Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations Course
$598 Per Person
(Bulk Discounts Available!)
Brand new course for 2024!
Do you have employees who work in either retail or hospitality that could benefit from learning how to deliver consistently great customer experiences for your customers?
Would your business benefit from happier customers and more sales?
When interacting with customers in a face-to-face environment such as retail or hospitality, there are a myriad of skills that come into play, including how to engage effectively with customers, handle objections, take orders, display empathy, take ownership, etc.
With decades of experience working directly in the customer service industry, we’ve designed this Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations course to deliver what we consider the fundamental customer service skills required for anyone who works in a role that deals with customers either face-to-face or via the odd phone call such as retail assistants, hospitality staff, etc.
Aligned with the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association (ACXPA) Quality Standards, your employees will be taught the skills that are proven to improve customer outcomes, and it’s delivered live by two genuine industry experts so your employees learn directly from the best!
The Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations course combines some of our most popular short courses into one handy course covering the essential skills for interacting with customers either in person or over the phone, how to handle objections, and how to build resilience to handle the rigours of working in the retail/hospitality industry to ensure your employees can consistently 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 in a structured manner that will positively transform their psychology and performance in how to interact with customers.
If you’re looking for a great all-around course that will return the investment you make in training your employees with an immediate uplift in happier customers and more sales, this is one course not to be missed!
Learn more about the course by scrolling below or jump straight to a section:
Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations course Fast Facts
Optimised for online learning (virtual training)
This course has been specifically adapted to be delivered online so your employees can dial in from either the workplace or from home, with employee engagement and learning outcomes enhanced by the short bursts of interactive and engaging development methods.
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 Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations course will introduce and coach your employees through the essential behaviours needed for superior in-person customer service that will also help deliver improved sales.
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).
For private bookings of this course, we can also conduct online/virtual training outside of standard business hours to ensure there is no disruption to your business whilst your employees receive training.
Who should do this course?
The Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations course has been designed to help any employees who work in a role that interacts with customers face to face/in person such as retail workers and hospitality staff.
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:
- Retail staff (retail assistants, retail sales assistants, sales assistant etc.).
- Hospitality staff (Wait staff, bar staff, reaturarent/cafe staff, baristas etc.).
- Receptionists/Front of house roles
- Customer service staff
- Frontline staff who interact with customers
What your employees will learn:
The Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training 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 ensure customers’ needs are met, how to handle tough situations and how to ensure your employees 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 job 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 & Sales
We will teach your employees the critical skills and behaviours for enhanced customer interactions that are used by the most successful customer service employees in the world to deliver superior customer experiences.
1. The Psychology of Customer Service & Sales
This module sets the scene about what customers want and need to purchase based on decades of research and why customer experience (CX) is crucial to business success.
2. How to Start and Finish any Customer Interaction
Your employees will learn how to create a strong first impression by showing strong ownership and intent, managing expectations and building trust and confidence.
They’ll also 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 that leaves a positive impression.
3. Body Language & Voice Projection
Participants will explore and practice the use of good posture, breathing, vocal delivery and body language to enable strong face-to-face communication that builds confidence and trust in customers resulting in better customer service and more sales!
Session 2 - Customer Service & Sales
In session two, your employees will learn how to ensure your customers are satisfied, resulting in better outcomes for your business.
Having to deal with frustrated customers is inevitable in any retail or hospitality job, so in this module we’ll also equip your employees with the skills and confidence to handle difficult customer situations.
4. Needs Discovery
We’ll teach your employees techniques used by the FBI for enhanced customer conversations that efficiently and effectively identify and confirm what customers wish to achieve through your products and services (for sales) or get to the root cause of any issues (for service).
5. How to Educate & Inform for Success
Participants will learn how to proactively educate and inform customers through consistent checks of understanding, comfort and suitability with key information and solutions provided.
6. Handling Difficult Customers
With increased levels of customer frustration, we’ll teach your employees various vocal and body language techniques used to diffuse heightened customer emotions and how to respond to more inappropriate customer behaviours.
Session 3 - Resilience & Wellbeing
Savvy businesses know that Interacting with customers all day can be hard work, so investing in your employees and ensuring they are equipped with improved resilience skills will not only build employee engagement, it will also result in improved performance, reduced stress leave, lower turnover, etc., which is good for your employees and your business.
