Salesforce
Customer service is an important aspect of conducting business that involves providing support to prospective and existing clients. The first point of contact is an important aspect of customer service and is usually handled either in-person, or through email, chat, phone, and social media interactions. No matter how wonderful your products are, if the person dealing with or coming into direct contact with your clients is not able to satisfy their service needs, it will likely cause your clients to get upset and give you less than satisfactory reviews online. In these times, the reviews your customers leave on social media and sites like PissedConsumer.com shape the buying decisions of countless others. To preserve your business and ensure that you are reviewed positively by customers, you need to take a look at your customer service function.
You can turn your customer service around with some commitment and trained support professionals. There are some key skills you must train your people in. Here are a few customer service skills that should be developed in your staff and something you should look for in potential hires.
Customer Service Professionals should be patient and attentive
Customer service is a field that needs utmost patience. This is essential because customers who usually need support are often annoyed and irritated. To provide great service they should be able to truly listen to them in a mindful and attentive manner.
Customer service professionals need emotional intelligence
Good customer support agents should have the ability to relate to their clients and handle their frustrations. They should be empathetic and make the customer feel heard and validated.
Customer service professionals should be able to communicate clearly
The customer support team is the voice of your company as far as the customers are concerned. That means that they should be able to un-complicate concepts into terms that can be easily understood. The ability to communicate is crucial because miscommunication can cost you.
Customer service professionals should be creative and resourceful
Customer service reps should not only be able to solve problems but also infuse warmth and personality in their exchanges with customers.
Customer service professionals should be able to use positive language
Good customer service means using language to persuade customers and create positive perceptions the company. Responding to customer queries with positive language can impact customer reactions and loyalty.
Customer service professionals should have the right product knowledge
The best customer service representatives have a thorough working knowledge of their products. It is only if you know your product like the back of your hand that you can help customers with their problems.
Customer service professionals should have some acting skills
Sometimes clients can be tough, frustrating and annoying, and such clients can make your teams lose their temper. However service reps need some basic acting skills to maintain their cool facade even when they don’t feel it.
Customer service professionals should be good at time management
The best customer service professionals can recognize when to be patient and give extra time to their clients and recognize when they are unable to help a customer so they can get that customer the right help.
Customer service professionals should be able to remain cool
Customer service means that you need to stay cool under pressure. The best customer service agents will not allow an angry customer to make them lose their own cool. In fact, they will calm the client down as well.
Customer service professionals should be able to handle surprises
Sometimes, customers can present unusual or strange problems. In such situations, good customer service reps will be able think on their feet and handle the situation in a professional way.
Customer service professionals should have good persuasion skills
Often, customer service has to handle sales related queries as well. In this case it is important that the customer services rep can convince them that your product is truly right for them.
Customer service professionals should have empathy
Empathy, or the ability to understand and share the feelings of the clients is another valuable trait of great customer service agents. This is because if a client feels like the rep is concerned and cares, this empathy can often make all the difference.
Customer Service Professionals should have good writing skills
As discussed earlier, customer support is not only carried out over the phone or in person. It is often also handled via email, letters, and social media. As such it is important that the customer services reps have good writing skills. Good writing brings the message as close to reality as possible without exaggeration. How reps phrase their writing makes the difference between sounding condescending and sounding like you care.
Customer Service Professionals should be willing to learn
Willingness to learn on the job is important. Your customer support team should not only learn about all existing and new products thoroughly, but they should also be willing to learn to communicate better, and improve in all that they do. If your team members are willing to invest time and effort in honing and adding to their own skills, that is the recipe right there for great customer support.
