Highly effective written responses to complaints received by letter and email will reduce complaint escalation and ultimately cut the cost of complaints. Thoughtfully crafted communications can potentially turn negative experiences into positive experiences and help to retain the customer and enhance the brand.
This workshop examines the theory and practice of effective written communications (both by letter and by e-mail) in complaint handling. Written communications can be effectively and helpful, or they can obscure meaning and antagonise. They can encourage dialogue and resolution or promote ongoing hostility and even litigation. They can speed up complaint handling or lead to protracted and unproductive paper wars.
Poor communications can erode customer confidence in your organisation which is why good written communication is a critical part of complaint handling.
Too often we either expect that people will automatically be able to write letters in response, or we provide legal sounding template letters for staff to follow. This workshop will teach attendees to think for themselves and empower them to write complaint response letters that help.
The workshop program includes:
Principles of effective written communication
Learn the how and when to write
Defining the letter: its purpose and message
Understanding the audience, the recipient and using appropriate language
Structuring the content of the letter
Writing etiquette: personalisation vs. precedent letters and scripts
Communicating bad news
Explaining complex matters
Reframing negative communications
Writing an apology, and
Common problems with written correspondence in complaint handling
Your facilitator: Nicole Cullen BA, LLB, Cullaborate
Nicole has a strong interest in early and effective complaints handling and communication based on many years of professional experience resolving escalated complaints Nicole is a highly qualified and experienced trainer and facilitator of complaints handling workshops including clear communication training.
Costs: Members $550 Non Members $660 Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
Strategy for Complaint Handling
Developing and implementing a strategy in a service recovery environment
Are you new to complaint handling management? Do you work in an organisation without an adequate complaint handling strategy in place? Or do you feel that you are ready to develop the expertise and confidence to apply strategic thinking and planning skills in your role? If yes, then attending this next level workshop will provide you with a clear understanding of the strategy development and implementation process in a customer facing environment.
Drawing on TMI’s expertise, you will take away practical tools to assist you to develop and implement a simple yet effective service recovery strategy within your organisation.
Who should attend? Ideal for newer managers and supervisors working in a customer facing environment for whom customer service and service recovery is a key issue, or those within an organisation with no strategy in place. Why not bring the senior team? Our 2010 and 2011 workshop attracted several teams who were looking forward to implementing strategy together.
Your Facilitator: Ralph Simpfendorfer, TMI Australia
Special thanks to TMI Australia for partnering with us on this workshop
Mutiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
Professional Resilience®
“Pressure proof” your team to build resilience and avoid burnout
Being able to take difficult situations in your stride is a crucial attribute for all consumer affairs professionals, particularly those working in dispute resolution or complaints handling. The ability to build and maintain resilience is critical, with lack of “bounce” taking a toll on personal wellbeing resulting in diminished energy and enthusiasm for both work and personal life. Key indicators that resilience is lacking in yourself or your team can be poor team morale or a dysfunctional team, decreased productivity, professional burnout, increased sick leave and absenteeism, or in a worst case scenario, increases in work related stress claims.
As a manager or team leader within your business, it is your responsibility to learn to build resilience in both self and others. While individuals are clearly responsible for their own health and wellbeing, a work environment where customer calls often escalate, or are just plain argumentative, can erode an individuals ability to manage this independently and it therefore becomes a work, health and safety imperative.
Michelle Bihary, your expert facilitator, has created a highly interactive and vibrant program for professionals to achieve resilience. Her Professional Resilience ® program draws on the latest research in resilience, emotional intelligence, subjective wellbeing and happiness, leadership, psychology, energy and stress management, neuroscience, mindfulness and spirituality. Additionally, Michelle draws on her 29 years as a Psychotherapist, Trainer and Consultant. Having worked extensively with executives and professionals for almost three decades, Michelle has a deep understanding of what works.
Attend this workshop and amongst the many things too long for this web page, you will gain:
Enhanced self leadership skills,
Improved strategies to strengthen your own resilience and prevent burnout,
An understanding of ways to protect your wellbeing from the stressors in your professional life,
Strategies for staying positive and for disengaging from negative interactions in the workplace,
A model of self care that can support a professionally satisfying and sustainable work style, and
Comprehensive strategies for building resilience in teams and workplaces.
