Customer Service Foundations Training Course
$598 Per Person
(Bulk Discounts Available!)
Do you have employees who work in customer service roles that need some extra help in delivering consistently great customer experiences for your customers?
Have you recognised the need to invest in customer service training but are not sure where to start?
When you start your search for customer service training courses, it can quickly be overwhelming. There are literally hundreds of courses, and just to add to the confusion, customer service can mean many things to different people!
Customer service skills, complaints handling, phone etiquette, resilience, empathy, taking ownership, improved efficiencies, creating first impressions and so on.
With decades of working in customer service, we’ve designed this Customer Service Foundations course to deliver what we consider the core fundamentals skills required for anyone who works in a role that deals with customers – customer service employees, receptionists, retail workers, customer support, admin/office assistants etc.
And we would know! This course is aligned with the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association (ACXPA) Quality Standards, teaching skills that are proven to improve customer outcomes, and it’s delivered live by two genuine industry experts so your employees learn from the best.
The Customer Service Foundations course combines some of our most popular courses into one handy course covering the essential skills for handling customers either over the phone or in person, how to handle difficult customers, and how to build resilience to handle the rigours of working in customer service to ensure your employees can function at their best.
Delivered over 3 x 3-hour online sessions (total of 9 hours of live, expert training), your employees will be coached to progressively learn, build and apply new habits and skills that will transform their psychology and performance to positively impact your customers and business like never before.
So if you’re looking for a great all-round course that will return the investment you make in training your employees with an immediate uplift in performance, this is one course not to be missed!
Learn more about the course by scrolling below or jump straight to a section:
Customer Service Foundations Training Course Fast Facts
Optimised for online learning (virtual training)
This course has been specifically adapted to be delivered online via Zoom with employee engagement and learning outcomes enhanced by the short bursts of interactive and engaging development methods.
And with the benefits of live facilitated online training, we are able to effectively use two expert trainers that would otherwise not be feasible with onsite training due to the additional costs.
The Customer Service Foundations training course will introduce and coach your employees through the essential behaviours needed for superior customer service that triggers positive emotions and high levels of customer and employee engagement.
With short, 3-hour modules, it enables you the flexibility to schedule the training with minimal disruption for your business as well as delivering improved learning outcomes (it can be challenging to focus for an entire day of training and retain all the learnings).
Who should do this course?
The Customer Service Foundations training course has been designed to help any employees who work in a role that interacts with customers.
The 3 x 3-hour sessions have been designed to be delivered in a structured manner enabling your employees to learn and apply their new skills in between the different modules.
The skills we teach are applicable to all industries, products and services!
Typical roles include:
- Admin/office staff who handle customer enquiries
- Customer service staff
- Call centre agents
- Receptionists/Front of house roles
- Retail staff
- Telephone account management
- Technical support
- Complaints teams
- Frontline staff who interact with customers
What your employees will learn:
The Customer Service Foundations course is designed to equip employees with the essential skills they need to work in a role that involves working with customers on a consistent basis.
How to have better conversations with customers, how to handle tough situations and how to ensure they can consistently perform at their best are all covered in this course that pulls content from some of our most popular courses and rolls them into one!
There’s plenty of role-playing, interaction and practice included to ensure your employees can put their new skills to work with the training conducted in a safe, fun and welcoming online environment.
At the end of the course, your employees will be provided with a certificate of achievement and most importantly, they’ll be empowered with new skills that will help them succeed in their role, and deliver improved outcomes for your business.
Key course outcomes include:
9 hours of training delivered over 3 x 3-Hour Sessions
The public version of the Customer Service Foundations training course is a 9-hour training course spaced out over 3 x 3-hour sessions to minimise the impact on your operations and enable employees time to learn and apply their new skills in between each session.
This course can also be conducted privately, which provides greater flexibility with the dates, times and duration of the course (e.g. we could deliver one 3-hour session per week for three weeks, complete all the sessions in consecutive days, run the sessions only in the mornings or afternoons during your quieter periods etc.) and the content can be customised to suit your exact requirements.
Session 1 - Customer Service Essentials
We will teach your employees the critical skills and behaviours for enhanced interactions that the most successful customer service employees in the world use to deliver superior customer experiences and efficient first-contact resolution.
The skills taught align with the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association Quality Standards required to deliver great customer service either over the phone or in person.
1. The Psychology of Customers
Includes an exploration of what customers want and need from any customer service interaction and why customer service is so critical for business success.
We’re often told this module can be quite inspiring and it sets up the training so people understand the ‘why’.
2. How to Engage
How to create a strong first impression and have impact at the start of any interaction by showing strong ownership and intent, managing expectations and building trust and confidence.
