Firms kick off customer service week with free training

AS part of the upcoming customer service week, a global awareness campaign that celebrates customer service in the workplace and stresses on the need for corporates to imbibe the principle, Customer Centricity Limited, in partnership with Customer Service Practitioners Association (CUSPA) will organize a one-day training workshop for stakeholders in the sector.

The training, which will hold on October 9th, in Lagos, is part of Customer Centricity’s yearly, “Create Raving Fans” Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project. What this is free training, usually with a Customer Service slant. It is not always core Customer Service, but a hybrid that may include (though not limited to) Leadership, Team Building, Process Improvement and/or Sales and Marketing.

The training is geared at further sensitizing and educating participants on the intricacies of Customer Service in an organization and these sessions help to engage people about service and are very interactive. The theme for this year’s training is, ‘Fantastic Workplace’.

With registration currently on-going on the company’s website, the training has been designed for HR Managers, Heads of Training, Entrepreneurs, Customer Service Personnel, SMEs and everyone interested in improving their workplace.

Courses will boarder on recruitment, knowledge, skills and attitudes, service management, business process improvement, customer service, personal effectiveness, team building and internal service management.

According to the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Customer Centricity Limited, Mrs. Uloma Umeano, “Our training is not staying on the level of just impacting knowledge, rather it is experiential, and focusing on attitude management, so that everybody present is already doing Customer Service before the training is over. Some of our titles include names like, “The Right-titude to Service”, “Positivi-tude”, The Be-attitudes”, “Communicat-itude in Customer Experience Management”. Our focus is on attitude enhancement.”

Umeano said the essence of the Customer Service Week is to celebrate the customer and service providers for the service they render.

Umeano further explained that once a year, a week is set apart globally to commemorate the work that was done in Customer Service; to bring the effort of those in service to prominence and to appreciate what they have been able to do to develop the industry in the year gone past.

“Basically, it is a concept that has been well received by those who practice customer service in consultancy or in organizations. We connect with the customer to celebrate Customer Service, which has started to become an important genre and career. So, Customer Service is here to stay and basically customer service week is here to celebrate the fact that it is here.”

While speaking on the need for greater awareness of Customer Service in Nigeria, Umeano, pointed out that although customer service in Nigeria has improved over the years that it has been in practice, in terms of individuals just understanding that something is wrong and the awareness that things can be done better, it still has a long way to go in terms of quality. “At least you find people talking about it, you find people noticing that something is wrong, you find people insisting on their rights as customers and so on. The customer is a lot more aware that things can be done better, that he can get a better deal. On whether the service providers have really stepped up to that, I would say, No.”

She noted that CUSPA was born out of the need to help structure an industry that was forming without any real plan or methodical thinking. “CUSPA is passionate about creating a proper knowledge center where everyone can have access to Customer Service information, global best practices and developments, publication, and training. The idea is to encourage knowledge sharing among training consultants and creating a resource base where members have access to information that help with planning training.”