1. PowerPoint presentation
Understand working in a customer service environment
Handout 4: The aims of this session are to: Identify job roles within a team delivering customer service. Describe dissatisfied customer behaviours. State the procedures to be followed when dealing with customer queries or problems. State to whom to refer customer queries and problems.
Tutor to read the unit outcomes before the session and prepare by checking the PPT tutor notes, session plans and slides prior to the session.
Domestics and session behaviours to be agreed before the session begins.

2. Customer service roles
What roles do you think there are in a customer service team?
Tutor to ask learner/s this and get them to respond (this can be one to one or group work).
There will be a varied response depending on the experience of the learner/s.
There are no defined right answers and the tutor should use their own experiences to develop or extend learning.

3. Typical customer service team ‒ job roles
Call centre Customer Service Operator
Trainee Customer Service Operator
Head of Customer Service Operations
Senior Customer Service Officer
Customer Service Officer
Customer Service Administrator
Customer Service Manager
Customer Service Supervisor
Customer Service Team Leader
Tutor to reveal these and ask the learner/s to draw their own organisation chart showing these or some of them.

4. Basic organisational chart
Manager
Call centre operator
Customer service operative
Trainee officer
Team Leader/supervisor/officer
Tutor to reveal and discuss this chart and how the role ‘officer’ can be higher in the hierarchy depending on the type of organisation.

5. Duties of a customer service trainee
These may include:
Answering casual enquiries from customers face to face or over the phone.
Processing refunds and returns.
Writing letters or s in response to queries or complaints.
Greeting and signing in visitors or customers to premises.
Asking customers for feedback.
*Should it include making tea and coffee for colleagues?
Tutor to go through these and ask learner/s what else a trainee might be expected to do. The tea making should create a short debate about fairness of this task and how it should be shared duty and that unfair requests can be challenged but to offer is always appreciated.

6. Duties of a customer service manager
These may include
Monitoring supervisors/team leaders’ skills
Recruiting and selecting new staff
Disciplining staff
Managing budgets
Collating complex information
Completing weekly, monthly and annual reports
Managing customer satisfaction surveys.
*Should it include making tea and coffee for colleagues?
This slide is to show the differences in job role/duties but also to get learner/s to consider the coffee making question again. It can be discussed that management do not have to be remote but can show respect to their team by being friendly and human by being on the rota for this task.

7. Customer behaviours that show dissatisfaction
Body language
Facial expression
Posture
Aggressive gestures
Verbal
Tone
Volume
Bad language
Tutor to reveal and discuss these areas with the learner/s drawing on experiences either feeling this way themselves or being on the receiving end.

8. Behaviour in customers
Anger makes us ugly – emitting hostile energy, creating a cause for more ugliness in others.
Happiness/contentment makes us smile and respond to customers positively.
Sadness can affect our body language and voice and make customers respond in a similar way.
Pressure and stress lead to impatience, intolerance and negative behaviours.
The things that affect our behaviour will affect the customer service experience and their beliefs in the organisation and its product and services.

9. Calming approaches to angry customers
If a customer is angry or abusive:
Try to stay calm and actively listen taking notes if you can
If they get abusive say politely ‘Please do not speak to me in that way’
Step back a little from their personal space (face to face)
Resolve their problem if you can especially if they know what they want
If you cannot resolve their issue ask if they would like to speak to your supervisor.

10. Customer service worksheet 5
Worksheet 5 – Job roles and customer behaviours
Complete the worksheet and discuss the answers with your tutor
The completed worksheet can be used as evidence in your portfolio.
Distribute to learner/s and discuss answers using the worksheet (tutor copy) to explore the responses and learner retention.

11. Procedures to deal with customer problems
Different organisations will have their own procedures but there are some golden rules of a customer service professional:
Actively listen to the query, problem or complaint
Don’t make promises that can’t be kept
Deal with the complaint if it is within your limit of authority
Be helpful and don’t expect your customer to repeat the problem if you pass it on
Go the extra mile if possible.
Tutor to discuss this with the learners and compare their experiences.

12. Complaints ‒ continued
If a customer has a general query or a problem taking notes can help this will depend what the customer needs and expects.
Customer service complaints are measured using the following factors:
timeliness
accuracy
appropriateness.
If a problem cannot be dealt with immediately they must be informed and the issue will need to be passed over to other colleagues or another department.
*Remember social media is a fast growing complaints platform.
A discussion could create debate around how the internet can have a positive and negative effect on companies.

13. Who to refer customer service queries and problems to
Sometimes queries and problems cannot be dealt with immediately. This maybe because the issue is complex or requires further authority.
Customer service personnel need to be trained on their own procedures and understand their own role and that of others in their organisation.
Moving issues up the ladder of authority needs to follow correct procedures so that supervisors or team leaders are not overburdened with problems that can be dealt with by other team members.
Remind learners that each organisation will have their own procedures for dealing with problems and some may expect that queries are escalated

14. Customer service Worksheet 6
Worksheet 6 ‒ Procedures to deal with customer problems and who to refer to.
Complete the worksheet and discuss the answers with your tutor.
The completed worksheet can be used as evidence in your portfolio.
Distribute to learner/s and discuss answers using the worksheet (tutor copy) to explore the responses and learner retention.

15. Activity 4 – Know how to refer customer queries and problems
Summary activity
Activity 4 – Know how to refer customer queries and problems
Activity can be printed or signposted to on the SmartScreen portal. Tutor version is available with correct answers.

16. Questions?
Tutor to distribute the first activity for this learning outcome.