Amidst day-to-day struggles, we forget great support stems not from a mysterious alchemy of magnetism and magic. Show
Instead, it arises from a certain set of core competencies. Behind the scenes of every experience are attainable skills that separate average or frustrating from truly exceptional. Fair warning: This article is long. (Which is fitting for a topic so central to successful support.)
But what skills matter? And how do you take your team, business, or career to the next level? To answer those questions… Here are 15 customer service skills along with step-by-step instructions on how to improve each one: 1. Develop empathy as your cornerstoneThe capacity to experience other people’s thoughts and feelings from their point of view, rather than our own. To identify with or be sensitive toward. Empathy is the foundation of support. That’s because it’s the foundation of all relationships. Thankfully, empathy isn’t something you’re born either with or without. It can be learned from a young age or improved as you get older. Although we may not have experienced what a person is going through, empathy allows us to understand their emotional reaction to a particular situation. As customer service agents, we’re often so focused on what we’re going to say next we miss the opportunity to listen and be present. This is a common scenario, particularly someone’s having a negative customer experience. Above all, people want to feel understood, respected, and supported. Steps to develop empathy
2. Exude positivity by watching your wordsA deliberately optimistic state of mind; looking for what’s right, rather than what’s wrong—and aligning our words with that goal. It’s a universal truth that we can’t change how we feel. Not directly anyway. Telling someone, “Just be happy,” is about as effective as telling them, “Just grow six inches.” Neither can be accomplished by an act of the will. So, how do you become more positive? By making a conscious choice to replace negative words with positive words: both verbally and mentally.
To understand the power of positive language, think about the negative language nobody likes hearing and what kind of reactions these might provoke:
Steps to practice positivity
3. Practice patience by knowing your triggersTo accept or tolerate delays, complaints, or suffering without developing counter-productive responses such as anger or irritation. Customer service is not an easy job. Sometimes, customers will be angry with you. Sometimes, they’ll need extra attention to understand what seems obvious. And sometimes, they’ll lash out. No matter the issue, the worst thing you can do in any of these situations is to lose your cool. Patience not only helps you deliver better service, but a study from the University of Toronto found that being impatient impedes our ability to enjoy life and makes us worse at doing hard things. A number of additional studies have also shown that people who are patient tend to be more healthy, happy, and successful. How to improve patience
4. Aim for clarity before persuasionEasy to understand. The elimination of ambiguity when communicating. Hinging on clarity is persuasiveness—people need to understand before they can be convinced. Clarity isn’t just important for making your customer feel confident and empowered—it can also make a big impact on your bottom line. What if you could send one less email per support interaction because you didn’t have to clarify anything that your customer didn’t understand the first time? If you field 300 requests a week (on the low side of an average Groove customer), that’s 15,600 fewer emails sent in a year. Think that estimate is too high? Even if you could send 0.25 fewer emails, on average—a very reasonable expectation—you’d still send 3,900 fewer emails per year. That’s not insignificant, and it’s a great argument for mastering crystal-clear communication skills. The secret ingredient is structure… How to achieve clarity
5. Keep it simple, stupidThe quality of being uncomplicated. Plainness of speech. Unadorned and single-minded purpose that makes comprehension effortless. If clarity is about order and structure, simplicity lives or dies by one rule: less is more. Less jargon. Smaller words. Shorter sentences. Fewer ideas. Keeping things simple without—distorting what needs to be done—empowers customer. It removes the barriers of doubt and confusion, placing them securely in the driver’s seat. Complexity, on the other hand, quickly leads to confusion, impatience, and other negative emotions that become counterproductive to resolving the original query.
Taking inspiration from that line, Reddit’s Explain Like I’m Five distills complex topics into plain language. Here’s one of my favorites: “Email is like a written letter that arrives in seconds instead of days. Google is a company that runs many websites, the biggest of which is a search engine. A search engine is a phone book for other websites.” How to hone simplicity
6. Cultivate curiosity through questionsHaving a strong desire to venture into the unknown with the intention of learning or discovering something new. To be inquisitive and to question. When we’re young, we are innately curious. Our minds are full of questions. But as we get older, it’s more common to accept the way things are and lose our sense of wonder. Curiosity is a skill we must learn to embrace in customer service. Why?
