Customer service training, coached weekly
Service teams get judged on the five worst minutes of the month. We rehearse those five minutes every week, so when they arrive for real your advisor has already been there.
Amara
Customer Service coach, English and French
Live
This week's scenario
“I have been waiting two weeks for my vehicle and nobody has called me. Is it ready or not?”
Product training gets a launch event. Sales training gets a budget. The conversation that decides whether a customer stays with you for another five years is usually left to whoever picks up.
The gap
What actually changes
Both answers contain the same facts. Only one of them keeps the customer, and the difference is entirely in how it is said.
“Yes, I understand, but the part is on backorder from the factory and there is really nothing I can do about that. As soon as it arrives we will book it in. I cannot give you a date, sorry.”
Every fact in it is correct. The customer puts the phone down still not knowing when they get their vehicle back, or who is going to tell them.
“Two weeks with no call from us is not good enough, and I am sorry1. Here is exactly where it stands: the part left the warehouse yesterday, it reaches us Thursday2, and I have put you first into the bay on Friday morning. I will call you Thursday afternoon either way, including if the news is bad3. And while it has been off the road, have you had cover? If not, I will have a loan unit ready for you on Thursday.4”
5 minutesdecide the relationship
A customer almost never judges a workshop on the quality of the repair. They cannot assess it. They judge it on how they were told what was happening, and on whether the person who promised to call actually called.
Which means the whole relationship rests on a handful of short conversations that nobody practices, usually held by the least senior person in the building.
Teknosell's position, from twenty years of listening to service calls.The scorecard
The curriculum and the report in one. Everybody is marked on the same six criteria from the first call, so progress is a movement on a scale rather than an opinion.
Acknowledges the customer's experience before explaining anything, and does not follow it with but.
Explains the decision in plain words the customer could repeat to their own boss.
Replaces as soon as possible with a date, a name, a number or a place.
Says who will call and when, and calls whether the news is good or bad.
Stays steady when the customer is not, without going cold and without over-apologising.
Recognises when a service conversation has quietly become a sales one, and hands it over cleanly.
The rotation
No module list and nothing to log into. A rotation of scenarios that gets harder as people get better, then starts over with your own material.
The calls that happen every day and set the tone for everything else. Unglamorous, and where most of the damage is done.
Where good service people separate from average ones. The coach plays the customer properly, including the interrupting.
Written from your own service standards, your scripts and the complaints that actually reached you last quarter.
Anatomy of one call
Short enough to fit between two customer visits, and easy to move when the day falls apart.
Thirty seconds of hello, then the coach sets the scene and plays the customer. No warning about which one it will be.
The part no course gives you. Out loud, under a little pressure, in the language you sell in.
What landed, what did not, and where the customer stopped listening.
Not five. One, small enough to remember on the next customer call.
Almost everyone is better on the second attempt, and that is the bit people remember.
Who it is for
Less useful if your problem is process rather than people. If the part genuinely takes six weeks and nobody knows where it is, coaching the phone call will make it sound better without making it better. Fix the information first.
What you get as a manager
Questions
The calls that decide whether a customer comes back: delays, refusals, complaints and the customer who is already angry. First the everyday calls, then the hard ones, then your own service standards and the complaints that reached you last quarter.
A coach plays the customer, your advisor answers live, the coach breaks down what landed and gives one thing to change, and they run it again. The whole call takes 8 to 10 minutes, once a week.
Service advisors, service reception, the parts counter, contact centre agents and anyone else who talks to a customer when something has gone wrong.
More than 30, with native-speaking coaches, so advisors practice in the language the customer will actually complain in.
A score per person on the same six criteria every week, a rollup per market and team, and the recordings to use in one to ones.
Let's talk
We will run one real scenario with two or three of your advisors and send you the recordings. No scores, no report, just the calls.
Most clients start with one and add another
