Course Overview
What do customers want, anyway? The answer need not be a mystery. As important as it is to deliver quality solutions on-time and within budget, it can be even more important to focus on how you treat your customers. Strikingly often, it is this human element of service delivery that has the greatest impact on customer satisfaction. In fact, seemingly small measures can cause customer satisfaction to soar to the top of the chart — or plunge to the bottom.

This seminar describes the impact of expectations in service delivery and helps participants develop a broad base of skills, techniques and ideas for better managing customer expectations. Material focuses both on personal behavior and organizational effectiveness.

Topics include the principles of customer satisfaction, the customer perspective, the two main types of expectations and their implications, key customer grievances and pleasers, building an expectations-managing foundation, setting and resetting expectations, information-gathering guidelines, communication caveats, and working with challenging customers.

This seminar draws from Naomi’s psychology, technical and management background; as well as her extensive experience delivering training and consulting internationally; feedback from numerous customers; and customer research.

This is a highly interactive seminar which includes case studies, small group activities, practice sessions, group discussion, reflection, and commitment-building. The principles, tools and recommendations presented will help participants become skilled Expectations Managers.Read More.

Who Should Attend
This seminar is ideally suited to managers, program managers, project managers, business analysts and staff from IT groups, help desks, data centers and other service provider groups that have customer contact responsibilities and want to learn processes, tools and skills for better managing the expectations of their internal and external customers.

Learning Objectives
This seminar provides practical tools that you can start to use immediately to better manage customer expectations by :

• Providing awareness of the importance of conscientiously and explicitly managing expectations
• Helping participants to assess their current effectiveness in managing expectations
• Providing insight into the psychology of customer satisfaction
• Explaining the principles of expectation management as they pertain to understanding the customer perspective, delivering superior service, enhancing communications, building strong relationships, becoming an information gathering specialist, listening persuasively, introducing new ideas, delivering bad news, and assessing service effectiveness
• Identifying simple, low-cost measures that have a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction
• Describing personality differences that affect the ability to successfully manage expectations
• Presenting examples from numerous organizations to illustrate key points
• Providing processes and tools for managing expectations, along with guidelines for putting them into action
• Read the Full Course Outline.

Plus, receive valuable takeaways. This seminar includes a detailed handout that will be used during the seminar and that serves as a reference guide afterwards for managing customer expectations.

Some comments from past participants:

"I absolutely enjoyed this class and would recommend it to peers. You have a very natural and approachable way of teaching. The material is interesting and though some of it, like you said, is “common sense,” you provided a path, a means of putting to practice this “common sense.” I know that I walk out of this class more informed, armed with tools to help my team and my customers in both my work and home environment. The examples worked well and helped me “get” the point."

"I liked the pace, material covered, your enthusiasm for the subject, thorough material. Good examples, relevant."

"The course and materials were very helpful and informative. The exercise on the second day allowed us to actively practice what we had heard and learned."

Read the Instructor Bio: Naomi Karten.