· Review of Exercise

· Some common strategies for closing the Knowledge Gap, including: customer surveys, customer service charters and CRM systems

· Exercise: developing a customer survey tool based on Gap Analysis

· Review of Exercise

· How to use the Gap Analysis survey to develop a customer satisfaction index

· How to use a Mirror Survey to help understand employee perceptions of customer expectations.

Day 2

Session 6: Developing a strategic complaints management system to help close the Knowledge Gap:

· The benefits of getting it right – turning potentially dissatisfied customers into loyal customers

· Using the Net Promoter Score to support a strategy to deliver customer loyalty

· Developing and deploying an effective complaints management process

· Exercise: building a complaints management checklist for your organisation

· Review of exercise.

Session 7: The Standards Gap – the gap between your understanding of customer expectations and the service standards that you set:

· Exercise: exploring potential reasons for the existence of a Standards Gap

· Review of Exercise

· Common reasons for the existence of a Standards Gap

· Exercise: exploring potential strategies for closing the Standards Gap

· Review of Exercise;

· Some common strategies for closing the Standards Gap.

Day 3

Session 8: How to measure, monitor and improve your customer delivery standards – a Case Study:

· An outline of the Case Study

· The issue of variation in customer delivery processes in the Case Study company - the importance of understanding the impact of process variation and the distinction between special and common cause variation

· How the Case Study company deployed control charts to measure and monitor process variation and bring their processes under control

· Exercise: constructing a control chart using the Case Study data

· Review of Exercise

· How the Case Study company used process improvement tools to align their standards with customer expectations

· Exercise: using improvement tools in the Case Study company to understand how to reduce cycle time and deliver superior customer service

· Review of Exercise

· Monitoring key customer metrics using the Balanced Scorecard

· Exercise: constructing the customer scorecard

· Review of Exercise.

Day 4

Session 9: The Service Performance Gap – the gap between the service specification and the actual service delivered by customer-facing staff

· Exercise: exploring potential reasons for the existence of a Service Performance Gap

· Review of Exercise

· Common reasons for the existence of a Service Performance Gap

· Exercise: exploring potential strategies for closing the Service Performance Gap

· Review of Exercise

· Some common strategies for closing the Standards Gap.

Session 10: The Communications Gap – the gap between what you promise, and the actual service delivered:

· Exercise: exploring potential reasons for the existence of a Communications Gap

· Review of Exercise

· Common reasons for the existence of a Communications Gap

· Exercise: exploring potential strategies for closing the Communications Gap

· Review of Exercise

· Some common strategies for closing the Communications Gap

· Case study: the best in the world. How one company delivers world class customer service – what can be learned from their approach?

End of Course