Dive Deeper: Skills for Excellent Customer Service
1. Patience
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. Yet patience shouldn't be used as an excuse for slothful
service either!
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.
It is important to pay attention to individual customer
interactions (watching the language/terms that they use to describe their
problems), but it's also important to be mindful and attentive to the feedback
that you receive at large.
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?"
What are your customers telling you without saying it?
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 be more cautious 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.
I thought that meant I'd be getting it for free, yet as it turns out, that
wasn't the case. The employee apologized, and I truly believe it was an
accident (they just worked there), but I haven't been back to that shop since
because of the miscommunication.
When it comes to important points that you need to relay clearly
to customers, keep it simple and leave nothing to doubt.
4. Knowledge of the Product
You and the best forward-facing employees in your company will
work on having a deep 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 every day 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 customers that seem to want
nothing else but to pull you down.
Every great customer service rep will have those basic acting skills necessary to maintain their usual
cheery persona in spite of dealing with people who may be just plain grumpy.
7. Time Management Skills
You need to be concerned with getting customers what they want
in an efficient and timely 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 difficult 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.
Leaving employees without goals is a bad idea. 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
your set 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?
12. Persuasion Skills
This is one a lot of people didn't see coming!
Experienced customer support personnel know that often times,
you will get messages in your inbox that are more about the curiosity of your company's product, rather than
having problems with it.
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.
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?