Customer service will be the focus of a breakfast seminar and training event being held as part of Local Enterprise Week on Monday March 5!
Customers First – Setting Cork Apart will look at what makes great customer service and explore the many challenges facing retail and other customer service type businesses.
Customer service and customer engagement have never been as important within retail circles. More and more recent case studies have indicated that delivering great customer service can help businesses succeed, despite all of the competition they face. So, whether you own or manage a café, retail shop, restaurant, hospitality or any consumer facing business, this breakfast morning event is for you. The speaker line-up represents some of Ireland’s leading retail and customer service experts, who will both challenge and deliver their recipe for success. Speakers include, Domini Kemp from Itsa Group and Lorraine Higgins, Deputy CEO of Retail Excellence.
A team of traders, under the auspices of the City Forum and supported by Cork City Council, are working at branding Cork City as a city of quality customer service. They collaborated with CIT to produce a Customer Service Charter, the first of its kind for any city in the world.
Speaking ahead of the seminar, Ita Murphy, Assistant Head of Enterprise at the Local Enterprise Office, Cork City said:
“This event, aimed at business owners and managers, as well as their front line staff, will challenge their thinking about customer service. Customer experience is vital in today’s competitive marketplace and customers expect great service. They don’t remember good service, just great and bad service. Our speakers will talk about delivering the customer experience both face-to-face and online and we will also hear about the Naas regeneration group, who are turning around the fate of retail businesses there, and the programme includes a briefing about a recently developed Customer Service Charter for Cork.”
The breakfast seminar will be followed by a customer service training session for front-line staff, which will be delivered by leading retail expert James Burke. Booking is essential and places can be booked at localenterprise.ie/corkcity.
For further information, call Local Enterprise Office on 021 496 1828 or email info@localenterprise.ie.
Date: Monday March 5, 8:30am to 12:00pm
Venue: Clayton Hotel, Lapps Quay, Cork City
Speaker Profiles
Domini Kemp
Domini trained as a chef at Leith’s in London in 1996, before co-writing New Irish Cooking and working in the Michelin-starred Peacock Alley, Dublin. In 1999, she founded itsa, together with her sister, Peaches Kemp. They opened the first itsa outlet on Abbey Street. Since then, the company has grown to five brands and over 100 employees across 14 locations, as well as catering and event management. The group also runs the cafes at IMMA, plus Table Restaurant in Brown Thomas, Cork. Their outdoor catering and event management (FEAST Catering) is resident wedding caterer in Powerscourt House, Wicklow.
In 2012 she co-founded Hatch & Sons Irish Kitchen, which is located in The Little Museum of Dublin, specialising in casual, Irish artisan fare. The second Hatch & Sons is located in the Hugh Lane Gallery. Domini was food-writer for The Irish Times Saturday Magazine from 2008-2016. She contributed to History on a Plate on RTÉ Radio 1 with Catherine Cleary and Dr Juliana Adelman. Over the years she has contributed to many publications and was columnist for both Image and The Dubliner magazine. She regularly appears on the Today Show on RTÉ, and was a mentor on RTÉ’s The Taste of Success. She is also on the steering committee for Social Enterprise change in Ireland and was involved in this government policy for change regarding employment for ex-offenders and social enterprise initiatives. She is also a member of the Irish Food Writers Guild and a Eurotoques Chef.
Alice Fennelly
Alice Fennelly is second last in a family of eight children and grew up actively participating in the family rural retail business. With a degree in BSc Pharmacology (UCD) and Post Graduate Diploma in Healthcare Technology, Alice worked her way up through roles, including sales and marketing roles with blue chip multinational pharmaceutical companies. She spent seven years self-employed providing management training programmes, interim management and general consulting services to a range of multinational clients.
More recently she has taken on the role as chair of voluntary group, Naas Working Together. A retail development programme was set up for the town of Naas in June 2016 in response to business closures and general discontent at the time. The programme has consisted of Retail Excellence Seminars – ‘Bringing the Experts to Naas’, a one-to-one mentoring programme for 25 consumer-facing businesses, the launch of Naas Town Gift Card and supporting new retail and café offerings and various other activities focussed on town centre prosperity.
Lorraine Higgins
Lorraine Higgins is Deputy CEO with Retail Excellence, the largest industry representative organisation, which supports Irish retailers to be the best they can be. Retail Excellence involves over 1,750 leading retail companies, who operate in excess of 10,000 stores in the Irish market. “We provide HR advice, market insights, representation, learning and events and eCommerce support to all of our members.”
Coming from a family who are generations in retail, she is also a qualified barrister and a former senator, who served in the twenty-fourth Seanad, following her nomination by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the recommendation of Eamon Gilmore. She is a graduate of NUIG and The Honorable Society of King’s Inns and has worked as a barrister and law lecturer.
Joan Lucey, Vibes and Scribes and Spokesperson for Cork City Customer Service Charter
A team of traders, under the auspices of the City Forum, together with support from Cork City Council, are working together at branding Cork City as a city of quality customer service. “To this end, we have collaborated with CIT, who have helped us produce a Customer Service Charter, the first of its kind for any city in the world. As part of this objective, a survey carried out among customers and staff informed us that 85 percent of staff feel they are not adequately trained, and as a result we are delighted to work on providing a customer training programme with emphasis on pride of place and working with all service providers in the city.”
James Burke – James Burke & Associates
Having dedicated decades of his career to the retail sector, and having being inducted into the world of customer service by Feargal Quinn, James will run a separate customer service training session for front-line staff at 11am after the retail breakfast morning. This training session is designed for front-line staff in your business and will use material from the Power of Me customer service training programme designed by James Burke.
