Customer Service for Local Governments

Putting Service First in Local Governments

Service excellence is a priority for most local governments, and yet delivering service is often challenging.

In this course built specifically for local government professionals in all roles, we discuss what is unique about local government customer service. In particular, we highlight some of the specific challenges that service providers have and the tough choices we make around who we serve and who gets their needs met. We also consider the question of who our customers actually are and the wide range of service expectations that comes with it.

In this course, we explore the skills that strong customer service requires, and also dive into some of the challenges of dealing with ‘difficult’ customers. While traditional customer service training focuses on external customers, we also explore the need to provide quality service to our ‘internal customers’ — our colleagues, those that we may provide leadership to, and our elected officials.

Participants will complete a personalized Customer Service Skills profile, which will assess their individual skills in all of these competency areas to help individuals identify their existing strengths and development needs.