About this Course

World-class customer communications must be delivered with a heart. World-class organisations are those who know what it takes to connect with their customers, build customer loyalty, and maximise customer delight with every communication. Increasingly, customers will communicate their satisfaction and dissatisfaction through email, feedback forms, letters and social media channels such as blogs, forums and Facebook, and expect a prompt reply that addresses their needs and expectations. Writing replies to customers is therefore an art that requires careful thinking, thoughtful analysis and astute writing skills.

This course is designed to help executives and managers shortcut their writing and thinking process with strategies that enable them to communicate and connect with tact, empathy and clarity on offline as well as online platforms.

Learning Outcome:

Participants will adopt a 5-step approach to understand, analyse and write to customers. Putting themselves in their customers' minds, they learn to identify customer needs and expectations effectively. Participants learn to address customer issues with empathy and sensitivity while writing in a systematic manner. Simple and effective techniques will also be provided to enable participants to write concisely and clearly, yet with shorter time. Finally, participants will walk away from the course with a toolbox of techniques that they can immediately apply to improve the quality of customer communications in their organisation.

Course Outline:

Day 1

Uncover and Understand Customer Needs

• Customer complaint iceberg theory
  
• What customers never tell you but expect from you
  
• Recognise critical customer needs and wants
  
• Adopt a service quality approach to identify service failures
  
• The art and science of customer communications
  

Analyse Customer Personality and Issues

• Apply the 3Ps Approach to identify customer personality and situation
  
• Understand customer prejudice and attitudes
  
• Use S.O.U.N.D to identify issues and important details in a systematic manner
  

Organise Your Message to Connect with the Customer

• Structure your message to communicate tact, empathy and assurance
  
• Organise long replies with useful content structures
  
• How to apologise with sincerity
  
• How to explain for situations which are not really your fault
  
• What to say when you can provide partial or no resolution
  

Addressing Customer in the Right Tone

• Greeting customers appropriately
  
• Personalise your opening for the customer
  
• Incorporate customer references and perspectives
  
• Write in a customer-centric vs. writer-centric manner
  
• Highlight the customer benefit when explaining and asking for information
  

Day 2

Responding to Complaints, Feedback and Compliments

• Steps to respond to complaints
  
• Replying to compliments
  
• Recommended phrases and words for different scenarios
  
• Phrases and words to avoid
  
• Apply techniques to samples (practice session)
  

Writing With Conciseness and Clarity

• Say more with less words
  
• Achieve clarity with precise words
  
• Using simple instead of complicated words
  
• Manage your sentence length and structure
  
• Change hidden verbs to create concise sentences
  
• Minimise jargon
  

Writing Quality Replies

• Common mistakes made in writing
  
• Avoid message spoilers
  
• Improve your grammar
  
• Quick editing & proofreading checklists
  

Improving Readability and Presentation

• Deliver information efficiently
  
• Effective paragraphing
  
• Use parallel structures
  
• Make use of embedded and numbered lists
  

Managing Social Media Feedback & Complaints

• The multiplier effect of social media
  
• Develop an effective social media strategy
  
• Identify the relevant social media channels
  
• Understand the customer behaviour types on social media
  
• Specific tips on writing to social media complaints and feedback
  

Who Will Benefit?

This course is designed for executives and managers who need to communicate with customers through email messages, letters and the social media, and who want to connect with their customers and build customer loyalty through the way they write. Managers who need to vet and coach others in the art of writing to customers will also benefit from the strategies and techniques shared in this course.

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