All courses are run by and through The Empathy Academy which specialises in developing and delivering content which is compliant with a core set of Empathy Competencies.

Open Workshops

• Relationship Management (Customers and Colleagues)
• Call Handling
• First Call Resolution and Controlling the Call
• Selling with Empathy
• Writing effective e-mails
• Creative leadership - Re-energise a Tired Team
• Coaching with Empathy
• Designing a Performance Management Programme
• Incorporating Empathy into Your Call / Communication Handling Standards (Creating a standard from scratch or reviewing an existing standard)

Myers Briggs Type Indicator Workshops

• Understanding your personality type
• Management and Leadership development
• Team Building and development
• Organisational change

Relationship Management (Customers and Colleagues)

Successful and fruitful interactions between people often depend on achieving a ‘connection' or reaching an understanding with the other person.  We find that easy with people who are already on our wavelength but how can we achieve that when the other person is ‘on another planet' or thinks that we are?!  The ability to develop a relationship with anyone is a valuable skill in any walk of life and vital for sales and customer service.  This module takes some of the mystery out of building relationships and gives guidelines that are easy to put into practice.

Content:

• What is empathy and how can we achieve it in all our interactions?
• Understanding others (customers and colleagues)
• Recognising thinking and communication styles
• An insight into the differences between generations
• Understanding ourselves
• Beliefs and how they affect our performance
• Self motivation
• Creating rapport
• Matching style and meeting needs
• Closing
• Leaving the customer with the ‘feel good' factor

This workshop is active and fun.  The practical approach will help bring this subject to life and make it relevant to you in your role or current situation.  The immediate benefit will be an increased understanding of what makes other people ‘tick' and how best to adapt your communication style to make the best of every interaction. 

By understanding and using some of the concepts outlined in this course you could see an improvement in your relationships, work or personal.   Whether you work in sales, service, management, consultancy, public or private sector; all kinds of possibilities may open up for you.  

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Call Handling 

Very often the first, and sometimes only, contact a customer may have with an organisation is over the telephone.  This interaction will leave a lasting impression which could be good, bad or indifferent.  This workshop will put your call handlers on the right track to help them achieve memorable, positive interactions with customers, balancing what is right for your business with the needs of the customer.

Content:

• Structuring a call
• Creating a positive impression
• Vocal tones - the underlying message
• Questioning to gain understanding
• Listening and acknowledging
• Building relationships with empathy and rapport
• Closing the call

This fast paced, interactive workshop will benefit anyone who spends part or all of their working day talking to customers or colleagues on the telephone.  It covers the skills that form the foundation of excellent call handling and, for this reason, would be ideal for people who are new to call handling or an excellent recap for anyone else. 

First Call Resolution and Controlling the Call

Call handling is an expensive part of your business and usually the area under the most pressure to cut costs.  Getting a call right first time is not just great for your customers but it is fantastic for your business too.  This workshop focuses on the interpersonal skills needed for first call resolution.

Content:

• Pre-planning call objectives / desired outcomes
• Conversation cycle (input/response, questioning, listening, acknowledgement)
• Controlling and guiding the call
• Handling concerns and complaints
• Summarising, actions and conclusion

The main focus of this session is to equip you with the skills of leading the customer where they need to go, whilst ensuring that they feel fully listened to, and resolving their queries and answering their questions along the way.  The main benefit of this workshop will be to increase your confidence in handling challenging calls and coping with time pressures. 

Developing the skills and behaviours needed for first call resolution will reap many rewards across your business.  Not only will customers be impressed by your efficiency, your finance department will be too!

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Selling with Empathy

Love it or hate it, ‘selling' has an emotional impact on most people.  This module explores what might inhibit our sales techniques and looks at approaching the sale from the customer's perspective.  It will look at questions that effectively identify needs and the secret to meeting those needs successfully.

Content:

• Exploring the fear factor
• Identifying opportunities
• Understanding customer's needs and concerns
• Responding with personalised benefits
• Asking for the sale
• Assertive communication
• Negotiation techniques

"If you believe you can do a thing, or if you believe you cannot, in either case you are probably right" - Henry Ford

Successful sales people hold two very important beliefs:

1. People want to buy what they're selling
2. They are the person to sell it to them!

This workshop will inspire and re-energise your selling technique.  It will show you how selling can be an enjoyable experience for both you and your customers,

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Writing effective e-mails

This does just what it says on the tin.  If you have never considered the factors that should go into writing an excellent and effective e-mail - this module is not to be missed!

Content:

• To mail or not to mail?
• The 5 point plan
• First impressions
• E-mail empathy
• Rapport
• Knowledge
• Handling difficult customers

Effective communication gives a professional impression of you and of your organisation.  Writing effectively is demanding and, for some, daunting.  This workshop aims to alleviate some of the confusion and uncertainty that surrounds our e-mail writing.  It gives a simple structure to follow and provides ideas to help you make your writing interesting, stimulating and reflective of your personality.

