Preparation
This class focuses on helping employees recognize that, in one way or another, everyone is their customer. Prepare for the class by identifying all of the Company’s internal and external customers. You’ll use this information during the class to help participants think about anyone they might not currently consider or identify as their customers.
Review guidance below.
Roles
Manager – Complete preparation. Encourage active participation. Recognize and embrace employees as your customers.
Employee – Actively participate. Identify all customers. Complete any self-study/learning exercise(s) provided.
Getting Started
Welcome everyone to the 10 Tenets of Customer Service course.
Since this is the first class, it is important to explain the premise of the course and discuss the learning objectives the employees can expect over the next 10 weeks. Ideally, these key points should be included as part of the course invitation. Refer to the previous post, 10 Weeks to Better Engaged Employees – Introduction, to help determine what information should be incorporated. Examples to consider include:
- The Learning Goal of the course is to improve the department’s or team’s level of customer service
- A better understanding of the Company’s objectives and department goals
- How the quality of customer service provided directly impacts each person, their department, and the Company
- How each individual impacts the quality of service customers received (Note: you may want to revisit this after identifying all of the customers later in the session.)
- How their needs as employees and their customers’ needs influenced the design of this course, i.e., the creation of a high impact course that can be delivered during the normal workday without reducing or negatively impacting the current level of customer service
Remember to keep this section as conversational as possible; PowerPoint slides, handouts, flip charts, etc. are not needed and could be more distracting than helpful.
Ask: “What questions or concerns does anyone have about the course?”
Help the attendees feel comfortable in responding so that they will continue to actively participate as the course progresses. Encourage participation and conversational dialogue by using open-ended questions.
Open-ended questions begin with What, When, Why, How, and Where, and cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”
If the participants are reluctant to engage in open dialogue, be prepared to share some of your personal thoughts and examples to get them started.
Now that there is some context around the course, introduce Tenet One – Customers Make the Rules.
Say: “The first Tenet is ‘Customers Make the Rules’.”
Ask: “What does this mean to you?”
What is a customer?
For the purposes of this course, we’ll use a general business related definition of the word “customer.”
A customer is a person or organization that will benefit from the goods and/or services offered by a Company and its employees.
Ask: “Who are your customers?” Pause and wait for a response.
Example: In insurance, the most obvious customer is the policyholder or customer. Customers would also include the agents, their staffs, those in other departments, the management team, and your coworkers.
Our customers are everywhere and most people have more than they realize. Ask the class to identify as many of their customers as possible – this is where the list of customers created earlier comes in.
As each customer is identified, acknowledge and repeat the response, and then pause for a moment…
Then ask: “And?” and wait for additional responses. Acknowledge and repeat as above and continue asking “And?” until all of the customers on the list you created previously have been identified. If there are any customers mentioned that were not on your list, add them to the list before teaching the next session of this class.
After identifying all of your customers, ask some additional questions to generate further discussion.
“How many of you realized we had this many customers?”
“What did you find surprising or unexpected? Why?”
“How many new customers did you just discover?”
Summary
The key idea and primary point of this class is that “EVERYONE is your customer.”
End the class by giving them the following assignment.
Homework/exercise
Notice how many times you interact with each identified customer group over the next week.
Let’s Engage!
I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.
Employee engagement is a critical mission. I hope I can count on your help! Subscribe to the RSS Feed to receive the latest intelligence/insights and/or register to make entries in the comments log.
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P.S. First contact? Welcome to the Agent In Engagement community. Explore and join fellow employee engagement operatives in targeting a known thief – alias: Disengagement. Together we can bring this thief to justice and make the world a better place for all companies and their employees.
You can access information on The 10 Tenets of Better Engaged Employees below:
Tenet 1 – Customers Make the Rules
Tenet 2 – Service Comes from the Inside Out
Tenet 3 – Provide Solutions and Show that You Care
Tenet 4 – Customers Define Quality and Service
Tenet 5 – Feedback from Customers is a Gift
Tenet 6 – Know Your Customer and You’ll Be Rewarded
Tenet 7 – Skip Satisfaction, Exceed Expectations
Tenet 8 – Create Value
Tenet 9 – Be More, Better, Faster, Different
Tenet 10 – Honor Your Customer
