Addictive Customer Experiences

As markets get ever more crowded and competitive, many organisations are finding it difficult to find ways to create sustainable competitive advantage. Many recognise that product or service differentiation is a way to do this but it too can be hard to achieve. Service level or style is one proven way this can be done.

This is just one reason why many organisations are focused on service. There are many more, such as -

These are just a few common reasons why a growing number of organisations throughout the world are focusing their attention on the subject of customer experience and how it may be used strategically for success.

We can help in many ways. We often begin by running a Customer Experience Health Check on your organisation . It explores and rates 20 key measures throughout the organisation and highlights the key areas of service strength and those where worthwhile changes or improvements could be made.

We can also provide ad hoc or long term consultancy and advice to help you keep up to date with all the latest and most effective thinking, tools and techniques.

Addictive Customer Experience learning programmes (ACE) are focused on the real customer service and experience issues facing employees and organisations today . Most importantly they show how to simply and effectively deal with them through insight, practical advice and real examples from world-class specialists and highly successful organisations . They are highly interactive , inspirational and practical and always end with a “From good ideas to worthwhile actions” section. This enables each participant to draw from all the ideas presented and create an action plan for immediate implementation upon return to work.

ACE learning programmes are individually and specifically designed to meet the practical needs and learning goals of people from different key levels within an organisation. Each workshop targets a particular field of customer experience and how it relates to the decisions and actions taken by –

Our expert learning facilitators have a wealth of commercial and customer service experience and our materials are continually updated and adapted to bring the very latest thinking, tools and real-life results to you.

Master-Class
How to use Customer Experience Management techniques to create differentiation, growth and sustainable competitive advantage

Open Master Classes are run in the UK, Poland and Romania every 2 to 3 months. We can also create in-house Master Classes for individual organisations or industries as required.

Customers everywhere are becoming more demanding and less loyal. Yet customer loyalty is a critical strategic driver of success; keeping low the ever growing costs of attracting new customers and keeping high the opportunities to up -sell and cross -sell to existing customers and the recommendations and referrals they attract.

Price is never an effective way of creating long term loyalty. A customer who is attracted by your low price today will also be attracted by a competitors lower price tomorrow. This workshop shows why and how service may be used as an alternative to price to create sustainable customer loyalty.

It’s now widely recognised that a focus on customer service , although still necessary, is no longer sufficient to win today’s competitive battle to attract and keep the best customers; something more is now needed . Customer Experience is that “something more” and this workshop will introduce and explore the latest, proven techniques to enhance and sustain positive customer experiences. It will also demonstrate how the continual management of the key experience components is essential to customise and maintain a noticeable and worthwhile difference between you and your competitors.

Moving from good ideas to worthwhile actions

For Line Managers

A series of one day workshops designed specifically for line managers.

Talent Recruitment – How to pick and keep the right people for service

Finding the people who have a natural talent for service, who will become your customer service stars and represent your organisation consistently well to customers, is an unending and ever more difficult challenge. Most recruitment processes focus on past experience, knowledge and skills. These are useful but do not give the full picture of a persons natural talent for service work and/or their future potential for service stardom.

This workshop shows how it is possible to identify the character traits that are essential for success in the different service roles in your organisation and then how to create a recruitment system that will attract and identify the people that have them.

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates will learn:

Why organisations should “Hire for attitude and train for skill”

How to identify the natural character traits that are essential for success in your organisation.

How to create a selection procedure that will attract and identify the people with the natural talents you need.

The “Service Talent Advanced Recruitment System™”

Character assessment interviewing with the STARS™ tool.

Experience Mapping – Learning where and how to make a difference

If it can’t be measured it can’t be managed. This is true of most things in business. So to manage customer experiences we have to have a simple but effective means of measuring them.

This workshop will show how to Identify the many “customer’ journeys” with your organisation. This is the essential first step to a true understanding of what it is like for customers each time they do business with you! It will show how to identify their key expectations, whether or not they are being met, and where you have opportunities to beat your competitors by being better at the things that really matter to customers.

