8 Customer Service Skills Your Staff Must Have

8 Customer Service Skills To Master

The biggest factor that separates good companies from outstanding companies is good customer service.

Whether or not your business can invest in customer service software to enhance communication with your customers is part of the key to rewarding and profitable customer relationships.

A good customer service program determines how products and services that are returned or cancelled; and how and why customers reorder and are maintained.

1. The basic nature of good customer service is the ability to communicate well by phone and email and both mediums need attention paid to them:

Telephone conversations need to be handled in such a way where the speaking tone reflects understanding and patience. Customer service agents should be friendly, knowledgeable, courteous, and professional.

Customer service email should reflect a friendly tone in wording and speed in response time. Customer service agents need to be just as courteous, knowledgeable, and professional as with a telephone conversation.

 

2. Customer service skills require knowledge in the industry in order to address customer concerns effectively. No one likes to be handed off to another customer service representative, which usually requires more waiting time.

3. Good customer service skills require the ability to listen. Over zealousness with knowledge should be avoided and, instead, listening to the customer and responding at appropriate intervals should be a honed skill.

4. Customer service representatives are human and should be able to freely admit to making an error. Customers appreciate dealing with a service representatives who are not afraid to apologize for an error or misunderstanding.

5. Customer service representatives should have patience with consumers. Good representatives have the ability to foresee the needs of the customer and be able to walk the customer through a solution to their problem effectively without "talking down" to the customer in tone or word.

6. Good customer service skills include the initiative to follow up with the customer to ensure that their needs were fully addressed or if other questions have arisen.

7. Customer service representatives need to be able to be respectful of a customer's level of understand. For example, not all people are 'computer-savvy'.

8. Good representatives know when it's time to take a break. It is better to take the break than to continue after a frustrating call or email. In addition, changing tasks can help to balance out the representative's perspective and help keep him or her "fresh" with customer interaction.

Important Customer Service Skills:

• Be friendly, courteous, respectful, and professional in speaking tone and email correspondence.
• Be knowledgeable in your industry or business so that answers to questions or solutions to problems are addressed effectively.
• Learn how to listen.
• Learn how to admit mistakes and correct them.
• Be patient with customers. Not all customers have the same level of understanding.
• Make time to follow up with customers in order to gauge customer service handling.
• Customer service representatives should know when it's time to take a break in order to stay "fresh."
• Incorporate regular customer service training.

Resources:

4-Hour Training: http://4hourtraining.com

The Customer Focus: http://www.thecustomerfocus.com/

Customer Service Training Directory: http://www.customerservicetraining.com/

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