Brunei bank managers are stars!

Last week I had the honor of conducting a 5-day leadership, communication and presentation skills course for 25 senior managers at Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam. The group was fabulous. They were hungry for information to be better leaders and communicators. They embraced every exercise I asked them to do, no matter how uncomfortable it felt.

Effective Customer Complaint Management course

Now, more than ever before, you need to ensure every customer remains a happy customer, even when there is a problem. How your staff deal with problems and complaints will determine if that customer will return, buy more and/or tell others about their experience.

My seminar “Effective Customer Complaint Management: Customer Service Excellence Strategies for Driving Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Experience” is a comprehensive program and can be geared toward executives determining which data to gather and mine, to managers overseeing customer complaints, to the front line skills needed to calm down upset customers and turn them into satisfied, loyal customers.

Excellent service recovery will cement customer loyalty. Every organization has customer complaints. It’s how the complaint is managed that determines if the customer is satisfied and their loyalty solidified. Your employees can create astronomical customer retention or can drive your customers away. It all depends on how you approach complaint management.

Do your staff follow through on your advertisements’ promise of superior service?

Companies can pay millions of dollars in advertising their superior service. But if their staff doesn’t actually deliver that service, all that advertising does is set up expectations that aren’t met, then you get unhappy customers.

I was excited about flying Emirates Air, as my friend Randy Gage waxed on about their service. Granted, Randy flew in one of their First Class suites (private bedroom, shower available). I was in coach. Although I’d flown Singapore Air a number of times, I wanted to check out the Emirates service to see how it compared.

Is every staff person a salesperson?

In this economy, every employee must become a salesperson. You can’t afford to have anyone on staff who isn’t doing some marketing effort.

You may think that accounting, HR, facilities, and other support staff are immune from cementing relationships with customers, encouraging current clients to buy more, or unearthing new opportunities. Even engineers, manufacturing workers and receptionists can step up to have a sales attitude. When trained and incented, these people can become solid lead generators.

But how do you turn someone who doesn’t have a sales personality into someone who seeks out sales possibilities? That’s where we come in. We partner with you to develop a meaningful reward system and give them the knowledge and skills to take the plunge. The concepts can be easy, like expanding their connections in LinkedIn to encouraging them to have upsell conversations any time they interact with a customer.

When people understand that they are not only helping your current and potential customers, but are possibly saving their own jobs, they are motivated to act! But only when given the right resources to be successful.

Review our basic outline here. This can be customized specifically to your company’s target group. Depending on the group’s technical capabilities, we can include how they can appropriately respond to blogs mentioning your company, using Twitter effectively, and expanding their presence at LinkedIn and other professional social media.

Call us today to discuss how we can help you expand your sales force to every employee! 408/998-7977

Is training punishment for your people?

Last summer, I read an article that stuck in my memory. It was about US Airways pilots who, because of the increase in fuel prices, were forced to take fuel-management courses if they ordered an extra few minutes of fuel for their flights.

One former Continental pilot Bruce Meyer, said he had to hide that
he was putting a safety cushion of fuel on board.

Then US Airways pilots took out an ad that said the airline “embarked on a program of intimidation to pressure your captain to reduce fuel loads.” Senior pilots — those who are well aware of the vagaries of flights — were targeted for (gasp!) fuel conservation training.

Their punishment was training!