Training and Skill Development

It's hard to achieve your customer goals without relying on the skills of the team that support them. Imonic undertake specialised training in a few critical areas of customer management. For key account managers (KAMs) or Global Account Managers (GAMs), we aim to give the maximum benefit - and fast - by concentrating on the basics:

• Clarity of account objectives
• Call/visit contact objectives
• Agreeing agendas - managing by outcomes
• Rapport building techniques
• Questioning/probing approaches
• Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.
• Listening (developing sensory intensity)
• Summarising and confirming
• Agreeing actions and following up.
• Key account planning.

If your KAMs are good at these fundamentals and use them all the time, along with a clear account plan, then you are 80% of the way there already! (Refer key account planning).

Developing the skills of less senior staff can often be as important (depending on your circumstances), and one critical area of customer support, which is frequently ignored, is effective interaction by telephone.

Imonic build skill in this area by undertaking a combination of workshops and one to one telephone coaching. We bring along, by arrangement, telephone recording equipment (this works with any PABX digital or analogue system), to record and review calls. Depending on call type (inbound/outbound), we ascertain the caller/customer's call objective and identify whether it was satisfied. We can then determine if:

• Customer wants and needs were met,
• Further customer information, was maximised and taken advantage of.
• What follow-up action is required to satisfy the call, improve future contact or create cross-sell/up-sell opportunities.

It's not difficult to imagine the number of opportunities that can be missed through poor listening and questioning techniques at this critical interface, which in many businesses accounts for the majority of customer contact traffic.

The one to one nature of our coaching programmes has a sustained and measurable effect on account objectives, sales and customer satisfaction - this is not an area that is usually improved through one day, away from base courses, integrated and tailored coaching plans are far more effective!

Imonic pride itself on practical coaching that builds skill and brings results. Most of the training we do is specific to a client's needs.