I’m giving you the actual exercise I gave to the employees in the customer service training I delivered this morning, along with the discussion questions I used. If you’d like an excellent training activity that helps employees convey empathy, print off this exercise and facilitate a short discussion with your team.
Continue reading “Here’s a Training Activity for Empathy In Customer Service”
This morning I took a team from one of my client’s branches on a field trip. We’re working to create the best possible customer experience in my client’s organization and I believe one way to achieve this goal is to learn from the best. So, I got everyone out of the office and we went to the Apple store and Barnes and Noble.
Before the fieldtrip, I gave the team a list of questions and observation points so that we’d make the most productive use of our time. At the Apple store, my team observed greeting upon store entrance, analyzed employee interactions and even got to see an Apple employee eloquently handle a not so happy customer. After the fieldtrip, we met in a circle in the mall and discussed our observations and explored ways they can take back some great ideas and adopt and apply them in their organization.
We left Apple and headed across the street to Barnes and Noble. The people at Barnes and Noble were so gracious and allowed us to explore, take up a lot of space, meet to discuss our observations and they even let us take photos. My team really walked away with a lot of customer service insights from Barnes and Noble.
I love what I do! It’s great to make customer experience training and consulting hands-on, relevant and even fun.
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Are you a corporate trainer who is looking for customer service training to deliver to your team?
For Zappos it’s all about delivering WOW. This presentation delivers powerful insights into the unique ways Zappos approaches screening and hiring, quality monitoring, social customer service, and making emotional connections with customers – all with the single goal of consistently delivering a WOW customer experience.
In this keynote I share the 5 keys Contact Center Managers and frontline employees can adopt and apply to create an engaging and unforgettable customer experience. (Live and Deliver WOW, Customer Experience as the #1 Priority, Make Emotional Connections with Customers, the Speed of Light, Treat Employees Very Well). Plus, discover how Zappos is able to WOW customers with no call scripts and no talk time targets and learn why Zappos pays employees $2,000 to quit. Enjoy!
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All webinars are recorded and you can purchase the digital recording of past webinars. Access to webinar recordings never expires and you can share the video freely within your organization. Pretty sweet deal, huh?
View our 2012 Customer Service webinar series
“I really do love your webinars, Myra. They are very well done and extremely beneficial. I always find little helpful hints in your information.”
Kristy L. Bolen Project Manager Carlson Hotels Worldwide
“I just viewed the replay of the webinar you did not long ago with citrix online and I was so enlighten and amazed to hear such outstanding information. I am a marketer and I knew surface level some of the information you shared but you went deep and took it to another level of understanding for me, the light bulbs of ideas and solutions have been bombarding my mind ever since. I simply desired to say thank you.”
James Stuart
One of my favorite things do in my work is to craft a custom keynote for a client. I love the building of a keynote almost as much as I love delivering the keynote. Here are the 6 steps I take to craft my dynamic keynote sessions.
1. I start with a launch discussion with my client. In the launch discussion I ask my client a ton of questions: What keeps you up at night about your current customer service position? Where do you need your customer experience to be 5 years from today? If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing about your company culture, what would that one thing be? My objective is to find out exactly what my client wants to accomplish by working with me.
2. Next, I go undercover as my client’s customer. This is often a lot of fun. For a specialty retail store chain, my client gave me $500 to go shopping at 3 of their stores. When I’m working with call centers I will listen to recordings of phone calls or call in and be the customer. I worked with a large church recently and my family and I were “undercover” visitors checking out the ushers, greeters, signage and worship experience. My favorite undercover assignment was for a salon and day spa. I spent 3 months visiting their spa to get massages, Caribbean pedicures, hair color and even days of beauty. I know, I live the life. My undercover experience gives me data I need to come back and report on what my client does well and to give them a strategy for improving the customer experience.
3. I’ll interview a handful of employees. I’m usually hired by management. To ensure my keynote is relevant to the audience, I always interview a handful of employees to learn what challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. These interviews are so insightful and often the meat of my presentation comes from what I learn from the employees. They tell me what the organization needs, what problems customers face and they give me ideas for process improvement. I love interviewing employees because the message I get from the interviews gives me credibility with the audience — because I’m speaking the audience’s language.
4. I gather stories and examples from the real world. The way to engage an audience is to present compelling stories, examples and analogies. After determining my client’s objectives and my strategy for improving their customer experience, I go out and find great companies that have mastered what I’m trying to help my clients accomplish. Sometimes, many times actually, I share stories from my own experiences as a customer. People tell me my stories are the most compelling part of my keynotes.
5. I find a way to make my keynotes interactive. Whether I’m speaking to an audience of 75 or 1,100, I get my participants involved in my presentation. In a recent keynote I divided my audience into small groups and had each group pull out their smartphones and iPads to quickly research a company and report back to the large group. To help a company with corporate change, I facilitated an activity where participants had to make 10 changes to their appearance within 30 seconds and they had to live with those changes for the duration of my keynote. I used this exercise to teach my audience that they could live with forced and immediate change, even though it may be uncomfortable. Making my keynotes interactive keeps audiences engaged and it makes the session fun.
6. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. I’ve been speaking professionally for almost 20 years and I still rehearse every speech I give. I rehearse my content, movement, gestures, pauses…everything. You can never practice too much.
Want me to speak at your next conference? Visit my website to explore my speaking topics and to contact my office. I look forward to the opportunity to work with you.
Related articles
What a Myra Golden Training is Like
How to Get Customer Service Reps to Express Empathy
I help companies deliver a great Customer Experience. I help them do that through my consulting and professional speaking. I travel throughout North America to speak at conferences and conventions, like the Contact Center Association, National Association of Retail Marketers and SOCAP, and I deliver onsite training to companies like McDonald’s, Frito-Lay, Johnson and Johnson, and others.
Another option for working with me is through live webinars and Skype meetings. If you’re interested in having me help you improve your customer experience and you have a tight budget, you might want to look into my webinars, Skype meetings and eLearning programs. These affordable options allow me to customize presentations, training workshops or consultation and I still get to connect with your audience through video and chat.
If you want to talk more about my affordable webinar and Skype options, visit my Contact Page and Lauren or Jamal will help you with the particulars.
I look forward to working with you.