By the end of this interactive workshop you will have learned how to enhance your existing e-mail skills and build an electronic rapport with your colleagues and customers.

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Creative leadership - Re-energise a Tired Team

Are your team missing that special something, lacking oomph and energy?  Or maybe they just don't understand or appreciate each other.  This module will reach parts that ... well you know the rest!

Content:

• Motivators and de-motivators
• Thinking and communication styles
• Understanding the individual and adapting leadership style
• Managing obstructive, challenging or negative team members
• Individual and team objectives
• Having fun

This lively, inspiring and interactive workshop is suitable for anyone who wants to get the best from their team.  It investigates the factors that enable people to get on with each other and those which cause friction and discord.  It will give you an opportunity to think about how your leadership style affects your team and look at how you can add a little sparkle and fun to their working day.

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Coaching with Empathy

Some of the most effective leaders and managers in the world have perfected the art of effective coaching.  An excellent coach does not just focus on one to one sessions, coaching is part and parcel of their communication style.

Content:

• The relationship between empathy and coaching
• Creating the best environment for growth (oak trees from acorns)
• Effective coaching questions: to make you think/to challenge/to inspire
• Limiting and enabling beliefs and how they affect performance
• Goals that motivate
• Coaching practice
• Measuring the success of the coach

This workshop is full of interactive and energising activities to help illustrate fundamental coaching skills.  It includes an overview on the theory of effective coaching and plenty of activities to bring this to life. 

We'll also give you a Coaching for Success measurement tool to takeaway so that you can assess your own coaching technique in the future.

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Designing a Performance Management Programme

Whether you are thinking of reviewing your performance management programme or designing a new one, this module is for you.  It looks at the factors that drive an effective lift in performance and looks at ways you can involve people in developing the measures which will motivate them and improve performance.

Content:

• Aligning team objectives with business objectives
• Agreeing what to measure - quantitative and qualitative
• Competency Frameworks
• Balanced scorecards
• Quality standards
• Service level agreements
• Review, reward and recognition

This interesting and informative workshop will help you to explore a variety of options and approaches available to you when putting together a Performance Management Programme.  The possibilities are endless but finding the solution that's right for your situation can be a real challenge.  By exploring the options, the advantages and disadvantages, this workshop will help you to find the right solution for you.

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Incorporating Empathy into Your Call / Communication Handling Standards - Creating a standard from scratch or reviewing an existing standard

Are you worried that your Call or Communication Standards don't quite hit the spot?  Would you like to be able to design your own in-house standard that measures both process and impression factors effectively?   We have years of experience in creating quality measurement standards for all kinds of organisations and we would love to share what we have learned with you.

Content:

• Envisioning the excellent customer experience
• Defining skills and behaviours
• Creating a useable tool
• Scoring
• The importance of alignment

We are passionate about creating excellent customer experiences and know, from our Empathy Benchmarking programmes, that organisations with effective communication handling standards perform consistently better than those who do not measure the performance of their staff.

This workshop will give you the methodology we use to create call or communication handling standards. 

Myers-Briggs Type indicator (MBTi) Workshops

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTi) questionnaire is the most widely used personality questionnaire worldwide.  More than 3.5m questionnaires are completed worldwide every year and there are over 13,000 qualified users in the Europe.  It is based on over 50 years research and development and is available in 19 languages.

The MBTi questionnaire describes an individual's personality preferences.

The various combinations of these preferences result in 16 personality 'types'. Each is associated with a unique set of behavioural characteristics and values. These provide a useful starting point for individual feedback, self-exploration and group discussion.  We are accredited to use MBTi.

Myers Briggs - Management and leadership development 

Help managers and leaders to appreciate the impact of their personal style on others.  Identify their strengths and any areas which they may need to develop become more effective. Can be used as part of an executive coaching programme.

Content:

• Pre-course questionnaire
• Introduction to the 8 preferences which make up the 16 personality types
• Self-assessment
• Impact of your style on others
• Maximising our strengths and developing other areas

Myers Briggs - Team building and development

Increase awareness of the team's working style. Through this, improve team communication, enhance problem solving, encourage appreciation of diversity and resolve conflict.

Content:

• Pre-course questionnaire
• Introduction to the 8 preferences which make up the 16 personality types
• Self and group assessment
• Recognising how to use each others strengths
• Maximising your strengths and developing other areas

Myers Briggs - Organisational change

Understand why people react differently to change and how to support them though the process.

Content:

• Pre-course questionnaire
• Introduction to the 8 preferences which make up the 16 personality types
• Self assessment
• Understanding the impact of and how to communicate and support change