Customer Centricity Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Customer Experience Managers, Customer Service Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-CS-136

Before you join: Participants should have experience working with customers, customer-facing teams, service operations, sales, marketing or process improvement.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Customer centricity is not achieved through friendly service alone. It requires teams to understand customer needs, identify effort and failure points, make sound trade-offs between customer value and operational cost, and act consistently across channels. Without this discipline, organisations often measure satisfaction while customers still face repeated contacts, unclear ownership, inconsistent advice and slow complaint resolution.

This course develops a practical customer-centred mindset for people responsible for service, sales, marketing, operations and customer experience. Participants learn to use Voice of Customer evidence, Jobs to Be Done interviews, personas, journey maps and service blueprints to identify what customers are trying to achieve. They examine moments that matter, customer effort, handoffs, service standards, complaint patterns and recovery decisions. The course also covers customer experience measurement, including NPS, CSAT, Customer Effort Score and operational indicators.

Teaching combines instructor briefings, sector-based cases, group analysis, communication simulations and structured application planning. Participants work with realistic scenarios such as a bank customer unable to complete onboarding, a public service user receiving conflicting guidance, or a business client experiencing repeated delivery failures. Each participant leaves with a customer centricity improvement pack containing a journey map, service recovery checklist, experience scorecard and 30-60-90-day action plan. Successful participants receive a certificate of completion.

The course is suited to professionals who already work with customers, customer data, service processes or cross-functional improvement initiatives. It is particularly relevant where customer trust, retention, regulatory treatment, service quality or reputation depend on consistent experiences across people, processes and channels.

What you will be able to do

  • Map customer journeys using stages, touchpoints, emotions, effort and ownership
  • Extract customer needs from Voice of Customer data and Jobs to Be Done interviews
  • Segment customers by needs, service expectations, value drivers and context
  • Design service standards and recovery processes for critical customer moments
  • Apply active listening, empathy and plain-language techniques during customer interactions
  • Resolve service failures using triage, root-cause analysis and closed-loop remediation
  • Establish customer experience scorecards using NPS, CSAT, CES and operational measures
  • Build a 30-60-90-day customer centricity improvement plan

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Diagnose customer problems beyond individual complaints and anecdotal feedback
  • Lead evidence-based discussions about customer priorities and service investment
  • Handle difficult customer interactions with clearer listening and recovery techniques
  • Produce credible journey maps and improvement proposals for senior stakeholders
  • Build a practical action plan for improving customer experience in a current role

For your organisation

  • Reduced repeat contacts, avoidable complaints and customer effort
  • More consistent service standards across teams and channels
  • Better prioritisation of journey improvements using customer evidence
  • Stronger retention and trust through effective service recovery
  • Clearer accountability for customer outcomes across functions

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can explain customer centricity as an operating discipline linked to measurable business outcomes.

  • Customer-centred purpose linked to retention, advocacy, margin and service recovery
  • Outside-in thinking contrasted with product, process and channel assumptions
  • Moments of truth identified across acquisition, onboarding, use and renewal
  • Customer value propositions tested against functional, emotional and social jobs
  • Service-profit chain relationships between employee conditions, loyalty and growth
  • Behavioural standards translated from brand promise into observable frontline actions

Participants can gather, interpret and act on customer insight from multiple evidence sources.

  • Jobs to Be Done interviews distinguish circumstances, motivations, anxieties and desired progress
  • Voice-of-customer sources combined from complaints, calls, reviews, surveys and social listening
  • Qualitative coding converts verbatim feedback into themes, needs and failure patterns
  • Survey questions avoid double-barrelled wording, leading language and response bias
  • Personas grounded in evidence rather than demographics, assumptions or internal labels
  • Closed-loop feedback assigns owners, response times, remedies and learning actions

Participants can define priority customer groups and their distinct service needs.

  • Needs-based segmentation separates customers by context, value drivers and service expectations
  • Priority segments selected using attractiveness, fit, service cost and strategic value
  • Customer personas specify goals, barriers, preferred channels and evidence sources
  • Journey hypotheses tested with frontline observations and customer interviews
  • Accessibility and inclusion needs incorporated into segment and journey decisions
  • Segment scorecards connect customer needs to proposition, channel and service design

Participants can map customer journeys and identify operational causes of customer effort.

  • Current-state journey maps chart stages, tasks, emotions, channels and handoffs
  • Touchpoint inventories expose duplicate contacts, effort drivers and broken promises
  • Moments that matter prioritised through impact, frequency, risk and dissatisfaction
  • Service blueprints distinguish customer actions, frontstage work, backstage work and systems
  • Root-cause analysis traces journey failures through Five Whys and fishbone diagrams
  • Future-state journeys define intended experience, ownership and proof points

Participants can design service standards that reduce effort and support reliable delivery.

  • Value proposition canvas aligns customer jobs, pains, gains and service features
  • Service standards set response times, accuracy thresholds, tone and escalation rules
  • Choice architecture reduces effort through defaults, clear language and next steps
  • Co-creation methods involve customers in testing concepts, scripts and prototypes
  • Failure-mode analysis anticipates service breakdowns before launch or process change
  • Recovery design specifies apology, remedy, authority limits and follow-up

Participants can communicate clearly, empathetically and confidently in routine and difficult interactions.

