Moments of Truth

Towards Creating Customer Service Excellence

Rationale for this Workshop

Jan Carlzon has been an inspirational voice for exceptional customer service.

Companies spend huge amounts of money on marketing and advertising their products and services with the intention of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. This money is wasted if staff fails to give a level of service required to encourage purchase, and ultimately a decision to return to this company. We cannot compete solely on the basis of product or price. Increasingly, a company is judged on its attention to the customer.

W. Edwards Deming said:

“It will not suffice to have customers that are merely satisfied. Customers that are unhappy and some that are merely satisfied – switch. Profit comes from repeat customers – those that boast about the product or service”

Workshop Goal

This module will provide the learner with the knowledge and skills needed to anticipate and respond in various constructive ways to the problems customers inevitably meet. They will discuss the importance of the value-added ingredients in exceptional customer care.

Workshop Objectives

• Analyze the problems of poor customer service and how to deal with them.
• Analyze your current methods of dealing with the customer and identify your strengthens and weaknesses.
• Demonstrate learning and understanding of current customer care concepts.
• Understand the value of effective customer care to a company.
• Discuss how can good customer service be a standard and not an exception.
• Understanding the basic customer’s needs
• Analyze the benefits of internal customer service.
• How to handle an upset customer and their complaints
• The program will help to develop & implement an appropriate customer service quality through active listening & questioning techniques.
• The participants will have better understanding of the customers’ needs & assertively manage the conversation with difficult or irate customers.

Anytime a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression” – Jan Carlzon

What makes service truly remarkable? Great service is not an event, it is a process that requires active, willing and competent participation of all employees.

Service must be customer-driven so their satisfaction is the ultimate measure of our success. Customers want to do business with people who make them feel good about themselves and their decisions. How we say good bye is as important as how we say hello. The way we help to solve a dilemma is just as important as its outcome because it will determine the outcome.

We all have important roles in a sequence of events that culminate in a positive customer service experience. Each job is a part of the chain reaction with our co-workers which impacts upon the response of our customers – this linkage is what remarkable service is all about.

We make choices every day about our customers. We make the choice when we say, “This customer is taking up my valuable time” or by saying, “This customer makes my job possible!”

In the book Moments of Truth, it speaks about the quality of contact between an individual customer and the employee that serves the customer directly. There are so many contacts that occur each day, month, year between the staff and the customers. Cumulatively they are in the thousands or even millions. These are called by author Jan Carlzon, “moments of truth”. They ultimately determine whether a company will succeed or fail as a company. They are the special moments when we must prove to our customers that your company is the best alternative to do business with.

Perceptions are everything and during each moment you are in contact with a customer, you are the organisation. Make the most of that moment, that opportunity.