Course Structure
Learning Objectives:
- Train others on the difference between ‘customer’ and ‘care’, classify the different customer service approaches and explain the various tools required to provide excellent customer service.
- Act independently in learning about the various customer service settings and channels of correspondence, while emphasising the importance of customer affairs in each setting and channel.
- Express a comprehensive view of the aims and objectives of customer service with an emphasis on the importance of customer service in the different types of organisations and its commercial influence on other organisations.
- Manage self-development creatively when working in customer service, and recognise the importance of supervision in the process.
- Express a comprehensive view of the employment conditions and contractual agreements, the health and safety conditions and policies to be met and the data protection and confidentiality terms in customer service settings.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1K Assignment (80%); MCQ (20%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Solve problems independently using soft skills required for effective communication, and conduct communication using the most appropriate non-verbal communication skills.
- Lead a team using the most appropriate approaches to communication in the customer service setting.
- Train others on how to identify the type of customer’s communication, how to respond to it and determine what the best approach to conflict resolution is when faced with conflict.
- Express a comprehensive view for implementing the most ethical confidentiality principles and maintaining them throughout the customer exchange.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1K Assignment (50%); MCQ (25%); Group Presentation (25%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Train others on the importance of customer service psychology,
- Train others on the best approaches to creating customer satisfaction and wellbeing through showing an understanding of customers’ motivations, recognizing their needs when in a customer exchange.
- Gain skills to determine the best approach to various customer behaviours and emotional states, categorising the types of customers with particular focus on today’s ‘On-Demand’ clients.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1K Assignment (50%); MCQ (50%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Objectives:
- Manage stressful situations triggered by customers and apply strategies to deal with them, through support from the workplace and available stress management interventions.
- Train others on the different forms of customer mistreatment, maintain professionalism during the exchange, recognise when and how to take responsibility, and the warning signs of counterproductive work behaviour (CWB).
- Gain skills to act with autonomy when implementing a holistic approach to tackling stress in the workplace.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1K Assignment (50%); MCQ (25%); Journal (25%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Train others on the importance of customer relationship management, personalising and optimising their communication styles to match the customer’s needs in order to strengthen relationships.
- Gain knowledge on how to lead a team on each stage of the customer lifetime value cycle and the optimal approaches to take when addressing their queries, maintaining customer loyalty, customer resolution and other CRM elements.
- Manage projects independently for the efficacy of the retrieval of customer’s knowledge in resolving and reducing a customer’s likelihood of defection.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1.5K Assignment (65%); MCQ (10%); Group Tasks (25%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Gain learning skills on the principles of health and safety
- Gain skills to distinguish between hazard and risk
- Identify the different hazards in the workplace
- Gain skills to apply strategies that avoid and minimise health and safety issues in the workplace
- Gain an understanding of the four-step risk management process
- Gain learning skills to conduct an informal risk assessment and its review
- Gain learning skills to report and respond to a health and safety incident in the workplace.
- Develop a Health and Safety Policy
- Gain learning skills to apply the main principles of the Occupational Health and Safety Act
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures
Mode of Assessment:
2K Assignment (100%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Develop team performance on the function of customer service in particular settings.
- Train others on the main channels of correspondence, emphasise the importance of being multiplatform while appraising each medium of correspondence.
- Gain responsibility and the ability to utilise each form of technology during a customer exchange, and train others on how to balance self-service with existing customer service agents.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/ online lecturers/Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1K Assignment (50%); Group Presentation (50%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Develop team performance of the utilisation of different marketing strategies that can be implemented in a customer service industry, and act independently in creating a proposal of a marketing plan that can be implemented in the customer service setting.
- Gain skills to monitor the progress of the selling process in a customer exchange and emphasise the importance of customer and product knowledge in this process, and train others to recognise the importance of good customer service encounters as a marketing strategy in today’s climate.
- Show creativity in implementing different cross-selling and upselling techniques in a customer exchange.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/ online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1.5K Assignment (70%); MCQ (15%); Group tasks (15%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Train others on the value of teamwork, within and between departments in an organisation with a particular focus on the customer service setting, and what makes teamwork efficacious when the key components are implemented.
- Gain skills to be responsible for a customer service department in an organisation and act independently providing customer service as the main point of contact along their customer journey.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/ online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1.5K Assignment (60%); MCQ (40%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Train others on how to best apply ethical standards in the customer service setting, pointing out what ethical standards an officer needs to uphold, as well as the benefits of good ethical practice in the customer service setting of customer retention and loyalty.
- Assume responsibility for gathering knowledge on business ethics, with a focus on ethical responsibility, leadership and culture, whilst recognizing what ethical theories helped shape business ethics as it is today.
- Lead a team and monitor them on the code of conduct in the workplace in Malta.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1.5K Assignment (75%); MCQ (25%)
Total Contact Hours:
27
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
50
Assessment Hours:
23
Learning Outcomes:
- Gain skills to compose, set up and write an excellent learner portfolio
- Train others on the importance of personal development even during practice.
- Gain the skills to be reflective and evaluate work done with the customers.
- Manage projects independently in creating SMART goals towards improving performance.
- Monitor progress on your SMART goals under the supervision of other professionals.
- Train others on the appropriate customer service skills, selling techniques, communication approaches, customer lifetime cycle stages, and ethical standards when working in a customer service setting according to professional and ethical standards for at least 170 hour-placement in a customer service setting.
Mode of Teaching:
Practical
Mode of Assessment:
Observation (60%); Logbook (40%)
Total Contact Hours:
20
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
170
Self-Study Hours:
0
Assessment Hours:
10
Learning Outcomes:
- Manage independently the recruitment requirements needed for a customer service agent, determining the measures of performance of existing customer service agents, while taking into consideration the training and assistance that is needed for new and existing recruits
- Manage independently the day-to-day activities of a customer service manager are in the customer service setting while maintaining and nurturing customer, employee and cross-departmental relationships
- Lead a team utilizing the best service processes, policies and standards for maintaining a successful and efficient environment
- Train others to use good leadership skills that lead towards service improvement
- Independently understand what leads to employee turnover and what approaches can be taken to improve employee retention
- Independently implement coaching skills and find the right coaching opportunities to benefit the customer service agent.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
2K Assignment (100%)
Total Contact Hours:
42
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
75
Assessment Hours:
33
Learning Outcomes:
- Lead a team to improve their technological competence in order to improve customer satisfaction, while emphasising the importance of multichannel communication in this modern technological climate.
- Gain skills to use call centre technology, multichannel communication, with a particular focus on becoming proficient in knowledge management systems for customer relationship management and knowledge retrieval.
- Manage independently call centre scripts and challenge yourself with the use of controlled improvisation, without shifting focus away from the selling process of the phone service encounter.
- Train others on how to utilize social media, chat and chatbot channels to interact effectively with customers, while encouraging the trainees to take intuitive approaches to use technology in customer service.
- Independently implement each channel of correspondence during a customer exchange and reflect on how to improve technological knowledge in each channel.
Mode of Teaching:
Face-to-face Lectures/online lectures/ Asynchronous
Mode of Assessment:
1K Assignment (50%); Presentation (50%)
Total Contact Hours:
42
Supervised Placement and Practice Hours:
0
Self-Study Hours:
75
Assessment Hours:
33