  • Active listening uses paraphrasing, probing questions, summarising and confirmation
  • Empathy statements acknowledge impact without accepting unfounded liability
  • Plain-language techniques remove jargon, ambiguity and unnecessary policy language
  • De-escalation follows CALM: control, acknowledge, listen and move forward
  • Channel switching preserves context between branch, phone, email, chat and self-service
  • Accessibility-aware communication accommodates different languages, abilities and digital confidence

Participants can manage complaints fairly while turning recurring failures into improvement actions.

  • Complaint taxonomy separates service failures, product defects, conduct issues and disputes
  • Case triage assesses severity, vulnerability, regulatory exposure and resolution authority
  • Service recovery paradox assessed without treating complaints as loyalty opportunities
  • Root-cause reviews distinguish individual error, process weakness, policy and system causes
  • Complaint letters document facts, decisions, remedies and clear next steps
  • Closed-loop remediation verifies resolution, captures learning and prevents recurrence

Participants can define cross-functional accountability for customer journeys and service decisions.

  • RACI matrices clarify accountability for journey stages, touchpoints and recovery decisions
  • Cross-functional governance links sales, operations, marketing, technology and compliance
  • Frontline empowerment defines decision rights, financial limits and escalation triggers
  • Knowledge management maintains accurate scripts, policies, product information and FAQs
  • Service quality calibration aligns reviewers on evidence, scoring and coaching
  • Internal service agreements set handoff standards between dependent teams

Participants can select and interpret customer experience measures alongside operational performance data.

  • Customer experience scorecards balance NPS, CSAT, CES, retention and complaints
  • Leading indicators track effort, response time, repeat contacts and promise fulfilment
  • VoC dashboards combine operational data with customer feedback and journey insights
  • Driver analysis connects satisfaction changes to touchpoints, segments and root causes
  • Metric governance defines calculation rules, targets, reporting cadence and data ownership
  • Goodhart's law safeguards prevent target chasing that harms customer outcomes

Participants can create a prioritised plan for embedding customer centricity within their area of responsibility.

  • Customer-centred priorities translated into 30-60-90-day implementation milestones
  • Opportunity backlogs rank improvements by customer impact, effort, risk and urgency
  • Pilot charters define hypothesis, scope, measures, owners and decision criteria
  • Stakeholder maps identify sponsors, blockers, contributors and communication needs
  • Change narratives connect customer evidence with operational and commercial rationale
  • Personal action plans specify behaviours, measures, commitments and review dates

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Customer journey map template
  2. Voice of Customer analysis framework
  3. Service blueprint template
  4. Complaint triage and recovery checklist
  5. Customer experience scorecard
  6. 30-60-90-day customer centricity action plan

Who should attend

  • Customer Experience Managers — need structured methods to improve priority journeys
  • Customer Service Managers — need consistent standards, coaching and recovery processes
  • Sales Managers — need customer insight to improve retention and relationship quality
  • Marketing Managers — need evidence-based customer needs and proposition decisions
  • Operations Managers — need to reduce customer effort caused by process failures
  • Product Managers — need customer evidence to improve services, channels and onboarding

Skills and tools covered

Customer journey mappingVoice of Customer analysisService recovery designCustomer experience measurementCross-functional service designCustomer-centred communication

Tools and standards

Jobs to Be Done, Customer Journey Map, Service Blueprint, Net Promoter Score

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce methods, followed by case analysis, group work, communication simulations and application planning. Participants interpret customer feedback, map journeys, identify service failures and assess customer experience measures using realistic service scenarios. Simulations focus on active listening, complaint handling and recovery conversations. Group discussions compare customer, operational, commercial and compliance perspectives. Trainers adapt examples to the cohort's sector, while each participant develops materials applicable to a current customer journey or service challenge.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience working with customers, customer-facing teams, service operations, sales, marketing or process improvement. They should be familiar with their organisation's main products or services and able to discuss common customer contacts, complaints or service issues. Basic familiarity with surveys, customer feedback or performance measures is helpful but not essential. No prior training in customer experience design, journey mapping, research methods, data analysis or formal quality management is required. Participants do not need specialist software skills.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

You should have some exposure to customers, service delivery, sales, marketing, operations or customer feedback. No prior qualification in customer experience, market research or service design is required.

Bring examples of a customer journey, recurring complaint, service process or customer feedback issue from your work where permitted. A laptop is useful for live online delivery and helpful for classroom participants, but specialist software is not needed.

The course suits managers, specialists and team leaders who influence customer interactions, propositions, service processes or experience improvement. It works well for cross-functional groups from service, sales, marketing, operations and product teams.

Customer service skills courses focus mainly on individual interactions and communication. This course also addresses customer insight, journey design, operating models, metrics, complaints and cross-functional accountability.

Participants leave with reusable templates and an action plan linked to a current customer challenge. They can use the materials to map a journey, improve a handoff, redesign recovery steps or establish a customer experience scorecard.

Training runs from 08:30 to 16:30 each day, providing about 6.5 contact hours daily. The programme is organised into ten modules covering customer insight, journey design, communication, recovery, measurement and implementation planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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