+61 9555 7955Is your customer service falling short of expectations - or are you ready to elevate from good to exceptional?
Your customers want more than just answers – they want to feel heard, understood, and valued. Yet too many organisations train their customer service teams with loads of product knowledge, leading to one-sided conversations that leave customers dissatisfied. Even when the problem is solved, the experience often feels transactional. Your customers deserve better.
A customer service professional’s ability to talk consultatively with customers to identify and satisfy their logical and emotional needs has as much to do with mindset as skillset. If a consultant can't see, hear and feel the world from the customer's perspective, they can't connect authentically, and the customer doesn't feel understood. On the other hand, if they over-empathise with customers, they can't step outside of this emotion to resolve issues effectively.
Our ‘psychology of customer satisfaction’ engagement model enables your consultants to engage in a way that satisfies both a customer’s logical and emotional needs. After our training, leaders can review conversations and quickly determine if the approach is being followed and assess which critical capabilities are strengths or development opportunities.
How our customer service programs work
Our customer service training uses a fascinating blend of personal and professional development techniques underpinned by Emotional Intelligence.
We offer people the opportunity to complete a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Thinking Styles Profile that will enhance their understanding of human behaviour and provide them with practical strategies for identifying customers’ communication style preferences. This helps to maximise customer satisfaction and your NPS.
Our programs use emotional intelligence to enable consultants to:
- build authentic relationships
- clarify true (stated and unstated) needs
- link a solution to a customer’s logical and emotional needs
- confidently encourage commitment
Get started in three easy steps
Contact us to make a time to chat
We will provide you with a preliminary program design
Sign off and program start!
Embedding your desired service culture
Like you we are mindful of how important it is to ensure an ROI for any training you invest in. That’s why we take an integrated approach to embedding your desired customer service culture by reviewing and defining the following:
- Desired capabilities and underpinning talents of your teams
- Ways to operationalise and embed components of the program, so it becomes part of your business as usual
- How customer conversations should sound through conversational mapping, which includes creating skills reference guides, conversational assessment scorecards and skills-based practice plans
- KPI assessment (including average handle time, customer retention, grade of service, abandonment, resolution and adherence)
- A coaching model that will embed the program in your organisation
Solutions Showcase
Solution 1 - Emotional Resilience Program for Financial Services Firm
The challenge
- This program was developed for Claims Agents to enhance their ability to manage their emotional state, maintaining composure and clarity during customer interactions.
- Agents frequently handle a high volume of customers in distress, dealing with financial or physical hardships or the loss of a loved one, which can be emotionally taxing.
- These customer calls can be draining, impacting the agents’ ability to manage outcomes effectively and deliver a positive experience.
- Incorrect assumptions by agents during calls can negatively impact both the speed of claim resolution and customer satisfaction.
- The goal was to equip agents with tools to compartmentalize emotions, minimizing the impact of challenging customer stories on their personal lives.
- Another objective was to foster empathy without desensitizing agents to customers’ difficult experiences.
Our solution
- Delivered through two half-day workshops, focusing on practical tools and strategies for emotional resilience during and after customer conversations.
- Key topics included building self-awareness, meeting customers at their emotional level, maintaining resilience, and using influential language patterns.
- These workshops enabled agents to enhance their ability to empathise while managing their emotional responses, ensuring improved customer experiences and a healthier work-life balance.
Solution 2 - Managing Challenging Customer Interactions for Utility Customer Engagement Team
The challenge
- The Customer Engagement team deals regularly with gas customers experiencing emotional or frustrated states, often facing hostile behaviour.
- Many cases require coordination across departments or multiple technician visits, resulting in delays that can frustrate customers and impact satisfaction.
- The team handles a broad range of calls, from process inquiries to complex scheduling issues, often needing escalation management when team leaders are unavailable.
- Additional challenges, such as weather-related rescheduling and site readiness disputes, contribute to the complexity of customer interactions.
- Negative customer experiences, including personal attacks, affect team morale and lead to defensive behaviours, with some team members responding too bluntly in communications.
Our solution
- A blended program was implemented to develop consultants' skills in managing mindset and using language effectively for positive influence.
- Included two half-day in-person workshops combined with self-paced online modules.
- Workshops provided experiential activities focused on de-escalation techniques, emotional disconnection from difficult situations, and clarity of thought.
- Online modules prepared participants with foundational knowledge before the workshops, allowing more focus on application. Additional modules were provided post-workshop to reinforce learning and support long-term application.
- The program aimed to improve customer satisfaction, team morale, and emotional resilience, enabling consultants to handle diverse customer personalities and escalations with composure and empathy.
Solution 3 - Emotional Endurance Program for Retirement Living Provider
The challenge
- Consultants in retirement living communities manage their own psychosocial health while supporting elderly residents, who may experience illness or loss.
- The consultants’ roles require them to handle personal grief and provide support to community members who may also be affected by loss.
- An increased societal focus on mental health has led to more frequent concerns being raised, which can add pressure to consultants as they navigate emotionally sensitive situations.
- In some instances, consultants may respond reactively to concerns raised by residents, especially in perceived conflicts, impacting relationships and overall resident satisfaction.
- The program sought to support consultants' development in managing conflict and emotional wellbeing while helping them foster a supportive community environment for residents.
Our solution
- The program launched with a virtual introductory session to engage participants and outline the program’s value.
- An online module on emotional wellbeing was completed before a one-day facilitated workshop, with a follow-up module on perceptual positions.
- The workshop covered topics such as psychological safety, understanding grief, practical resilience strategies, and identifying personal stress triggers.
- Participants received Practice Plans post-workshop to embed key concepts, along with coaching support from line managers to encourage sustained application.
- This holistic approach aimed to strengthen consultants' emotional resilience and ability to provide empathetic support, fostering a compassionate and connected community atmosphere.
The NNC customer service training experience
The expert team at Neural Networks have been working with organisations for over two decades to integrate customer service culture with an emphasis on engagement, customer focus and performance accountability that align with organisational values. We deliver and facilitate customer service training for employees across a broad range of industries.
Frequently Asked Questions About Customer Service Training
Great customer service goes beyond solving issues; it creates a positive, memorable experience that fosters trust and loyalty.
Emphasise a "sales-through-service" approach where helping the customer is the primary goal, and sales are a natural result.
Building resilience is an ongoing process that benefits from a holistic approach—one that supports not only skill development but also the mental and emotional well-being of the team.
An effective customer service training program provides team members with the skills, knowledge, and mindset needed to deliver exceptional service consistently.
The 70 20 10 model for learning and development originated from research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the 1980s.
Blog Posts About Customer Service Training
As a customer service leader, it's your responsibility to ensure that your team not only performs well but also thrives in a supportive, healthy environment.
Read about how having good customer service and retention can be just as important as sales.
Learn about the importance of replacing a pure service focus to to a sales and service mindset.
Explore the principles, application, best practices, benefits, and real-world examples of implementing the 70 20 10 model.
In this post, we'll debunk some myths around employee training and development and provide insight into the best practices.