Workshop · Strategy
The client who never complained
Retention is settled in how the service was designed, not in the manner of whoever answers the phone.
- Duration
- 3 hours
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 8 to 22 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
A company loses a client and almost never learns why. There was no complaint, no argument, no call to the owner. The client simply stopped calling, and some time later somebody notices the name has dropped off the billing list.
The comfortable explanation is price. The real one is usually spread thin: a delivery that ran late with nobody warning them, a question that sat unanswered too long, an invoice with an error that took chasing to correct. None of those episodes justifies a formal complaint, which is exactly why none of them was recorded anywhere.
Customer service tends to be treated as a personality trait of whoever picks up the phone. While it stays that, the only improvement available is asking for more warmth from people who are already being warm, and the company keeps losing clients who never said a word.
What it covers
The workshop rebuilds the full journey of one real client of the participating company, from first inquiry to final invoice, marking every point where that client had to wait, repeat information or chase an answer. The material is the company's own: borrowed examples produce no discomfort, and discomfort is what makes the session usable.
On top of that journey the service commitment gets written: what the company promises at each point, who answers for it, and when a failure stops being an inconvenience and starts requiring a deliberate recovery. Recovery is designed before it is needed, because improvised it depends on who happens to be on shift.
The last part is what turns service into a system: what gets recorded about each incident, who reviews it, and how often that review changes something in the operation. Without that loop, the best service map is a well-drawn chart.
What participants learn
- Rebuild a real client journey and locate the points where the decision to return is actually made.
- Separate a failure of manner from a failure of service design.
- Write the company's service commitment with a named owner at each point of contact.
- Design a recovery protocol before the incident that calls for it occurs.
- Define what gets recorded about a lost client and who reads that record.
Agenda
- The client who leaves without complaining, and why no report shows it
- The client journey: where retention is genuinely decided
- Manner and design: two different causes treated as one
- The service commitment: what the company promises and who answers
- Recovery decided in advance rather than in the moment
- What gets recorded about a complaint, and about a silence
- The standing review that turns incidents into process changes
- When a service problem is really a capacity or a pricing problem
What the organisation leaves with
- A client journey map with the critical points marked and an owner at each one.
- A written service commitment, in language the client can check.
- A recovery protocol covering the foreseeable cases, with who may authorise each response.
- An incident and lost-client record format, with the review routine that goes with it.
Programme details
- Format
- Workshop
- Also available as
- Intensive workshop · Executive talk · Corporate training day
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Owners and general managers of service businesses or businesses with repeat custom.
- Operations leads who inherit the client once the sale is closed.
- Sales and account managers whose clients renew or come back.
- Front-line teams answering inquiries with no written commitment behind them.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this not the same as customer service training?
- No. Service training improves how the person already on the phone is treated. This works on why that call was necessary, who should have given warning earlier, and what happens to the record afterwards.
- Does it help if the real problem is that we are stretched too thin?
- It helps name it precisely, which is usually half the value. But it is worth knowing in advance: if the cause is capacity, the workshop will end by pointing at a hiring or a pricing decision, and that decision does not get taken in the room.
- Do we need satisfaction data to attend?
- No. If it exists it gets used; if it does not, the work runs on the history of recently lost clients, which tends to be more revealing than a survey answered by the people who stayed.
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Read more →Request this programme
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Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.