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates will learn:

The key “Stages”, “Elements” and “Experiences” of your customers’ journeys

How to identify the influential Ouch or Wow experiences

Ways to Identify the key areas for customer feedback.

What to do with the knowledge and insights this provides.

Vital Voices – Generating and using colleague and customer feedback

Without regular and effective feedback an organisation will spend more and more time and effort focusing on things that matter less and less to colleagues and customers. Feedback is therefore the vital life blood of any organisation. If you are serious about providing effective customer experiences and using them to build loyalty and competitive advantage you must create ways to get the ‘voice of your customers and colleagues’ into your organisation. You must also create ways to communicate and act on what you learn.

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates learn:

How to evaluate various methods to obtain customer and colleague feedback and select the best ones for your organisation

Ways to design tools to acquire and analyse experiential feedback

The best techniques to ensure the views, opinions and motivations are heard and acted on

Sustaining Success – Measuring and Managing the right things

There’s no point in getting ahead of your competitors if you can’t stay there. This means that your pace of improvement is critical to continuing success. This workshop will focus on the simple and effective tools and techniques that create and maintain a momentum of improvement in customer experience and employee engagement. It will show how to ensure lasting success by measuring and acting on the things that really matter.

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates will learn:

The basics of the “Systems Thinking” approach

Why the Sigma Service System™ is the best way to ensure service perfection

How to identify and manage the key organisational pressure points

The right goals and measures for Peak Performance Management

For the Front Line

A series of one day highly practical workshops designed specifically for customer service front-line people.

Creating Positive Experience – How to WOW

WOW experiences can have a lasting, positive effect on customer loyalty. They need to be understood by management; but they are created and delivered by front line ‘service stars’ This workshop is designed to help front line people understand why and how to generate and deliver effective ways of creating and sustaining customer WOWs.

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates will learn:

How to turn a standard product or service into a positive experience

The 3 key criteria for positive experiences

How to work with colleagues to create a constant stream of positive experiences

Cutting Negative Experience – Eliminating OUCH

Every organisation gets it wrong sometimes; it’s inevitable and unavoidable! There is therefore a need to constantly search out and destroy all sources of errors and inefficiencies. This will create the most effective and reliable product and/or service, improve your business reputation, increase customer loyalty and have a positive influence on both the top and the bottom lines.

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates will learn :

Why and how experiences have a big impact on customer loyalty

The 6 key reasons why most negative experiences aren’t reported to suppliers

How to identify your organisation’s key causes of negative experience

How to work with colleagues to create systems and procedures to eliminate all negative experiences

Developing Dazzling Recovery – OUCH to WOW

Mistakes may be inevitable, but dissatisfied customers are not. The key therefore is to have in place simple, effective and flexible procedures to turn potentially dissatisfied customers into loyal ones. We call this Dazzling Recovery. It is a procedure that can be used by any organisation which goes beyond the ordinary, boring and ineffective techniques used
by most organisations. When applied well it boosts employee morale, increases customer loyalty and referrals and creates competitive advantage..

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates will learn:

Why and how recovery is the experience that has the biggest positive impact on customer loyalty

How recovery is used to turn a negative experience into a positive experience

The 5 key criteria for a dazzling recovery programme

Demanding and Difficult Customers – Aversion to advocacy

Customers can understandably become very emotional when important things go wrong. Having people with the skills and temperament to deal with customers in this state of mind is important. They need to know how to convert this emotion into positive energy so as to turn customer aversion into long term advocacy.

During 1-day with an experienced facilitator delegates will learn :

Why and how the right attitude and approach can turn potentially problematical encounters into positive experiences for employees and customers

How the SMILE™ system works to turn problems into solutions

How to work with colleagues to deal effectively and positively with difficult and demanding customers

Open courses are run in various locations and at different times throughout the year. Please check our web site for details.

SEALS trainers can deliver ‘in-house’ courses for your service managers and teams. If you required this the following prices apply.

We can also license your own trainers to deliver the programmes themselves. If you require this the following prices apply.