Your expert facilitator: Michelle Bihary, Psychotherapist, Trainer, Consultant and Director of The Delta Centre
Current schedule: (note registration is from 8.45am)
Melbourne: Thursday 16 May 2013 9am to 5pm - cancelled Sydney: Thursday 30 May 2013 9am to 5pm Brisbane: Thursday 14 November 9am to 5pm
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
Managing Difficult Customer Behaviour
Strategies to deal with difficult customer behaviour
Managing relationships is an ongoing concern for all individuals working in the area of complaint handling. Managing relationships where the behaviour of the customer is considered to be difficult adds a further level of complexity, can be stressful for staff and is a drain on both time and resources. This workshop focuses on strategies to deal with difficult customer behaviour, tools to defuse difficult behaviour and potential conflict before it escalates plus looks at strategies for management to implement.
During this workshop you will practise a range of helpful tools and skills via role-plays and interactive exercises plus have the opportunity to exchange experiences and knowledge about managing challenging customer behaviour. Specific topics include:
Why some customers display difficult behaviour
The associated emotions and behaviours
Strategies to assist you and your staff to manage difficult customer behaviour
Support strategies for teams and staff who deal with difficult customer behaviour.
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon.
Investigate to Resolve (not to convict)
How to manage a serious complaint
(Government Only Workshop)
Some complaints investigation processes (in particular when the complaint is serious in nature) appear to be based on a law enforcement model, where the purpose is to apportion blame and to allow for appropriate action to be taken against the person (or persons) found to be responsible.
With complaints handling, that approach can be too narrowly focused and the opportunity to find a timely and effective resolution can be lost, along with the ability to acknowledge the needs of all of the stakeholders in the complaint.
This one day workshop will cover proven strategies and techniques to help navigate the complaint management process and arrive at a fair and impartial conclusion.
This workshop will cover:
How to apply a complaint management framework
Receiving, recording and responding to serious complaints
Assessment - Understanding what the complainant wants; analysing the complaint; accepting the complaint and/or considering alternative dispute resolution options,
Finding the facts/Investigating - The investigation as a response option; interviewing skills and techniques
Resolution—Evaluating the facts, procedural fairness, impartiality, reviewing the process, arriving at an outcome
Reporting – Essential elements of a report; finalising the investigation / response; managing the impact and moving forward
Who should attend?
Ideal for anyone handling escalated complaints or investigations, and those supervising others investigating complaints.
Your expert facilitator: Bryan Cook is the principal investigator at Ashdale Workplace Solutions and has 20 years’ experience as an investigator. He currently advises on complaint management process and complex investigations. He is an expert and highly engaging facilitator and trainer with stories that will both educate and entertain.
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon.
Coaching for Complaint Handling
Empowering your team to resolve complaints
If you are a team leader or manager who needs to inspire and empower your team to deliver excellent customer service, effective service recovery, delight customers and build loyalty, then this full day workshop is for you.
The Coaching for Complaints Handling Workshop is a highly interactive, fast-paced experience. It offers a proven model for understanding complaint handling and a practical process to empower your people to deliver excellent service recovery - a critical aspect of customer service. ‘Real play' is a key component of the day providing lots of opportunities for participants to practice their new skills.
You will gain the following:
Renewed energy and commitment towards achieving excellence in complaint handling
Ability to reinforce the mindset of complaints as gifts, not threats, by the entire team
An understanding of the power of coaching around complaints for your people
Knowledge and application of a specific coaching process to complaints
Practical coaching experience through real play of your situations
Specific feedback to guide your ongoing development as a ‘Complaints Coach'
Your facilitator: Kerry Maberly (Sydney); Lyndall Dugdale (Melbourne)
Mutiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
Conducting Root Cause Analysis
An integrated approach to complaints prevention and management
Do you get tired of hearing the same customer complaint or problem over and over again? Do you feel that sometimes you are merely providing a Band-aid solution but you know that there is something more at stake?
No longer just an issue for the customer relations department, customer complaints can wreak havoc across the entire organisation. With responses to complaints requiring collaboration and information sharing between departments, it is not surprising that organisations are now also introducing highly collaborative strategies for preventing complaints.
Best practice usage of root cause analysis methodology will assist you to identify the real reasons behind problems and complaints. Once identified, there are huge savings to be made from preventing these systemic issues from arising again.
Who should attend? Ideal for complaints managers, customer service managers, consumer affairs professionals, and anyone spending valuable time trying to resolve or respond to recurring complaints. Why not bring the senior team? Discounts apply for multiple attendance.
