- Understand the impact of poor customer service on business and public sector organisations
- Understand the benefits to you of providing outstanding customer service
- Be able to identify your connection to the organisation’s customers
- Features and benefits of your products and services and the sector you operate in
- Your organisation’s systems and services
- Your team’s strengths and weaknesses
- Your competitors’ products, systems and promotions
- Understand the factors which combine to make a good first impression
- Improve on your ability to deliver a good first impression
- Know how to dress appropriately for your role
- Understand how to acknowledge and approach customers
- Know how to build a successful rapport with your customers
- Identify the key skills required to understand the needs of your customers
- Learn how to listen actively to the customer
- Identify the barriers to effective listening and plan how to break them down
- Practice effective questioning techniques to tune into specific needs
- Understand how to interpret body language and tone to drill down to the customer’s real message
- Using your product knowledge and professional judgement to deliver best advice
- Handling objections calmly and professionally
- Proposing solutions with products which may also suit them
- Focusing at all times on the customer’s needs and wants, giving them your full attention
- Understand how complaints can benefit your business
- Adopt a positive attitude towards complaints
- Understand the importance of a consistent complaint resolution process
- Understand the aim of each step in the complaint resolution model you decide to adopt
- Recognise and avoid the common pitfalls which annoy customers and delay resolution
- Understand how adult-adult interactions aid problem resolution
- Understand how to avoid parent/child responses by guiding the relationship through a positive process to achieve resolution
- Be able to avoid an emotional response and remain calm in challenging situations
- Ensure the complaint is followed up thoroughly to complete resolution
- Persevere in difficult circumstances
- Develop your listening, questioning and other communication skills to help and build relationships with all customers irrespective of their situation
- Identify and focus on the key factors of a successful presentation
- Appreciate the impact of a clear and effective presentation structure
- Connect with your audience’s needs to deliver your message with impact
- Understand the power of visual aids to create a shared understanding with your audience
- Identify key steps to making a memorable and powerful presentation
- Be aware of what you seek to achieve and set clear objectives for your presentation
- Develop a checklist to analyse the needs, attitudes and expectations of your audience
- Maximise the opportunities available to you – location and length of presentation, key players attending
- Make contingency plans for when things go wrong
- Adopt the appropriate delivery style to suit your audience, objectives and venue.
- Know how to plan your time efficiently to prepare a thorough, targeted presentation
- Employ the Rule of 3 to shape your structure and power your key messages
- Adapt your structure to match your time allocation, cut or enrich content to fit
- Design your messages to engage and connect with your audience’s needs
- Explore the pros and cons of different presentation structures
- Choose the most appropriate model to suit your objectives and bring your message alive
- Match your structure with content
- Understand how to select appropriate words to connect to your audience
- Restrict words to a minimum without losing the sense of your message
- Engage with different methods of thought
- Investigate and use different techniques to fit your audience and message
- Understand the difference between low and high impact openings and closings
- Adopt the INTRO mnemonic for a strong opening and the STØP mnemonic for a memorable and effective close
- Recognise and avoid the features of poorly designed visuals
- Identify when a visual aid or other media will enhance your presentation
- Describe successful supporting visuals and ensure yours are legible, clear and have impact
- Ensure your notes support rather than intrude on your relationship with the audience
- Create effective hand-outs to clarify your points and support your audience
- Understand how to create impact with stories, examples and anecdotes
- Ensure the story or example is relevant to your key messages
- Practice delivery to ensure it is polished and convincing, personalise the example to make it your own
- Explore building tension and suspense
- Create colour with your voice through pace, pitch, pronunciation and use of pauses
- Convey confidence with your posture and dress
- Employ movement, gesturing and your body language to express your message with sincerity
- Handle your visual aids, notes and handouts with confidence
- Gain control of your nerves
- Rehearse thoroughly and effectively
- Use questions as an opportunity to tailor your presentation to audience needs
- Prepare for questions and indicate that you are open to questioning
- Plan when to answer questions
- Value every question
- Check your understanding of the question, think before you speak, and answer as clearly as possible
- Be sincere, admit if you do not have the answer
- Rehearse to improve your ease with visual aids, handouts and timings
- Explore your use of words and phrases for best impact
- Experiment with voice “colour”: speed, volume, tone and the power of the pause
- Rehearse in the same posture you plan to deliver, with your visual resources if appropriate
- Rehearse alone initially and then seek supportive feedback when you feel prepared
- Recognize influencing as an adult, respectful alternative to both command and manipulation
- View influencing as a process, not an action
- Recognise that you must be others-focused not self-focused
- Generate SMART influencing goals with win/win outcomes
- Be able to identify champions, blockers and your floating voters
- Use 4 different approaches to getting your ideas across according to the circumstances
- Identify and use the thinking patterns of individuals to frame an idea and communicate
- Interpret and control body language to augment communication
- Identify an individual’s false realities and challenge positively
- Understand the conditions for trust and use trust principles to build trust with individuals
- Analyse an individual’s values and priorities including: openness, security, creativity, listening
- Use communication techniques and content to appeal to an individual’s values
- Adapt your influencing style to suit the situation
- Use your analysis of the stage of growth of the team to adopt your influencing style
- Analyse the likely behaviour of an individual based on their preferences for leading or following, being assertive or passive
- Adapt your communication style to appeal to different personality types and working styles