The RCCSP Professional Educational Alliance has released new upcoming dates in 2011for the vital – and timely – The Art of Managing Difficult Callers and Affecting Real-Time Customer Recovery course.

The workshops will be offered:

• Aug.15-17       Dallas, Texas (The Adolphus)
• Sept.14-16       Washington, D.C. (Henley Park Hotel)
• Oct.10-12        Austin, Texas   (Omni Austin Downtown
• Nov.16-18       Orlando, Fla. (Sheraton Suites)

The RCCSP Professional Education Alliance also offers private in-house training for this seminar.

There is arguably a crankiness and impatience amongst individuals specifically, customers these days whose reputed causes are legion, whether poor economic or weather climate, traffic congestion and/or perhaps in many cases an overly high set of expectations and sense of worth. Just ask any call center agent or front line retail staff, off-the-record.

Social media has given people a powerful new tool to vent; their comments-accurate or not-will influence others in their buying decisions. Both call/contact center and social media channels bring out the worst from these difficult individuals because they hide behind the lines; many – but not all – would not dare say or write the same comments in face-to-face encounters.

Yet at the end of the day these individuals are customers. They make money for companies. Which company they spend with, how much and what on depends in part on their experience with the products or services they bought and how they perceive they are treated by staff. And they have the power through verbal or written word of mouth to affect product/service and vendor choices of other existing and prospective customers. They therefore must be properly handled.

The Managing Difficult Callers seminar will teach contact center managers and supervisors to beehive to their agents how to exhibit the exact traits the caller wants and expects, pinpoint causes of caller frustration and know what to do when a customer cannot be satisfied. Attendees will be taught how to be calm, win over and drive callers toward positive outcomes and how to manage, recover and maintain you’re their own attitude and composure. They will be instructed on practicing the art of customer recovery and turn dissatisfied customers into a loyal customers. They will master the use of the How to Manage Difficult Caller Personalities desktop reference, the ultimate real-time customer recovery “cheat sheet”.

Attendees of this course will walk away with the knowledge, tools and confidence they need to handle any type of customer with skill and professionalism, says Nina Kawalek, CEO of the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance. Participants will learn simple proven strategies for handling the most challenging customer encounters, tactics for managing a variety of caller personalities. They will obtain customer recovery skills that can be used in real-time customer encountered at the “moment of truth”. They will also learn why dissatisfied callers expect the worst, what callers really want, and how to reverse customer perception. 

Activities, exercises, discussions, and role-plays are used in the classroom, allowing participants to practice and hone newly-learned techniques. Instruction is enhanced by real-life situations and customer voice files that demonstrate strategies for effectively dealing with difficult callers.

“Contact center professionals consistently cite the difficult caller as the most stressful encounter they face on a day-to-day basis,” says Kawalek. “At the same time, every difficult incident presents an opportunity for the organization to demonstrate above-and-beyond service and to earn long-term customer loyalty. Done right, real-time customer recovery is a dazzling, jaw-dropping experience for the customer – one they will never forget, and a story they will relate again and again.”

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