Your experienced facilitator will:
explain the process known as “Root Cause Analysis” (RCA)
demonstrate the process with reference to real life problems
assist you to go beyond the human cause of problems and identify the processes, systems, and latent or organisational causes of problems.
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information. Workshop prices include workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon.
Collecting, Analysing and Reporting on Complaint Data
Harvesting “actionable input” from your complaints data and using the data to drive decisions development
A full day workshop with Jillian Mercer - Be prepared to be challenged!
Please bring examples of a complex, or “compounded” complaint (lengthy with many issues within). The complaint MUST be de-identified and you must be prepared to give it others to work on.
Customer feedback can be categorised into two main areas: core business practice, product and service delivery. The program will provide ideas for what to do next to enhance capacity to develop prompts and questions to gather useable information from complaints (and other customer feedback data) about core business practice, product and service delivery. When implemented, your organisation will have more useful data which will clearly reveal:
What you should stop doing i.e. what you are doing badly;
What you are doing well that you should continue to do;
What you need to change, develop or improve in the future; and
How to get internal customers to take action on the basis of the reporting.
Issues to be covered during the workshop include:
The imperatives to collect and harvest useable data from complaints,
The risk management context of having competent complaints data capacity in your business,
How to build the capacity of your complaints data-gathering efforts,
Learning about meaningful “actionable input” data from complaints, and
Building your competence and confidence in leading your business in complaints-data gathering and use
Who should attend? Ideal for those grappling with multiple data collection points, those not sure how to drive change through the business with facts and data gained from complaint data, or those new to data who simply need the best tools to get started. This workshop will assist you to cut through the data to find the future for your business.
This workshop has been designed at the request of SOCAP members.
Cost: Members $770 Non Member $880 Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
A Complaint is a Gift
What all frontline staff need to know about handling complaints
Representing a change in thinking, the Complaint is a Gift philosophy views complaints as opportunities not threats. Every complaint is a ‘moment of truth’ for your customer and, if handled effectively gives you an opportunity to repair and strengthen your relationship with that customer and build loyalty.
This full day workshop is ideal for all front line customer service staff and their team leaders who want to achieve excellence in service recovery and is designed to provide participants with a model for understanding and delivering this critical aspect of customer service.
In this highly interactive fast paced workshop you will take away the following:
A renewed energy, excitement and commitment towards handling complaints
A mindset of complaints as gifts not threats and an understanding of their value to your organisation
The ability to gain trust, rapport and credibility with all complainants
An increased repertoire of proven skills and techniques to handle complaints
Confidence and skill to handle the emotions and demands of ‘difficult’ customers.
Current schedule: TBA 9am to 5pm - inhouse training enquiries welcome
Members: $484 Non-members $585
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
SOCAP Communities of Practice
Where complaint and consumer professionals come together with peers
SOCAP Australia members have been contributing to their own professional development by coordinating discussions and networking activities in their location, with other like minded SOCAP members.
Offers of hosting and sponsorship are most welcome to enable us to keep these gatherings free.
Phone Skills for Complaint Handling
Top strategies for dealing with complaints over the phone
The telephone is one of the most used communication tools in today’s business world. Everyone uses telephones and we automatically assume that everyone is competent without training. However, effective complaint handling via the telephone can be a complex issue that requires considerable skill and expertise.
For those who work in the area of complaint handling or dispute resolution, mastery over telephone communication techniques is essential. Based on the latest research on consumer needs, expectations and preferences in both complaint handling and telephone communication, and on research into the advantages and disadvantages, and the problems and principles of telephone communication, this program is ideally suited to SOCAP member needs. This program is designed to provide an introduction to the principles and practice of the effective use of telephone communication in complaint management.
This comprehensive workshop covers the following issues, among many others:
Using the telephone to meet the needs of both the complainant and the organisation,
Basic principles of effective telephone communication,
The challenges of telephone communication,
Advantages, disadvantages and competencies of telephone dispute resolution,'
Vocal quality, style and process,
Inappropriate responses and terminating calls,
Facilitating negotiation and settlement by telephone,
Associated problems including challenges in caller behavior, and legal issues.
Note: workbook pre reading and a pre workshop questionnaire will form part of this comprehensive course delivery. This will be sent approx. two weeks prior to the course to enable ample time to complete.
