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5 Skills of an Excellent Customer Service Manager CSIA Customer Service Training

Last updated on August 5, 2023 Software development

Doing so signals to the customer that your team is capable of solving their issue. Even if they don’t know what step to take next, the last thing you want is a customer wondering if they’ve hit a dead end. Reps need to be creative to find an answer that solves the customer’s problem while still meeting your business goals. This is a lot easier said than done and only the best service reps can consistently deliver this skill.

Not every service rep can do it, which is why some experiences are more memorable than others. Every great customer service professional needs basic acting skills to maintain their usual cheery persona in spite of dealing with people who are just plain grumpy. It’s not enough to close out interactions with customers as quickly as possible.

How to Handle Complaints by Practicing Customer Service Excellence

While it may be embarrassing when a customer knows more than your customer service representative, if that rep gets flustered while trying to hide a lack of knowledge, you may lose business. https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ Instead, encourage your reps to admit when they don’t know something or are wrong, and offer to find the answer. No list of good customer service skills is complete without empathy.

qualities needed for customer service excellence

Create a database of saved replies that support agents can use to answer frequently asked how-to questions about your product. On the other, they’ll represent the needs and thoughts of customers to your company. For example, it doesn’t behoove the customer to receive a long- winded explanation on the ins-and-outs of solving a particular bug. When a support rep is able to demonstrate sincere empathy for a frustrated customer, even just by reiterating the problem at hand, it can help to both placate and actively please .

Key Customer Service Skills (and How to Develop Them)

The best reps can not only answer these questions but can explain them in a way that makes sense to someone who’s not even a customer. Instead, they know how to keep a cool head and a steady, guiding hand. Perhaps empathy — the ability to understand and share the feelings of another — is more of a character trait than a skill. But since empathy can be learned and improved upon, why does customer service excellence important for business we’d be remiss not to include it here. The best customer service professionals are quick to recognize when they can’t help a customer so they can quickly get that customer to someone who can help. All new Help Scout employees, for example, are trained on customer support during their first or second week on the job; it’s a critical component of our employee onboarding process.

qualities needed for customer service excellence

They should know when email or live chat communication simply isn’t enough, and have the skill to get the customer on the phone. Alright, here we go – those elusive “skills” that make excellent customer service. I’ve found that customers want to feel like they’re the only person that matters and like businesses care about them. Make sure you are focused on the specific customer’s needs and doing everything possible to ensure they are satisfied.

Position Other Employees Well

Y Combinator’s Paul Graham wrote an strong essay about the difference between writing and speaking skills . Being a good speaker is less about the substance of what you’re conveying and more about your people skills . Some great books to improve your written skills are Everybody Writes , 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing , and How to Write Short . Free email, survey, and buyer persona templates to help you engage and delight your customers. Candidates who are empathetic can quite naturally feel the frustrations of the customers and keep that mind when responding to them. In addition to these, you can also design a custom screening test to assess how your candidates take negative criticism based on real life situations.

qualities needed for customer service excellence

In other situations, a problem-solving pro may simply understand how to offer preemptive advice or a solution that the customer doesn’t even realize is an option. Reps who are assured in what they’re talking about make customers feel like they’re in good hands. If you’re pessimistic, customers will think that the situation is worse than it is and will believe the experience is negative even when you give them the right answer. It doesn’t matter if you’re introverted or not the best at small talk. Opening up to customers will help them feel more comfortable with the situation and make you more likable. And, if you track metrics like customer satisfaction score and NPS, you can set long-term goals so reps have a benchmark to work towards throughout the year.

Customer Service Excellence: How to Win and Keep Customers

Patience is one of the most important characteristics of customer service employees. Only a patient customer service representative can give each client the time they need for their issue resolution . Often times, if you can find this one trait in a person, the others can be trained. They often want help immediately and don’t want to wait long for it.

Oftentimes, support teams get messages from people who aren’t looking for support — they’re considering purchasing your company’s product. Your customer support team is on the front lines of problem solving for the product itself, and serves as a kind of two-pronged bullhorn. The ability to truly listen to customers is crucial to providing great service for a number of reasons. Not only is it important to pay attention to individual customers’ experiences, but it’s also important to be mindful and attentive to the feedback that you receive at large. No particular checklist of job experiences and college diplomas adds up to the perfect candidate.

Practice active listening.

Even when the customer has been waiting angrily on hold for 10 minutes, the best service reps keep a level head and focus on what they need to do to complete the task at hand. Compassionate service reps see the value of all support inquiries and are eager to assist people whenever and wherever possible — even if that means working outside their scope of support. Think about the last positive memory you had with a support rep. Chances are that rep had some stand-out customer service qualities that made that interaction so special. If you think this service excellence talk only applies to top level managers, leaders or white-collar knowledge workers, think again. Take into account the hotel housekeeping employee who recently “jerry-rigged” my room to create a makeshift office with a standing desk using two empty boxes and a large room service tray. When I told him I needed somewhere to host an impromptu meeting, he created the space by replacing the couch in my room with two swivel chairs and extra power and lights.

  • That means they need to intuit not just what went wrong, but also what action the customer was ultimately after.
  • No list of good customer service skills is complete without empathy.
  • Think about the last positive memory you had with a support rep. Chances are that rep had some stand-out customer service qualities that made that interaction so special.
  • When you call your credit card company to dispute a charge and speak with a representative, that’s customer service, too.

It is administered through a Likert scale question, with answers that provide a five-point option system to reflect the customer’s experience. How can your brand continue to grow and improve the customer experience you offer? How can the process be accurately measured to understand what improvement looks like? While the customer experience may seem like something that is too abstract to effectively measure, there are a few important KPIs to track that can enhance your CX strategy.

Problem solving

Instead, you’re looking for qualities that can’t necessarily be taught. Understanding that customer service is the cornerstone of your customer experience helps you leverage it as an opportunity to delight customers and engage them in new, exciting ways. When 86% of customers quit doing business with a company due to a bad experience, it means that businesses must approach every support interaction as an opportunity to acquire, retain, or up-sell. It’s easier to give your customers the tools to become experts in your products and services when you feel like an expert yourself. When I worked on HubSpot’s customer service team, my manager told us to consider ourselves subject matter experts when it comes to anything HubSpot.

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