3. Better Needs Discovery
Learn and apply techniques used by the FBI for enhanced customer conversations that identify and confirm the root cause of issues and customer needs in an efficient manner.
4. How to Educate
Participants learn how to proactively educate customers through consistent checks of understanding, comfort and suitability with key information and solutions provided.
5. How to Close any Call or Conversation
Your employees will learn how to avoid those often awkward, clunky finishes through a simple method of strong final checks, expressions of gratitude and thanks in a warm farewell.
Session 2 - Managing Difficult Customers
Having to deal with frustrated customers is inevitable in any customer service job so equipping your employees with the skills and confidence to handle difficult situations is paramount.
This module will teach employees how to handle difficult customers over the phone and in person, as well as tips to handle complaints via email and online chat channels.
The training goes well beyond traditional customer service training tropes such as ‘always have a smile in your voice’ or using trite statements such as ‘I can tell that you’re frustrated’.
Your employees will gain practical insights, techniques and methods across five modules to better listen, diffuse, empathise and control conversations and responses to address customer concerns with newfound confidence.
1. The Psychology of Complaints
We’ll teach your employees how to identify and understand the different types of difficult customers and what they need from their service experiences when they voice concerns.
This module also includes an exploration into the science behind emotions, and how they can impact our brain chemistry and functions that will help your employees better understand and manage challenging situations.
2. Empathy and Intent
Your employees will learn how to validate with empathy to diffuse emotion and take ownership to satisfy both a customer’s emotional and transactional needs with a powerful 2-step response method for responding to customer concerns.
3. Handling the Most Difficult Customers
Exploration of various vocal and body language techniques used to diffuse heightened customer emotions and how to respond to more inappropriate customer behaviours.
4. Group Practice
Putting the learning into practice with fun, engaging group role-play activities that enable participants to apply the key customer service and complaint handling skills learnt in a range of contexts and scenarios.
5. Online Communication
Tips, techniques and examples of how to write effective responses to complaints and concerns raised by customers via both email and online chat channels.
Session 3 - Resilience & Wellbeing
Handling customers all day can be tiring in any environment, so investing in your employees’ well-being not only improves employee engagement but also delivers benefits for your business.
In this module, we teach your employees the foundations of resilience to ensure they are better equipped to deal with the rigours of customer service that will result in improved performance, reduced stress leave, lower turnover, etc.
But even armed with the best resilience skills, if your health is poor and you are constantly feeling sick, tired, etc., it’s hard to perform at your best.
So this module also includes some global best-practice health and wellness tips that will positively impact your employee’s health and well-being inside and outside of work.
1. Resilience – What it is and isn’t
Resilience is often described as our ability to deal with difficult situations and recover quickly, usually described as toughness. What is frequently missed is the ability to master these situations, or more than one situation, in a way that is healthy and suits each of us.
Resilience is not just the ability to ‘soldier on’ but how to embrace difficult times and challenging situations as a learning opportunity without carrying the burden.
2. Pillars of Health And Wellbeing
The 4 Pillars of health and wellbeing are the foundations that will set you up for success and give you the strong base to build resilience, critical thinking and a solutions focused approach.
Ensuring your team has the strongest and most solid foundations will enable your employees to position themselves in the top per cent of those who are able to not only manage, but master difficult situations and challenging times.
3. Creating an environment to build resilience
This is not about soldiering on or being toughening up. Real resilience comes from the habits, thoughts and behaviours that create a healthy external and internal environment.
Having both the short term and long term strategies to effectively deal with life’s challenges as they arise are essential to your success and the success of your team, both professionally and personally.
This module will give you the tools to build upon your current strategies and steps to move through your day in the best way.
4. Top Tips to Wellbeing
Your employees will learn some of the leading well-being tips that will keep them happy, healthy, vital and consistently performing at their best.
Small and simple tips that create big results when consistently applied will result in your team having higher employee engagement, improved productivity, lowered stress levels, and a higher level achievement.
Not one, but two expert Trainers!
When you are building a house, you wouldn’t ask the plumber to do the electrical work for you or get a handyman to build the entire house. You’d have the specialist trades perform their respective skills to get the best result.
And that’s the same approach to training!
Resilience/Wellbeing is a completely different skill from customer service skills, so to ensure you get the best result for your employees, we use two specialist trainers!
It’s one of the big advantages of virtual/online training, enabling us to use two industry experts to deliver the best training outcomes, and for this course, we’ve got two of the best in the business!
Both Simon Blair and Nant Nissen are respective experts in their fields, each with decades of experience behind them.
This ensures that participants of the Customer Service Foundations training course receive the maximum benefits, delivering the best return on your training investment.
Simon Blair
Simon has trained thousands of employees across a variety of businesses in Australia in a career spanning over 30 years and he’s recognised as one of Australia’s leading customer service trainers, providing high-energy, fun and interactive training sessions that deliver immediate results!
