15
Customer Service Skills that Every Employee Needs
1. Patience
If you don't see this near the top of a customer
service skills list, you should just stop reading.
Not only is patience important to customers, who often
reach out to support when they are confused and frustrated, but it's also
important to the business at large: we've shown you before that great service beats fast service every
single time.
Yet patience shouldn't be used as an excuse for
slothful service either!
Derek Sivers explained his view on "slower"
service as being an interaction where the time spent with the
customer was used to better understand their problems and needs from the
company.
If you deal with customers on a daily basis, be sure to
stay patient when they come to you stumped and frustrated, but also be sure to
take the time to truly figure out what they want — they'd rather get
competent service than be rushed out the door!
2. Attentiveness
The ability to really listen to customers is
so crucial for providing great service for a number of reasons.
For instance, customers may not be saying it outright,
but perhaps there is a pervasive feeling that your software's dashboard isn't laid
out correctly. Customers aren't likely to say, "Please improve your UX!", but they may
say things like, "I can never find the search feature," or,
"Where is the _____ function at again?"
3. Clear Communication Skills
Make sure you're getting to the problem at hand
quickly; customers don't need your life story or to hear about how your day is
going.
More importantly, you need to be cautious about how
some of your communication habits translate to customers, and it's best to err
on the side of caution whenever you find yourself questioning a situation.
An example: The last time I went to get work done on
my car, I was told by an employee that if I wanted to get an oil change, it
would be "included" in my final bill.
4. Knowledge of the Product
The best forward-facing employees in your company will
work on having a dep knowledge of how your product works.
It's not that every single team member should be able
to build your product from scratch, but rather they should know the ins and outs
of how your product works, just like a customer who uses it everyday would.
Without knowing your product from front-to-back, you
won't know how to help customers when they run into problems.
5. Ability to Use "Positive Language"
Sounds like fluffy nonsense, but your ability to make
minor changes in your conversational patterns can truly go a long way in creating happy customers.
Language is a very important part of persuasion, and
people (especially customers) create perceptions about you and your company
based off of the language that you use.
Here's an example: Let's say a customer contacts
you with an interest in a particular product, but that product happens to be
backordered until next month.
Small changes that utilize "positive
language" can greatly affect how the customer hears your
response...
Without positive language: "I can't get
you that product until next month; it is back-ordered and unavailable at this
time."
With positive language: "That product
will be available next month. I can place the order for you right now and make
sure that it is sent to you as soon as it reaches our warehouse."
The first example isn't negative by any
means, but the tone that it conveys feels abrupt and impersonal, and can be
taken the wrong way by customers.
Conversely, the second example is stating the same
thing (the item is unavailable), but instead focuses on when/how the customer
will get to their resolution rather than focusing on the negative.
6. Acting Skills
Sometimes you're going to come across people that
you'll never be able to make happy.
Situations outside of your control (they had a terrible
day, or they are just a natural-born complainer) will sometimes creep into your
usual support routine, and you'll be greeted with those "barnacle"
customers that seem to want nothing else but to pull you down.
Every great customer service rep will have those basic
acting skillsnecessary to maintain their usual cheery persona in spite of
dealing with people who may be just plain grumpy.
7. Time Management Skills
Hey, despite my many research-backed rants on why you
should spend more time with customers,
the bottom line is that there is a limit, and you need to be
concerned with getting customers what they want in
an efficient manner.
The trick here is that this should also be applied when
realizing when you simply cannot help a customer. If you don't know
the solution to a problem, the best kind of support member will get a customer
over to someone who does.
Don't waste time trying to go above and beyond for a
customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time!
8. Ability to "Read" Customers
You won't always be able to see customers face-to-face,
and in many instances (nowadays) you won't even hear a customer's voice!
That doesn't exempt you from understanding some basic principles of behavioral psychology and
being able to "read" the customer's current emotional state.
This is an important part of the personalization process as
well, because it takes knowing your customers to create a personal experience
for them.
More importantly though, this skill is essential because
you don't want to mis-read a customer and end up losing them due to confusion
and miscommunication.
Look and listen for subtle clues about their current
mood, patience level, personality, etc., and you'll go far in keeping your
customer interactions positive.
