Want to take your customer service skills to the next level? Whether you’re a total newbie or a well-seasoned professional with decades of experience, there’s always more you can do to improve.
Read on to discover the skills you need to excel in as a top-notch customer service professional. Well done if you’re already an ace at all of them. And good luck if you need they need a little attention and fine-tuning to help you get there.
- Empathy is a customer service representative’s most important ally. It’s only by understanding customers’ feelings, motivations, and issues that you can deal with them effectively.
- Listening carefully to your customers is a key part of the challenge. By doing so, you’ll get a good idea of their situation and the right solution for them. If the customer’s comments and questions don’t paint a clear picture of the issue, ask them questions to clarify things.
- Patience is a vital attribute, particularly when annoyed, unhappy customers are venting their frustration. You’ll need to remain calm to get to the bottom of their issue. Remember that their anger or frustration is aimed at the situation and not at you personally.
Once the call is over, don’t let any residual ill-feeling influence your next call. Hang up and move on with positivity and optimism!
You’ll also need to accept that repeating the same information to different customers throughout the day goes with the territory. Treat each customer as a new person and take the time necessary to walk them through all the details with consideration and respect.
- Keep your in-depth understanding of your company’s products, services, and processes up-to-date. Your expert answers can make all the difference between keeping and losing a customer. If you don’t know the answer, be honest and take the time to find out and follow up.
- Have a proactive mindset. Anticipate the customer’s needs and offer solutions before they ask. From a team perspective, this proactivity should take the form of sharing your insights on, for example, emerging, common issues. If you develop a script to answer frequent questions, share it with your team to see how it can be improved. Everyone benefits from a collective pool of expertise – your team, your customers, and the company as a whole.
- Be respectful, polite, and professional. Pitch your language – technical vs. non-technical – and your level of friendliness to the person.
- Follow up. After you’ve dealt with the customer’s issue, check in with them to ensure that the matter has been dealt with to their satisfaction. If it has, your care will benefit your brand and if it hasn’t, you get a second opportunity to deal with the issue and avoid losing the person’s custom.
To further explore the topic, please see a great article by BusinessInsider.com.
Are there any skills that we’ve missed? Please get in contact to let us know. And if you’d like to benefit from our expert guidance in sourcing your next perfect-fit role in Customer Services (or other), please pick up the phone. Our team has got the expertise, contacts, and know-how to deliver at speed. Please give us a call at 020 7092 3911 today to brainstorm the options!
