Customer service - customer influence - has become the primary focus it deserves to be. We all have much to learn about customer satisfaction, and much to gain in doing so. The development of our "Situational Service" program has been coached and nurtured by our clients.

Our clients wanted a process appropriate for the beginner in front line service, as well as for the veteran service providers. To this end, our customers provided us with two lists: what to do and what not to do.

The "what not to do" is just as important as the "what to do". To understand this, you need only put yourself in the position of a service provider today; anxious about outcomes, performance, opportunities and perhaps, job security.

Participants send out "Peer Assessment" instruments to five of their internal customers. This feedback on their service style is returned to the participants during the workshop and compared to their self-assessment.

This first module emphasizes the critical nature of customer satisfaction, and more importantly, the one-on-one human interface between service provider and customer. Also covered: there is no all purpose set of "steps" to satisfy customers, rather, what is used is a common sense influence model that acknowledges and helps organize what participants have already learned and experienced on the job.

Module Two takes an inward look at the behaviors that service providers use in customer interactions. By defining and categorizing influence styles, participants gain a common "short-hand" of how customers perceive the service provider's styles. A self-assessment exercise allows for personal insight around the participant's comfort zones and the impact of their behavioral tendencies on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Having "looked inward" at their own behaviors with customers in Module Two, participants now look outward at their customers' role in the influence process. Customer readiness is a transaction-specific function of two variables; information and satisfaction. In this module, activities center around defining and categorizing the different levels of customer readiness and identifying the behavioral cues associated with each level.

The job of service provider is one of the toughest in the world, in that the service provider owns the responsibility of informing and satisfying customers. Yet, often there is very little time or information on which to make a decision. Here, we combine the "inward" and "outward" looks to demonstrate the relationship between service style and customer readiness resulting in informed, satisfied customers that keep coming back! Participants work at isolating everyday transactions associated with each level of readiness, along with what they've found to work (or not to work) in those situations.

In Module Five, participants return to the self-assessment they completed earlier in the program and (if appropriate) the prework/feedback profile from their internal customers,. After covering concepts such as style range, flexibility and execution, participants interpret their own style profile. Through a Personal Development Inventory, participants identify their strengths, and areas to focus on improving, to understand what they can do to increase their own service effectiveness in customer interactions.

It's often difficult to transfer newly acquired knowledge and skills from any program to real work settings. This applications module is designed to help participants put Situational Service into a practical perspective. Participants work together to identify the "top-five" transactions they face as a group. The readiness level of their customers for each transaction is determined. Groups then isolate the forces helping and/or hindering them. Strategies and tactics are designed to maximize service performance on these "top-five" transactions and beyond.