Current Schedule: TBA 9am to 5pm - inhouse training enquiries welcome
Your expert facilitator: Dr Gregory Tillett has taught alternative dispute resolution and mediation in the School of Law at the University of Western Sydney since 1999, and teaches conflict resolution in the Sydney Graduate School of Management. He is the author of the best-selling book, Resolving Conflict, now in its 4th edition. He is a consultant on complaint management and litigation avoidance to one of the world’s largest financial corporations, and provides professional development programs for a number of private sector and government organisations.
Cost (inc GST): Member $484 Non member $ 595
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
From Rage to Reason
Strategies for handling and diffusing angry complainants
Customers are not always right. Customers make mistakes; they forget things; they get confused. But, customers are always emotional. They always have feelings, sometimes intense. Janelle Barlow - President TMI USA
Dealing with intense customer emotions is unavoidable and increasingly part of complaints handling. Incidents of customer rage are increasing yet many staff feel poorly equipped to deal with them. This has significant negative impact on customer relationships and employee well being. This workshop translates the latest consumer rage research into realistic, practical techniques to empower frontline staff and their managers to identify, understand and manage customer rage. Participants will learn how to move a customer from rage to reason to form a problem solving partnership.
In this interactive workshop you will:
Learn how to identify customer rage
Explore the triggers for customer rage
Understand the importance of treating customers as people first and consumers second
Identify techniques to manage raging customers using the “Road to Resolution” approach
'Real’ play case studies and examples from your workplace
Discuss post rage actions including self-care and feedback
Develop a personal action plan to ensure transfer of learning to your workplace.
Currently scheduled: to be scheduled upon demand - contact the SOCAP office directly
Cost: Members $484 Non Member $595
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information.
Dealing with High Conflict Behaviour
How to swiftly deal with high conflict behaviours in the workplace
People are likely to find themselves in conflict when they have different opinions about something they care about. In the workplace this may be the allocation of resources, the setting of priorities or which strategy to support. People who contact organisations with a complaint may feel they did not get the service they expected. If conflict is not managed well it can quickly degenerate into personal attacks, deadlock and revengeful threats. The long terms effects of badly managed conflict can be lost productivity, sick leave and high turnover of staff. It can also severely damage the reputation of an organisation.
Everyone in an organisation has a role to play in managing conflict. Customer service people have a particular role to play. They can help create an open culture in their team by modelling good practice, encouraging constructive conflict, providing feedback, critical thinking, and active listening.
In this workshop you will:
Learn how to identify people who display high conflict behaviours (HCB),
Find out how conflict causes the brain to neurologically storm, and why we all have the potential to have HCB under the right circumstances,
Discover how to respond to misinformation,
Acquire an overview of the five high conflict personality styles,
Develop basic yet effective, communication intervention strategies, and
Understand the expense of not dealing with HCB for example physical and emotional wellness, recruitment costs, damage to organisations etc and where you can go for additional support.
Your facilitator: Dr Sandra Fenton has 20 years of experience in conflict management and dispute resolution. She is a mediator, negotiator, conflict coach, team facilitator, trainer and lecturer. The key focus of Sandra’s research and her current work focuses on individuals who present with high conflict behaviours in the workplace
Current Schedule: TBA 9am to 5pm - inhouse training enquiries welcome
Dispute Resolution Skills for Complaint Handling
How to resolve disputes, cut costs and achieve lasting win/win outcomes
Our Dispute Resolution Skills for Complaint Handling Workshop combines elements of both mediation skills and negotiation skills training, to enable you to learn in just one day how to resolve disputes, cut costs and achieve lasting win/win outcomes for both the customer/consumer and your organisation.
Entrenched complaints are a given for those who work in the complaints field, yet we often feel ill-equipped to deal with them effectively. Additionally, sometimes it might appear that complainants have prepared for battle by the time they get put through to us, and effective tools to assist in dispute resolution are critical. Distilling the most effective elements from a range of dispute resolution processes including negotiation and mediation, this brand new one day course has been tailored for a service recovery environment. Not only will it assist you in resolving disputes more efficiently and effectively but will also contribute to cutting the cost of conflict through early resolution.
Measure your ROI: For the first time ever, we will be introducing an evaluation component to assist you to assess the cost benefits to your organisation of undertaking this training. Workshop participants will create an assessment and evaluation plan they can use to assess the positive impact of this training to achieve early resolution of complaints.
