Customer Service training is undoubtedly very important to all organisations – all the more so currently. Globally people have less available to spend on the products and services they need. With the rise of the internet, you can get almost anything from anywhere. Research shows that 80% of buying decisions are based on the service.

Improving customer service will put you ahead of the competition

The customer service module takes around 3 hours on a standard 2 day To Market customer service and telephone communications training course. Here we’ve had it distilled down into around 45 minutes of the key extracts and tips. Some of the top customer service tips here have been collected from the customer service personnel (agents) who have attended the courses. And they are the professionals of course – so they should know.

In this customer service audio CD you will hear why exceptional customer service matters to the progress of any organisation, the 4 point customer development mantra – the 4 key fundamental cornerstones why in the long run professional customer service is a MUST HAVE. Andrew Seaward will guide you through some commercial realities to customer service. Then he finishes with the 15 key points which make up effective customer service – and give your customers the service they deserve. And that’s without having to go the extra mile.   Click here   http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=27 to find out more about the CD and with a couple of clicks it is easy to buy through PayPal or by using your credit card.

Account management on the telephone is becoming increasingly important. Selling costs are going up and in many markets there are fewer customers. Consequently it is important to focus your time on where you are likely to get the best return.

Telephone account management - growing business area

As one of our latest batch of audio products, we have a CD that guides you through all the things you need to know to add more customers and clients and equally importantly – keep the ones you’ve currently got.  How often do sales business models focus and reward exclusively new business accounts. You can find the audio training CD by following this link http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=32

It guides you through understanding what the function of account management is, how to do the key parts of the job effectively, and how you are the single biggest factor in determining outcomes !

Interestingly, 5 out of the last 7 people who have bought this audio CD, also bought the audio CD on time management too. Running your customer portfolio is partly about being well organised yourself of course too. Find more details here http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=24 All CDs are currently £34.99 + VAT and payment is easy through PayPal. You can use your credit card too.

Customers are the most likely future customers. There are many studies that show this to be true. They are cheaper to acquire than new customers, and this is partly because they are easier to influence. After all they are already in the habit of buying from you.

We came across an article by Karl Bryan the American trainer who covers this area. This is some of what he says on the subject ;

“….. many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers, but you NEED to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current and former customers.  These are people you already know to be a good sales potential. They’ve already bought from you!”

So it is important to take the time to market and sell new products to your existing and lapsed customers. Spend less time trying to sell old products to new customers, and you will see improvements in sales, customer quality and brand position. Karl Bryan offers this useful list with some added notes from us to make sure you retain your current customers ;

1. Stay in contact: This means by phone, email, e-newsletter, and in person. Keep them posted on what you are doing : new products and services etc.

2. Post-Purchase Relationship Building: This means you need to follow up with customers. Your customers need to feel  you have a genuine interest in them and their experiences with your product or service.  How many times do sales people lose interest the minute they get the order. Something as simple as a Thank
You note with your contact or customer service information can go along way in retaining a great customer.

3. Deals & Guarantees: Always offer your current customers the best deals and guarantees you have. Show them you appreciate their business and help them to get the best deals and advice. You can also do this with a preferred pricing option if their spend warrants it. It’s about making them feel special, valued. It all helps.

4. Integrity: Using good business practices and simply upholding integrity, dignity and honesty go along way with customers. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of half-hearted rubbish sales people. So the more they can trust you to do waht you say when you say you’ll do it, the more the relationship will build, and the more they will trust you.

There are three cornerstone ideas to a successful business:
. Quality product/service
. Offering useful products/services that solve a problem for or enhance the life of a customer
. Offer subjects your customers find interesting

Use this approach of educating your customers and offer them real information and insight and you will be rewarded with loyalty and success. Don’t waste all your time on new prospects while your current customers become someone else’s new accounts.

As the well known motivational speaker Jay Abraham says, “Your best prospects are your existing customers. If you’ve been putting all your marketing efforts into acquiring new customers, stop and divert some of your resources into reselling, upselling, cross-selling to those same customers.”

Good words Jay.

It’s how you say it that’s important. Are you aware that something like 80% of the impact of a message is conveyed in how you say it ?  Sure the actual words are important, but actually as humans we are all perceptive around people’s vocal tone, their energy level and their level of enthusiasm.

Vocal tone is important in your interaction with customers

The minute you walk into a shop and the person says “good morning” you know instantly whether they mean it or not !

One of our newly released audio CD titles covers the training topics of Expression, Energy and Emphasis. You can find it here http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=30.

It guides you through understanding that you can tell 40+ things about a total stranger who you can’t even see from as little as 6 words. The CD explains all of this and relates moods to colours !

We’ve also added a currency coverter to the site recently so that our customers from the United States can order easily, and know the exact price at the point of order.

Upsell, cross sell and switch sell. This new audio CD has become one of our top selling products since it’s release in the Autumn. It seems it strikes a chord with businesses keen to get the most value out of every phone call. 

More skills for internal sales teams

 This is a product aimed at those of you who have a team of people or individuals who deal with incoming calls, but who are nevertheless expected to sell. If you want to raise your skills, or build up your selling skills this product could help http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=31

Every phone call coming in represents an opportunity. OK, it may not always look like it – “Oh, I’m just phoning round looking for prices” or “I want to know where my goods are !” But within whatever the customer is saying there is always the seed of an opportunity.