Nant Nissen
Nant is a global health expert with three decades of experience backed by extensive academic qualifications and evidence-based methods combined with an unequivocal passion that has helped elite athletes, small and large businesses, and senior executives achieve incredible, sustainable results.
About CX Skills
CX Skills is a specialist training business that only delivers customer service, customer experience (CX), contact centre, workforce optimisation (WFM/WFO) and workplace wellness courses designed and facilitated exclusively by industry professionals.
We're the official training provider of the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association (ACXPA), and we are proudly Australian-owned and operated.
We’re grateful to have been trusted by hundreds of customers, and we’re proud of the amazing customer testimonials we’ve received, so you can rest assured that when you book a training course with CX Skills, your training is in good hands.
Recent Customer Reviews & Testimonials
Strongly Recommended!
Did the introduction to contact centre manager course with Justin, and it was a fantastic experience!
You could clearly see the passion and joy Justin had for what he was teaching and it was clear to see his experience.
I really enjoyed some of the storytelling and practical examples Justin provided, it really helped tie everything together.
Strongly recommend!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Jim, glad you enjoyed the course and some of the stories along the way – they certainly do help bring it all to life!
Really enjoyed the course!
The training provided by Justin was really good, lots of information that will benefit us in many ways in the contact centre!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Shah, appreciate you taking the time to provide us with some feedback and glad to hear you enjoyed the course!
Fantastic content and practical takeaways
Just finished the introduction to contact centre management course, I really enjoyed it Justin was excellent as facilitator. Some fantastic content.
This course is great for a variety or people in different positions. Team leaders looking to progress would get a lot of benefit but even Contact Centre managers like me who have done the role for a while.
It provided some great insights to customer experience and how to help your team leaders to have a greater impact on their people & customers. I’m armed with quite a few practical take aways.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Daniel, appreciate the kind words and really glad to hear you enjoyed the course and got some practical takeaways!
Excellent course covering strategy and best practice thinking for CX
Really enjoyed this course! Designed well so that it fits with a busy work schedule.
Great content, delivery and knowledge from Daniel and interesting discussions with the group.
I found this course really valuable and have been able to implement and test some thinking and ideas immediately.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Shelley for taking the time to leave a review and super happy to hear that you found it a valuable investement and put some of the learnings to immediate use!
Deeply insightful and well structured CX course
Highly recommend this CX fundamentals course, was initially apprehensive about spending so many hours online but Daniel Ord is such a gifted trainer and facilitator that he made it super engaging and so practical with real life, tangible case studies sprinkled throughout the course.
I loved learning from fellow course attendees through their various industry sectors but all with the focus of designing and delivering exceptional customer experience regardless of where each one of us sat within our organizations.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Tsumi for the lovely review and yes, time does fly when you are with Daniel and the learnings from others on the course always adds to the experience!
Authentic Course with Genuine Learnings
I found this course to be very engaging, Daniel does a wonderful job of keeping it interesting and honestly the time just flew. Whilst I work in the CX Field every day, this course challenges your thinking in the field of Customer Experience (CX) and have given me some fresh perspecitives.
It is not a tick the box type of course, it is very worthwhile with genuine learnings. I would highly recommend to any either starting their journey or well into their CX journey
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Meredith, what a lovely review and glad to hear you found the course engaging combined with some great learnings. And yes, it’s very easy to get lost in time when engaging with Daniel!
Very interesting & engaging!
Daniel is a passionate and very knowledgeable CX expert who was very engaging throughout the whole course. Relevant course content and thought-provoking activities to learn through discussion. Definitely recommend this training!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Krysten, so glad to hear you enjoyed the course with Daniel and you 100% nailed it, he’s super knowledgeable and engaging which is a great combination!
Engaging and informative
I recently took part in the Customer Experience training conducted by Simon, which was mandatory for all employees. Before the training, like many others, I was apprehensive about its duration given our busy schedules and anticipated would be boring.
Surprisingly, it turned out to be the complete opposite. The training flew by, thanks to Simon’s fun and energetic delivery and his encouragement for active participation in various scenarios.
He imparted valuable insights and practical tips applicable not only in the workplace but also in personal interactions. Overall, the session was highly informative and engaging. Thank you, Simon!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Toula, we appreciate you taking the time to leave such a wonderful review!
What you kind of knew but didn't know you knew!
This training explains exactly *why* good customer experiences are good and how to make them good for your customers. Best of all Simon builds a framework you can use in all your interactions and provides scenario insights that help you make the connection between the framework and how to use it in all the various types of customer interactions you have day-to-day, whatever your role.