9. A Calming Presence
There's a lot of metaphors for this type of
personality: "keeps their cool," "staying cool under
pressure," etc., but it all represents the same thing: the ability that
some people have to stay calm and even influence others when things get a
little hectic.
I've had my fair share of hairy hosting situations, and
I can tell you in all honesty that the #1 reason I stick with certain hosting
companies is due to the ability of their customer support team to keep me from
pulling my hair out.The best customer service reps know that they cannot let
a heated customer force them to lose their cool; in fact it is their job to
try to be the "rock" for a customer who thinks the world is falling
down due to their current problem.
10. Goal Oriented Focus
This may seem like a strange thing to list as a
customer service skill, but I assure you that it is vitally important.
In my article on empowering employees, I
noted that many customer service experts have shown how giving employees
unfettered power to "WOW" customers doesn't always generated the
returns that many businesses expect to see.
That's because it leaves employees without goals, and
business goals + customer happiness can work hand-in-hand without resulting
in poor service.
11. Ability to Handle Surprises
Sometimes the customer support world is going to throw
you a curveball.
Maybe the problem you encounter isn't specifically
covered in the company's guidelines, or maybe the customer isn't reacting how
you thought they would.
Whatever the case, it's best to be able to think on
your feet... but it's even better to create guidelines for yourself in
these sorts of situations.
Let's say, for instance, you want to come up with a
quick system for when you come across a customer who has a product problem
you've never seen before...
Who? One thing you can decide right off the bat is who you
should consider your "go-to" person when you don't know what to do.
The CEO might be able to help you, but you can't go to them with every single
question! Define a logical chain for yourself to use, then you won't be left
wondering who you should forward the problem too.What? When the problem is noticeably out of your
league, what are you going to send to the people above? The full
conversation, just the important parts, or maybe some highlights and an example
of a similar ticket?
How? When it comes time to get someone
else involved, how are you going to contact them? For instance,
at Help Scout we prefer to solve small
dilemmas over chat, and save bigger problems for email, keeping inbox clutter
down to a minimum.
12. Persuasion Skills
This is one a lot of people didn't see coming!
Experienced customer support personnel know
that oftentimes, you will get messages in your inbox that are more about
the curiosity of your company's product, rather than having problems
with it.
(Especially true if your email is available on-site, like ours)
To truly take your customer service skills to the next
level, you need to have some mastery of persuasion so that you can
convince interested customers that your product is right for them (if it truly
is).
It's not about making a sales pitch in each email, but
it is about not letting potential customers slip away because you
couldn't create a compelling message that your company's product is worth
purchasing!
13. Tenacity
Call it what you want, but a great work ethic and
a willingness to do what needs to be done (and not take shortcuts) is a key
skill when providing the kind of service that people talk about.
The many memorable customer service stories out
there (many of which had a huge impact on the business) were created by a
single employee who refused to just do the "status quo" when it came
to helping someone out.Remembering that your customers are people too, and
knowing that putting in the extra effort will come back to you ten-fold should
be your driving motivation to never "cheat" your customers with lazy
service.
14. Closing Ability
To be clear, this has nothing to do with "closing
sales" or other related terms.
Being able to close with a customer means
being able to end the conversation with confirmed satisfaction (or as close to
it as you can achieve) and with the customer feeling that everything has been
taken care of (or will be).
Getting booted after a customer service call or before
all of their problems have been addressed is the last thing that
customers want, so be sure to take the time to confirm with
customers that each and every issue they had on deck has been entirely
resolved.
Your willingness to do this shows the customer 3 very
important things:
That you care about getting it right
That you're willing to keep going until you
get it right
That the customer is the one
who determines what "right" is.
When you get a customer to, "Yes, I'm all set!"
is when you know the conversation is over.
15. Willingness to Learn
If you came across this article and read all the way to
the bottom, you likely already have this skill (nice job!).
This is probably the most general skill on the list,
but it's still necessary.
Those who don't seek to improve what they do, whether
it's building products, marketing businesses, or helping customers, will get
left behind by the people willing to invest in their skills.
We love how the Buffer team approaches
this skill with their wonderful monthly
customer happiness updates.
The updates are public, detailed, and go through how
the support team (and the company at large) handled incoming emails for the
month.
What better way can a startup's support team learn as
it goes then breaking down their own customer happiness metrics each
and every month, for the public to see?
Credit to : Gregory Ciotti
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