But even armed with the best resilience skills, if your employee’s health is poor and they are constantly feeling sick, tired, etc., it’s hard to perform at their best, and this can manifest in higher unplanned leave, reduced performance, etc.
So this module of the Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations course also includes some global best-practice health and wellness tips that are easy to implement and will positively impact your employee’s 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 carpenter to do the electrical work or get the painter to do your plumbing. 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 and sales 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, that it enables us to use two industry experts to deliver the best training outcomes that otherwise just wouldn’t be cost-effective for onsite training.
For this Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations course, we use Simon Blair and Nant Nissen – both respective experts in their fields, each with decades of experience behind them.
This ensures that participants of the Retail and Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations 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
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!
Good Theory and Practice
Really enjoyable session, feel like a good use of time. The session felt like 40min as opposed to the full three hour block!
The focus on structure and technic meant that the content was well conveyed and practiced in the session.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Carlos, glad you enjoyed the session!
Amazing!
Highly recommended! Simon taught skills you probably use every day but brought format and structure to it.
Makes you highly aware of how we form conversations and steer them in a direction where you get results.
Simon was very engaging and fun during the session, and I could take value from it and further apply it to everyday interactions.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Louis, love how you summarised it!
Great info, needed more time for practice
We found the information very useful, and there was great examples and knowledge imparted in the training.
The changes in techniques and updates to some of the techniques I had been taught previously were appreciated.
I wished there had been more time to do role plays to practice the techniques more, so the team could have felt more comfortable with them.
However, the introduction to the trainer was too long winded. I would rather the presentation of the material follow the call flow, as for newer staff we jumped around and lot.
The material sent after the course was greatly appreciated and I have some of the pages displayed on my wall to assist me to use the techniques.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Michelle, agreed – as this is the ‘Essentials’ course there is only so much we can cram in. Our ‘PRO’ courses provide a lot more time to cover each skill and a lot more time to role play and build confidence in applying them. Appreciate the feedback on the intro and flow and we will take that onboard!
A crack-up 🙂
Simon thank you for making the training enjoyable and engaging. I have walked away with a lot of useful tips on dealing with difficult calls.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Minnie, and yes Simon is know for delivering a few laughs throughout the session 🙂
Lots of Key Takeaways
I love this training and learned a lot! Thank you Daniel for giving such a meaningful course.
The key takaeway for me was that Customer management and customer service are totally different concepts and that CX management should look from the perspective of the customer lifecycle, etc.
It really has has provided me with a fresh perspective on my current job!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Jac, really glad it’s given you a fresh perspective on your current job and we wish you well on your CX journey!
A fantastic CX Management Fundamentals course!
The CX Management Fundamentals course has helped me understand important CX practices and how we can bring these to life within our business to deliver continuous Cx improvements.
The course was extremely engaging and created a safe environment to ask questions and bounce ideas. I highly recommend this course for anyone new to CX or wanting to expand on their current skillset!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Tiffany, glad you enjoyed the course and appreciate the recommendation!
CX Management - CCXP Exam Preparation Workshop - ONLINE
Well, it was an amazing 4 days! I have learnt so much from the program and key concepts have given me a-ha moments. Customers are the lifeline to any business and it is not only the responsibility of the Customer Service teams.
This program is WOW. W for Winning [rich, structured and meaningful content – world class], O for Outstanding [delivery was impeccable and Daniel, is always animated, lively, funny and very clear in delivering the messages] and W for Warmth [the warmth and respect that Daniel brings across in an online setting is tremendous].
Now I know more, I want to do more. Terima kasih!
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Jimmy and loved the WOW acronym!
Comprehensive and interesting class
It shaded me the overall ideas on customer experience though myself are from Customer Contact background, and it’s help me to understand how to deal with other department.
Keep the customer journey in mind and make improvement, and also not to forget employee also are key in this CX journey.
Response from CX Skills
Thanks Justin, so glad you enjoyed the course!
Some of the CX Skills Customers we've provided training for recently:
Pricing and Payment Options
The Retail/Hospitality Sales & Service Training Foundations 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 Retail/Hospitality Sales & Service Training 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.
- A Credly 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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