E.g., having a clear framework for the Engage step make a huge difference. Once you understand the CX framework Simon teaches, just saying ‘hello’ becomes more purposeful. Having that conscious intent and being focussed on establishing trust when you kick-off that initial meet-and-greet makes a huge difference to the whole meeting.
I will be reviewing Simon’s excellent and simple-to follow CX framework as an essential part of my pre-meeting preparation for – well – just about everything from now on.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Stephen, what a lovely, thoughtful review – much appreciated for taking the time to write it and really glad we’ve helped you on your journey!
Excellent course On Customer Service Essentials
I found this course to be extremely engaging and enjoyable. Simon is a fantastic facilitator, very articulate, charismatic, and knowledgeable.
We learned some wonderful tips on how to engage customers and keep the dialogue succinct, cordial, respectful, and outcome driven.
I would highly recommend this course to anyone considering doing it, and especially if you work in the customer service industry or manage a team that does. AAA+
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Derek, what a wonderful review 🙏 Thanks for taking the time to send it in!
Great session!!
Simon is a great trainer and there were many take aways from the session. He engaged everyone throughout the training!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Ramya, we think deep down Simon just loves to perform – he just happens to know a lot about customer service as well! Glad you enjoyed the course.
Awesome Training Provided by Simon!
Awesome training provided by Simon, all the scenarios he gave with examples, and he also gave a live demo in the training which I enjoyed!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Ashwini, really glad to hear you enjoyed the training!
Great Refresher & Information
Training was very informative and hands-on experience of the situation. Something we do every day but did not realise that we are following same principles. Thanks for refreshing the concept!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Vijaysinh and glad to hear it was a good refresher – sometimes that’s all it takes to get things back on track!
Excellent training!
It’s clear that Simon was a natural in providing us customer service training – I appreciated the enthusiasm and energy and found the learnings insightful.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Brenden, he’s certainly very passionate about it which helps. Glad you enjoyed the course 🙂
Very engaging and knowledgeable with teaching of useful skills
The course was fantastic with a good amount of information and how to implement the strategies and tactics to ensure you get the customer on-side. Simon was a personable presenter. He was able to give examples and explain why the skillsets work and how to employ them.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Scott, appreciate you taking the time to leave a review and more importantly, that you enjoyed the course!
Customer Service Training - Short but Sweet!
Simon provided the perfect balance to deliver an enjoyable but focused message that I think met the needs of our newer staff members as well as our more seasoned staff who live and breathe ‘customer service’.
Having a mixed audience from across our practices for these sessions was a great format, and Simon’s approach was very well received.
I am sure everyone learnt something to take back and hone to improve the service experience for our customers (internal and external), and even our social lives. Thank You Simon!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Greg, it’s a fine balancing act but glad it seemed to hit the mark! Thanks for taking the time to leave a review, very much appreciated 🙏
Easy to remember, incredibly useful and effective content.
Simon was a great presenter. I found the system really helpful and applicable, not only in a work setting!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Christopher and your 100% right, these skills can be very useful in many situations!
Excellent breakdown of customer psychology
As somebody who’s been in the customer function for 20 years now, I have great appreciation for how Simon broke down the interactions with customers and the psychology of how customers interpret and react to the messages we deliver.
Highly recommend Simon as a content & training provider!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Albert, given your experience that means a lot! Thanks for taking the time to leave a review 🙏
Great content and superbly delivered by Simon
Simon took us through a customer service refresher. I learned new skills that will defo go into my repertoire as additional skills I can use with my team and our customers. Great content and superbly delivered by Simon.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Alex, perfect summary! Thanks for taking the time to leave a review 🙏
One of the most awesome sessions I ever had in my overall career!
It was an awesome session with lots of real time examples to better relate to the content and truly embed what has been taught.
I was able to enjoy the whole 3 hour session without getting bored once! The trainer (Simon) knew how to conduct his content in such an interactive manner and so much involved and connected to each of the trainees.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Neha, what a wonderful testimonial and glad to hear you really enjoyed the course!
Some of the CX Skills Customers we've provided training for recently:
Pricing and Payment Options
The Customer Service Foundations training course is only available for private bookings, so you can request the dates and times that work best for your business, and it will be exclusive training just for your employees.
The pricing is based on $598 AUD per person ex GST for the entire 9 hours of online facilitated learning (3 x 3-hour sessions); however, discounts are available depending on the number of employees you would like to train.
A private course for the Customer Service Foundations course requires a minimum of four people, and typically, we allow a maximum of fourteen people per group/class.
Each employee who attends the training will receive:
- 9 hours of live, facilitated training.
- Course takeaways containing key action points and prompters.
- Digital certificate of completion.
Payment for the course can be made by credit card or you can request an invoice (payment to be made prior to the course commencing).
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