Who should attend? Managers, supervisors, complaints handlers, customer relations officers and others who are called upon to resolve disputes with customers. An ideal negotiation skills refresher or a “taste tester” for those considering undertaking a 5 day mediation course to become an accredited mediator.
Methodology: The session is 100% interactive and attendees learn new concepts by actively participating in role plays, by practicing skills in small groups and through debriefing together.
In this workshop you will:
Learn a structured dispute resolution win/win process for resolving entrenched complaints,
Acquire tools to effectively negotiate in the complaints environment,
Cultivate communication skills to improve customer relationships and help you deal with even the most challenging conflict situations,
Improve your personal approach to conflict and understand why you respond in certain ways, and
Learn to effectively and quickly resolve customer complaints by focussing on what is at the heart of the issue.
Your Facilitator: Nicole Cullen, Cullaborate, an Accredited Mediator, former Project Coordinator for the Mediator Standards Board, former Deputy Chair, Superannuation Complaints Tribunal and expert facilitator.
Current schedule: TBA, please contact SOCAP office
Costs: Members $770 Non Members $880
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information. Includes workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon.
Strategic Conversations
Geoffrey Stackhouse delivered an outstanding presentation at the CCR12 Crisis and Consumer Response conference in Sydney earlier this year.
Workshop Overview Persuasive communication is a combination of what we say and how we say it.
Learn the art of Strategic Conversations in this practical, engaging and innovative communication workshop. You will acquire skills to persuade and influence your audience through relevant, compelling and focussed communication for high level meetings, presentations and one-on-one conversations.
This workshop draws on frameworks used by leading management consultants to develop a compelling argument, and combines them with techniques used by News Anchors and journalists to deliver that argument so you engage and persuade your audience. You will never again be thrown by an unexpected question, or struggle to bring a conversation around to the topic you need to address or spend hours working out what you need to say.
Achieve real results in a supportive and safe environment. We will help you to strengthen your argument, sharpen your message and improve your delivery.
Who should attend? Ideal for anyone wanting to sharpen their Strategic Conversation performance strengths and identify areas for further development, in a safe, positive environment
Your facilitator: Geoffrey Stackhouse, Principal Trainer & Managing Director, Clarity Business Solutions. Geoffrey is an MBA-trained former management consultant with more than 25 years’ experience in journalism.
Currently scheduled: TBA - contact the SOCAP office directly
Cost Member: $770 Non Member $880
Multiple booking and distance discounts apply. Fee includes: Workshop materials, refreshments on arrival, morning/afternoon tea and a light luncheon. Please refer to multiple booking discount policies and cancellation policies for more information
How do we measure a highly effective complaint department?
Executive Masterclass - By invitation only
Tailored for the Government Sector
Workshop Overview The ‘complaint department’ - Dispute resolution in large organisations was traditionally characterised by benign neglect from senior managers and decision makers who may have concluded that there was little to be gained from getting too close. A prime symptom of this logic is that a complaint department is a cost centre (with all the cost minimisation pressures this implies). According to this view, complaints are a negative commodity which erode profit, sap morale and divert attention. Inevitably, this meant leaving dispute resolution – and even complaint handling more generally – to the lawyers.
Dr Brendan French, General Manager Group Customer Relations, Retail Banking Services at CBA will facilitate a thoughtful discussion amongst senior government members around the value of a complaint department and how we might assess how we are delivering, how we might improve our department’s performance leading to greater loyalty, improved ROI, increases in customer satisfaction and increased retention, and how we then communicate those outcomes back to the organisation for all to understand.
Tips and traps as we contemplate how we run our complaints departments
What does success look like?
What does failure look like?
What measuring tools work most effectively in the Australian context?
Performance assessment more broadly, including performance indicators for staff and for the organisation.
Who should attend? Government complaint department heads and/or decision makers
Currently scheduled: May event has been postponed date TBC from 12.30pm to 5pm
Cost (inclusive of GST): Member: $750 Non Member $880 and past attendees of previous Master Class at $350
Distance discounts apply.
Fee includes: Light luncheon and afternoon tea Please refer to discount policies and cancellation policies for more information
Webinar
An easy one hour webinar, from the convenience of your own desk
Tips on De-escalating Complaints with Jillian Mercer, Service Transformation
When: Friday 12 July 2013 from 12.30pm to 1.30pm via web conference
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