Staff Customer Service Training

Kansas Legal Services - 020060

Abstract Number: 020060

August 2002

Kansas Legal Services (KLS) has undertaken a major effort to train their staff and provide them with outstanding customer service etiquette, sensitivity, and techniques to better assist their clients. KLS worked closely with a company, Distinctive Customer Treatment, to customize a 15-hour training module.

The emphasis of KLS's training program is to sensitize staff - clerical positions, management, attorneys, paralegals - to view client staff interactions from a client centered perspective. The training module draws on the most up-to-date methods currently utilized in the business world regarding customer treatment. KLS explores our customer's desires and expectations in their interaction with KLS, realizing that a satisfying business interaction includes both the delivery of quality products, in this case legal assistance, as well as excellent customer treatment.

Kansas Legal Services challenges their staff to provide KLS customers with the best possible treatment, bar none. KLS believe professional interactions with clients can empower their customers to demand high quality treatment from other organizations and agencies with which they interact.

The training module incorporates role-play, demonstrations, group discussions, and quizzes designed with an adult learning methodology. Five staff members train new staff and present the material in two-day blocks. Initially, KLS held training sessions every two months however they now occur only a couple of times a year. KLS report that implementing customer service training has improved staff interactions with clients and effectively worked its way into KLS culture.

The training covers such topics as:

• Focusing on the client's experience
• Basic Information on customer service organizations
• Reviewing methods of interaction with customers to eliminate barriers
• Creating a Positive Impression
• Gathering information in a way that makes customers want to work with you
• Dealing with employee anger
• Dealing with customer anger
• Dealing with mistakes
• Dealing with client requests

Contact Information:

Marilyn Harp
Kansas Legal Services Inc.
200 North Broadway, Suite 500
Wichita, Kansas 67202
Phone: 316-265-9681
Fax: 316-265-5902
harpm@klsinc.org

Additional Information

Customer Treatment Training

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