Increasing the average order value by upselling, or switchselling the customer on to a different product if the one they want is out of stock are all important ways of ensuring you lock their business in, and don’t lose it to your competition.

 Training audio CDs for United States despatch.

Unsurprisingly most of our enquiries, orders and websites come from the English speaking world. The United States is our second biggest market. As a result and in order to make it easier for our American customers to work out the prices in dollars you will see we’ve added a click through currency converter against each of the products here.

Training CDs - ready to ship to United States

So if you’re in California,Wisconsin, New York state, Florida, Ohio, Washington, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, or Canada or any of the 50 U.S. states and you’re after some best practice advice from the U.K. on customer service, telesales or general telephone communication skills, try us out. A few clicks and the products are on their way to you.

Developing in-house training material for customer service and telesales is important for you and your company if you still have restricted training budgets at the moment. The temptation is to cut costs and look for increasing ways of being self-sufficient.

You recognise that training is important – perhaps MORE important than it’s ever been, but you’ve not got money to throw at it. Perhaps you’re reading this looking for some new ideas and new material.

Telesales training CDs are available for free – well sort of.

The training company To Market runs training courses for telesales and telemarketing teams. We have on offer at Associated Learning Systems a range of telesales and telemarketing related training CDs as part of our audio training programme. These include our best selling line the 3 CDs on telephone selling. We also have a CD on benefits titled “sell the sizzle, not the bacon.” There will be other CDs added soon on upselling, cross selling and switch selling plus highly effective account management.  

You may be thinking the CDs are unlikely to be completely free – well here’s the deal. For every one of the Sales training CDs available on our site that you buy, you can have a complete refund of what you’ve spent against any in-house training you commission To Market to run for you before the 30th September 2009.

Our telesales training products and material here contain advice and tips on sales techniques, including how to open the sales call, identifying needs, spotting buying signals, questioning techniques, probing customer needs, and dealing with objections.

So have a browse around the site, press a few buttons and these CDs could be with you tomorrow, or maybe the next day. Payment is easy and secure through PayPal, you can make payment with your credit card.

So big Phil has gone ! And Chelsea FC are going to make do with a part-time manager who doesn’t even work in this country the rest of the time. So is that really better than having a World Cup winning manager full-time ?! I don’t see how it can be.

So is Phil a bad manager ? Probably not. Did he lead the team well ? Seems not – judging by the stories of disharmony in the camp. But let’s just consider his management credentials for a moment. He led Brazil to a World Cup win (possibly not the most difficult feat in football admittedly – with so much abundant talent), but you’ve still got to be the ‘chosen one’. He was also the man who regularly put one over on Sven when it mattered - sending us out of 2 key tournaments. So much so, that not so long ago he was supposedly the man for the England job. “If you can’t beat him, let him join.”

So what happened at Chelsea then ? Did all those skills desert him ? And what of his predecessor Avram Grant ? His team finished a close second in the league on the final day (by 2 points) and were just one kick of a ball away from being European Champions. Sounds fairly impressive. But not good enough it seems. “So let’s stir it all up and start again.”  

Perhaps the problem is with the organisation ! Huh – oh no, can’t be ! To produce a winning organisation first you must have stability and continuity. Clearly if someone is a muppet and falls short of the their goals then they have to go but look at your goal setting. Is it realistic ? Is world domination a justifiable aim ? No-one has yet managed that in any field.

Also it is important to recognise that just throwing money at a problem will not solve it. Whether it is Abramovich at Chelsea or the American government in the Middle East, achievement of our goals in life will involve some graft and dedication, and putting our shoulder to the wheel. It may be a slog but it must be done. Just hoping that money will help achieve everything we want doesn’t work.

But yes I’ll leave you to tell that to Mr Abramovich !

Make your goal setting challenging but realistic, and remember to set SMART goals. In these testing times setting personal goals and self-development becomes even more important. There are audio products available on the subject of personal self-development. Click here to follow the link http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_list.asp?Section=SELF%20DEVELOPMENT

A book I bought for holiday last year, which I thoroughly recommend is Predictable Irrationality by Dan Ariely.

It is not intended as a sales manual, but is more an insight into patterns of human (and therefore by extension customer) behaviour. As the title suggests, it explains that although we as buyers do extraordinary things and apparently act irrationally, much of it in fact is entirely predictable. How much would this benefit you as a sales person do you think ?

One tip I learned is the example of giving people 3 options. Set out 3 options and people will naturally drift towards the middle option. This gives you the opportunity to present the product or service you want them to go for (and which is realistic) as the middle option. Good stuff eh ?!

He also covers an example of comparing 3 items when two of them are similar (a luxury weekend in Paris, a ‘value’ weekend in Paris or a luxury weekend in Rome.) He talks about why a person will be likely to choose one of the Parisien weekends. But I’ll let you discover that one for yourself.

You will be able to buy this at all good bookstores, I got mine at Smiths, you can follow this link http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/ProductDetails-Predictably+Irrational+-9780007256525.html

But happy reading and let’s make 2009 an informed year ! Knowledge is the new power !