Leadership Institute

Service Plus®

Learning Format: Classroom

(Skill Practice Program)

Order No. NSP10

Customer loyalty. It comes from an expectation of superior service. It’s a belief that even if something goes wrong, your company will do everything possible to make it right and to make sure the customer is happy. Is this the relationship you have with customers?

Service Plus® creates that level of service, helps eliminate customer defections, and strengthens customer satisfaction and loyalty. The program gives service providers more than a list of do’s and dont's by providing a toolbox of skills for effectively and efficiently handling all types of customer interactions.

Performance Objectives

Service Plus® creates service providers who:

  • Think and act consistently to please customers by putting them at the heart of your organization.
  • Create unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Ensure repeat business from established customers, increase word-of-mouth referrals for your business, and inspire loyalty in new customers.

Program Overview

This program for service providers and their leaders consists of either one-half or one-day of training and post-training skill-builder activities (Service Boosters). Self-assessments, videos, engaging activities, skill practices, and fast-paced discussions are included. An additional workshop for leaders -- Creating a Service Culture: The Service Leader’s Role -- helps build a service culture.

Course Overview

  • Keys to Service: The Service Success Loop shows the benefits to the organization and service providers for superior levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Learners discover that customers have personal and practical needs and that recognizing personal needs elevates good service to outstanding service. Learners use Key Principles to cement relationships with customers and keep them loyal. They learn how feedback on their job performance helps them hone skills and how sharing feedback with internal partners creates a web of learning that strengthens service cultures.
  • Steps to Service: Learners practice using a four-step process to meet practical needs. They see how achieving the right balance of Key Principles and Service Steps is critical to ensuring superior service every day, because some customers emphasize their practical needs while others emphasize their personal needs.
  • Extraordinary Service Opportunities: Learners use Taking the HEAT as a process to turn dissatisfied, angry customers into satisfied, loyal ones. They discern between talkers, who complain about poor service, and walkers, who don’t complain but become ex-customers unless service providers intervene. Strategies to uncover and remedy walkers’ dissatisfaction are shared. Learners calculate the financial impact of one unhappy customer to see how an “I can afford to lose this one” attitude damages profitability.
  • Service Boosters: These mini-learning activities on 10 topics are good skill developers and refreshers to be done individually or with a partner or group back on the job. Topics include: Taking Initiative; Effective Questions Get Results; Listening: More Than Hearing; and Selling: A Valuable Service.

Program Details

  • Target audience: Service providers and frontline through mid-level leaders.
  • Length: 6 hours, 45 minutes, or 3 hours, 45 minutes Fast Track.
  • Facilitator certification: DDI-certified facilitator required.
  • Prerequisites: None.
  • Series: Suitable for all environments
    • Industry-specific skill practice booklets for:
      • Banking and Finance
      • Communications
      • Hospitality
      • Internal Partners
      • Manufacturing
      • Retail
      • Transportation
      • Utilities
  • Group Size: 8 to 16 people.
  • Prework: Self-assessment. Optional. 5-10 minutes.

Related Courses

Program Advantages

  • Builds essential service skills in just one day.  Your service providers can start using what they have learned the very next day.
  • Uses engaging and interesting learning techniques and tools.  The program’s design includes the latest learning approaches, while the Service Boosters keep your service initiative alive long after the training has ended.
  • Includes materials and skill practices that present real-life scenarios to create participant buy-in.
  • It’s fun!  With cliff-hanger videos, engaging activities, games, and fast-paced discussions, you’ll feel the energy in the training room.
  • Provides flexibility in delivery options, with both classroom and self-study formats available.

Primary Competencies Developed

  • Building Customer Loyalty
  • Communication
  • Initiating Action

Secondary Competency Developed

  • Negotiation

Results

  • A study of DDI clients across various industries rated the impact of DDI service interventions on a variety of business results.  Ninety percent of the participants reported a positive impact in service culture development, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and retention, and internal customer satisfaction.  Return on investment ranged from $6,989 to $15,029 per person. 
  • Following the implementation of Service PlusÒ at Florida Power Corporation, research revealed an average of 80 percent positive change in associates performing customer service behaviors.  The company expects a return on investment of more than $2.5 million over four years.
  • According to composite results from the Service Plus® Training Evaluation, clients experienced statistically significant improvements in all of the 16 Service Plus®
    skill areas.
  • New York Life Taiwan increased performance across nine key customer service skill areas by 30 percent.  They estimated an overall return on their training investment of 518%, or a return of $5.18 for every dollar invested, over a four-
    year period.