Seminar: Professional complaint management – customer service by letter and email
Responding to complaints in a clear, customer-oriented style, and formulating refusals/rejections in a respectful tone.
Every complaint is an opportunity to generate positive customer loyalty. Polite answers to both simple and complex complaints have a crucial role to play in the business process. Seminar participants find out how to deal with complaints with peace of mind and write respectful, clearly structured replies. This enables you to project a professional image, as well as saving both time and costs.
Responding to both simple and complex complaints repeatedly poses a particular challenge in the area of customer contact. Contemporary replies are friendly, frank, clearly structured and reflect an emotional tone as appropriate.
Seminar objectives: Participants review their strategies in responding to letters and emails and learn how to handle even complex complaints in a way which effectively strengthens customer loyalty.
Duration: 1 day, e.g. 9 am. to 4 pm.
Preparation
- Participants submit customer letters/emails and the relevant replies for prior analysis and formulate their questions and expectations of the seminar.
Content
- The eight basic principles to follow for a contemporary letter and email style
- What no longer works: obsolete (e.g. „zur Verfügung stehen“), wrong (e.g. „beiliegend finden Sie“), superfluous („wir beziehen uns auf“) or clumsy expressions are replaced with flawless, contemporary ones
- Clear, targeted and precise formulations: drafting letters that are correctly and comprehensibly structured
- Sensible structuring and the best possible line of argument
- Primary and secondary purpose of the customer letter: choose positive, respectful wording which is not patronising[
- Complaint handling: Wording replies to criticism, cancellations and rejections in a respectful manner, especially in customer service
- If necessary: create sample templates for commonly used texts
- Write with formal precision: be familiar with and apply the guidelines and norms for letter and email writing
- Optimise letters and emails written by participants
Handbook, quick reference cards and seminar service
- Detailed seminar handbook and handouts with exercises
- A5 quick reference cards as a brief summary
- Supplementary material and photographic minutes by email
- Support after the seminar: simply by email or using the Knowledge Blog – participants are welcome to ask questions and request tips after the seminar
Your communications skills trainer:
Uwe Freund: Communication trainer, coach, text optimiser. Uwe Freund has been supporting companies since 1989 as a communication trainer, speaker, coach and consultant for business writing skills and complaint management by letter, email, chat and social media as well as time management, telephone dialogue and presentation.
He advises companies in German-speaking countries on the redesign of written and verbal communication as well as the concrete implementation through text optimisation of templates, building blocks and templates. His industry expertise focuses on financial services, insurance, law firms and law firms, automotive, IT and software, clothing/fashion. Uwe Freund lives in Munich.
- Studies: Politics, German Studies and Psychology in Frankfurt am Main and Munich - Degree: M. A. (Magister/Master)
- Qualifications: Certified coach based on transactional analysis; further training: Gestalt, NLP, TCI, conflict management, group dynamics, physiology and sports training methodology, energetic psychology (MPC), INSIGHTS MDI (accredited counsellor), Lumina Spark (accredited counsellor)
- Seminar languages: German, English
- Seminar topics: Written communication and business writing such as letters and emails, live chat, professional formulation and copywriting, telephone dialogue, customer service and complaint management, time management and productivity, pyramid style presentations, presentation, facilitation
- Memberships: BJV Bayerischer Journalistenverband / German Journalists' Association, DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V. / German Standardisation Organisation (member of the working committee "Text and information processing for office applications")