Graham Bennett – Customer Service Training
Customer Service Expert
Graham has made a speciality of devising customer care courses around complaints handling. That may be because he's always enjoyed complaining himself in all areas of his life, and probably knows well how to handle the complainer so that they feel heard and understood. As far as he's concerned enabling a complainer to feel heard and understood is about the most important thing you can do to satisfy a complainant, irrespective of whether you can resolve anything for them.Graham has developed and run telephone customer facing programmes for the Capita Connexions Team, Warburtons, and Huntingdonshire District Council. At Huntingdonshire, together with Bronia Szczygiel, the brand new Customer Call Response Centre team of 18 were trained from scratch. Such was the success of their work that two years later the Team won a Government Charter Mark for Excellent Customer Service.
Graham developed and led an Excellent Customer Service Programme for the Operations Department at Morley Fund Managers, (now Aviva Investments), which has been added to the core training curriculum for the company. He also oversaw the Customer Service Training programme for Guide Dogs for the Blind.
As one of life's improvisers, he shies away from anything that is suggestive of a script, and tends to discourage people who are purporting to offer him some customer service from using a script. Not only is the customer right, but they are also unique, and need to be treated as such. The customer is often a nuisance, wrong, and typical, but Graham's view is that they must never be made to feel that way. His approach to customer facing is friendly and relaxed, with time to listen.
He couldn't have been happier when a shop assistant, universally admired by his customers for his niceness, good humour, and empathy, made it onto the 6 o'clock news (Read the story here) on November 30th when elected by his community to turn on the Christmas lights in the town. He even has an 'Appreciation Society' locally. Now that's a result!
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