Dealing with Challenging Customer Interactions
Course Specifications
Course number: 088880
Course length: 1.0 day(s)
Course Description
Course Objective: You will explore methods for dealing with common difficult customer interactions.

Target Student: This course is intended for customer service representatives and any client-facing employee who needs to cope with challenging customer situations, either directly or indirectly. This course is also highly useful to customer service managers, who need to be aware of the potential difficult situations in the field and have a standard means of addressing them.

Prerequisites: To ensure your success, we recommend you first take the following courses, or have equivalent knowledge: 
•	Customer Service Via Phone and Email 
•	Emotional Intelligence 
Hardware Requirements
•	A Pentium® III with 500 MHz (or better), or Macintosh® Intel-based or PowerPC G4 (or better) processor. 
•	At least 512 MB of RAM. 
•	A monitor capable of 1024 x 768 screen resolution and 32-bit color display. 
Software Requirements
Each computer requires the following software:
•	Microsoft® Windows Vista®, Windows® XP (Professional or Home Edition), Windows 2000, or Apple® Mac OS® X 10.4 (or higher). 
•	Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7 (or higher), Mozilla® Firefox® 2 (or higher), or Apple® Safari® 2 (or higher), with pop-up blocking turned off. 
•	Adobe® Flash® Player 8 (current version recommended). 
Course Objectives
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: 
•	learn to establish a solid relationship with the customer, so that you may proceed with the interaction in a positive direction. 
•	learn to overcome communication issues when dealing with customers. 
•	learn to resolve challenging situations with customers. 
Course Content
Lesson 1: Establishing a Solid Customer Relationship
Topic 1A: Review Customer Service Basics 
Topic 1B: Recognize a Difficult Situation 
Topic 1C: Work Within Your Company's Parameters 
Topic 1D: Handle Simultaneous Customer Contacts 
Topic 1E: Handle a Difficult Customer Interaction 
Lesson 2: Overcoming Communication Issues
Topic 2A: Adapt to the Customer's Personality Style 
Topic 2B: Identify the Customer's Issue 
Topic 2C: Overcome Communication Issues 
Lesson 3: Resolving Challenging Situations
Topic 3A: Educate the Customer 
Topic 3B: Focus on the Issue 
Topic 3C: Overcome Negativity 
Topic 3D: Redirect the Customer 
Topic 3E: Follow Up on a Challenging Situation