Sales & Customer Experience
Customer Experience: Count to 7!
Managing challenging conversations: a transformational programme on understanding yourself first, then the person who is angry with you.
The business challenge
Why organizations ask for this.
Organizations invest in the product and improvise the experience. Frontline teams absorb the difference, and without tools for de-escalation and emotional regulation, the cost appears as escalations, churn and burnout.
Approach & methodology
How the programme actually runs.
4 × 3.5 h workshops + 2 h follow-up, or 2 days face-to-face · Online or face-to-face · 70% practice / 30% theory
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Setting the scene
Corporate strategy and the focus on customer intimacy; mindset versus role in achieving performance; the customer care goals and KPIs the team is actually measured on.
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Part 1: Mastering self
Understand, reflect, accept, integrate and act. A world café where the group answers, from three perspectives (me, the company, the customer): how I see my role today, what the organization expects of me, and what customers actually expect.
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Customer needs and expectations
The customer's mindset and buying occasions; the customer persona; the customer journey and its Moments of Truth; effortless buying; the service profit chain that links employee satisfaction to customer satisfaction to profitability.
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The Customer Interaction Framework
1. Acknowledge and approach. 2. Identify the best solutions. 3. Build authenticity. Then: identify further needs and issues, deliver the solution, overcome resistance, close the interaction.
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Managing conversations and emotions
Effective communication across phone, email and chat; de-escalation of upset customers; powerful questioning to build rapport and trust; what changes in the brain during a challenging conversation.
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Between sessions
Short reflection homework that embeds the previous workshop into the day-to-day.
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Follow-up
A two-hour group coaching session: what went well, what can be improved, sharing best practice and creating productive embedding routines.
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Optional: mystery shopping
A mystery shopping programme run against an interaction framework agreed with the client, to measure the behaviour rather than the intention.
Competencies built
What participants can do afterwards.
Emotional regulation
Count to seven and choose your response, instead of matching the customer's state.
Active listening
Hear the request underneath the complaint.
Empathy
Acknowledge the frustration before you start solving anything.
Conflict management
De-escalate without conceding what you are not able to concede.
Rapport building
Rebuild the relationship inside the same conversation that damaged it.
Customer journey management
See your interaction as one step in a journey the customer remembers whole.
Expected business outcomes
What the organization should see.
Higher customer satisfaction scores (NPS, CSAT)
Reduced complaints and escalations
Improved customer loyalty and retention
Schedule & format
Practical details.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Customer-facing teams.
4 × 3.5 h workshops + 2 h follow-up, or 2 days face-to-face. The rhythm is deliberate: modules are spaced so participants apply the behaviour at work between sessions.
Online or face-to-face · 70% practice / 30% theory. We adapt the mix to your geography and shift patterns.
Yes, and it always is. We start with two to three individual conversations with selected participants, then rebuild the cases, the language and the practice situations from your business.
Kirkpatrick levels one to four: reaction, knowledge, self-assessed behaviour, and the participant's manager assessing the same competencies. We agree the target behaviours with the sponsor before design starts.
Digital missions and buddy work on PROMOTE, with the participant's own manager involved. This is the difference between 15–20% and 60–80% transfer into practice.
Yes. We also deliver in French across our Western European and African operations.
Related programmes
Others in Sales & Customer Experience.
Consultative Selling
A High Performance Learning Journey that moves a sales team from transactional to consultative, diagnose before you prescribe, and build the customer's business case with them.
Consultative Selling with DISC
The same rigorous method, plus a behavioural read of the person in front of you, so the approach adapts in real time to how that buyer actually buys.
Sales Academy
A participant-centred development journey for a whole sales organization: define the picture of success, measure the real gap with an assessment centre, then build only what is missing.
Start a conversation
Book a strategic discussion about Customer Experience: Count to 7!.
If you are evaluating how to build capability that actually changes the way your organization works, we can help you define the right starting point, cohort design and delivery sequence.
The first conversation is diagnostic. We discuss your context, priorities, maturity, and where capability building can create measurable leverage.