Executive Summary

This project focused on enhancing the customer de-escalation training program for customer service agents at a leading national airline.  With customers displaying heightened aggression, it is crucial for airport customer service agents to possess de-escalation strategies and techniques to handle both customer tensions and their own stress levels effectively.

Challenge

Numerous newly recruited customer service agents are hired without prior experience in customer service.  Frequently, when a customer starts to become agitated during an interaction, these agents tend to freeze and quickly seek their supervisor's help to handle the situation.

Solution

To address these challenges, an interactive training session was developed.  This in-person training course would be facilitated by an experienced customer service agent or supervisor.  Participants are given the opportunity to interact with one another throughout the training.  They develop statements for each step of the LAST model and are given the opportunity to role play real-life scenarios and are provided with feedback.  The employees would leave with a plan in place before starting in their new position.

Results

The expected outcomes with be increasing the confidence level of newly hired customer service agents, thus reducing the need for customer agent supervisors to intervene during customer interactions.  This in turn would lead to an increase in customer satisfaction.