Using Our Customer Service Books In Training and Customer Service Coaching

A number of companies (and government departments) have found that our customer service books are incredibly valuable as the basis for, or use in training seminars or customer service coaching. There's actually a reason why our books are particularly suited for these uses. The author (that would be me) comes from a long history of working in the "learning" industry, including a teaching at colleges and universities, working as an instructional designer, and as an organizational and staff development consultant/trainer.

My books reflect a learning perspective, and they are structured to mirror the kinds of activities, thinking and stimulation that would be typical if I was using the same material in live training. In fact, Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook For Public Sector is actually intended to replace the training seminars. I developed it so that people in areas to which I could not travel could learn the skills needed to deal more effectively with difficult customers.

Multitude of Uses In Customer Service Training

Our clients have used our books in a number of ways that are tied to customer service training, and they work well because they were written in part to address client needs. Here's a few examples typical uses.

• Several clients have purchased bulk copies of Perfect Phrases For Customer Service (McGraw-Hill) to hand out as additional reading either before or after training. It's priced to make that very affordable.
• A number of companies have purchased the workbook to use as a basis for designing their own in house programs for dealing with customer service. This has worked well because the workbook contains a number of exercises, including our role play replacement technique (script analysis) that has proven to be effective in both learning research and in practice. Since the workbook is somewhat modular, it's possible to use the content that is relevant to a particular organization's context, while simply not using content that is not as important. It's a really great way to do background research for instructional design, and in many cases all it costs is the price of one book. Provided you don't copy verbatim the material in the book(s) you will be on safe copyright grounds.
• A few clients have used content from the Perfect Phrases For Customer Service book to use in short lunch time, or staff meeting mini-training sessions. This book is of wider scope than the other two books we've written, so it fits with general courses on customer service. It's also fairly modular and contains tons of sample dialogues to illustrate the many techniques and best practices that can be used by customer service representatives.
• Many clients, particularly those on tight budgets, simply buy a copy of one or more of the books and make them available to staff in each of their customer facing locations to be used on an if and when needed basis.
• Some managers and supervisors have purchased our books to hone their own customer service skills, so they can coach their staff, particularly on how to handle tough customer situations.

Where To Start?

There's two good starting points if you are an instructional designer or trainer/coach looking for material to use to develop customer service skills on the part of staff. I'd be glad to give you some suggestions if you have questions about what book(s) might fit best for you, and how you might use them. Drop me a line at ceo@work911.com, and we can set up a time to talk via telephone. The second method is simply to get copies of each of the books, before you contact us. If you are familiar with the books, we can probably offer better advice, or the answers to what you need will be self-evident to you.

Of course, I'd like for you to order tons of copies, but I understand that's not always realistic. Still, you may find that our customer service books are so learning/training oriented that you can use them, coupled with discussion groups, to keep actual training time down to a minimum, thus maximizing staff productivity. Lots of options. Feel free to contact me.