Questioning, investigating, and learning: curiosity leads us to the answers we need to build better customer relationships and find out the deeper causes of problems. Research from Harvard Business Review found that curiosity is vital to an organization’s performance. What’s more, curiosity makes us less defensive and less aggressive in stressful situations. How to feed your curiosity
7. Listen attentively and activelyListening actively and paying close attention to what is being said or done. To be alert, watchful, and receptive. The body language of attentiveness means holding eye contact in person or eliminating distractions digitally. It involves honing our listening skills, devoting ourselves to the issue at hand, and responding with the right questions or answers. If you’re in a bustling call center or an open-plan office with music and other conversations going on around you, attentiveness can be a challenge. Inattention, however, leads to disgruntled customers, which can intensify already touchy situations and take longer to resolve. Being attentive allows you to take care of customers’ actual needs, rather than what they think they need—often two very different things. It’s up to you to help them realize that. “In our louder and louder world,” explains sound expert, Julian Treasure, “we are losing our listening.” How to be more attentive
8. Learn to prioritize, then automateThe action or process of ordering competing demands; managing both time and expectations more effectively. Putting first things first. When a customer reaches out, they expect a timely response. When multiple customers are demanding your attention all at the same time, those individual expectations don’t change in the slightest. Responding to all inquiries at once is physically impossible—unless they’ve all asked common questions. In those instances, automation, email templates, and a searchable knowledge base can be godsends. If only it were always that simple…
It also can compromise a sale if you leave new customers waiting too long for a response. How to better prioritize
9. Keep your composureRemaining calm when faced with adversity and staying in control of your emotions when the unexpected happens. Some customers can make it tough to hold your composure, but the moment you lose your cool is the same moment you lose your ability to be helpful. (Easier said than done.) Why? Because we’re human. We feel deeply. On top of the daily stress of serving customers, you could be facing something personal. Maybe you just had a bad start to the day. And, of course, the same might be true to the customer who’s frustrated on the other end of the conversation. But as soon as your actions are hijacked by emotions in a tense customer scenario, productivity ceases. You end up with a moral dilemma because you snapped in the heat of the moment. How to maintain composure
10. Thicken your skinReceiving tough feedback or criticism and not allowing yourself to get upset or offended by it. Being tough, stalwart, or resilient. Having thick skin doesn’t come naturally to everyone. But if you’ve been in the customer support trenches, you already know how valuable it is. There will always be someone who disagrees, calls you a bad name, yells at you, or embarrasses you. No one enjoys these experiences—but we can all learn to deal with them. We tend to take things personally, even when it has absolutely nothing to do with us. If you’re dealing with a disgruntled customer, they may lash out. Remind yourself that it’s not you they have an issue with, it’s the situation. How to develop thick skin
11. Hone your humilityThe ability to put your ego, wants, or needs aside to serve others. Willingness to admit when you’re wrong or don’t have the answer. All of us crave approval. To greater or lesser degrees, we find our self-worth in the eyes of other people. Pride is the natural human impulse to protect our reputation: to look good. Ironically, pride manifests itself in two opposite responses: (1) defending ourselves and (2) doubting ourselves. The first is about self-centeredness. The second, self-pity. But the root of each is the same.
In customer service, pride rears its head through a relentless pursuit of solving problems all on our lonesome. The truth is you don’t have to have all the answers. Humility allows us to be comfortable with what we don’t know and to be proactive about it. For many of us, humility is one of the hardest traits to develop, because it has to start from a recognition that you are not always right and requires an acceptance of yourself which many of us find challenging. How to develop humility
12. Adapt, adapt, adaptOpen to change and quickly modifying thoughts and actions to respond positively. To be flexible rather than rigid, set in our ways, or immovable. We all aspire to be adaptable and care-free. However, let’s face it, our actions and responses to change can sometimes be the complete opposite. Adapting to customers allows you the power to control the situation without taking the power away from the customer. This makes the customer still feel served and appreciated. Unfortunately, there are plenty of negative traits that undermine your ability to be adaptable in customer service:
How to cultivate adaptability
13. Take ownership and responsibilityThe act of possessing a situation, problem, or challenge and seeing it through to resolution; taking control and taking responsibility. At first, ownership may appear to be at odds with adaptability—in particular, the idea of taking control. It’s not. Think of it like this: When a customer reaches out for help, they’re feeling lost, overwhelmed, and insecure. Failing to meet those conditions with a firm and steady hand leaves them trying to solve the problem alone. Worse, they don’t have all the resources you do.
Of course, taking ownership doesn’t mean you have to personally solve the problem. Rather, you find a way to make sure it gets resolved. Ownership language such as, “Let me see how I can help and—if not—I’ll find the right person,” prevents customers from feeling dismissed and isolated. How to take ownership
14. Act with confidenceExpertly communicating to provide the mutual feeling that questions have been answered and issues have been acknowledged, addressed, and resolved. Flowing right out of ownership is confidence. Confidence provides security and closure. Customers feel certainty as they progress as well as clear-headed resolution at the end of the support exchange. The opposite is also true. Customers can smell blood. Without confidence, they’ll become restless, anxious, and irrational. They will continue to email, call, or ask to speak to a manager until you can provide them closure. Steps to bolstering confidence
15. Become a teachable teacherThe willingness and capability to learn from others. Once you accept that you don’t know everything, then you can embrace teachability. What defines a teachable moment? It’s when you have the opportunity to learn something new, whether it’s from someone else (a customer) or by teaching yourself. Teachability is about taking the initiative to read the company updates that get sent through to your email, understanding changes that have been made to a particular product or service, and making the most of any training that is provided to you.
Having in-depth knowledge about the product or service can really set you apart in a customer service team. It makes you truly invaluable because you are more equipped to handle the complex and unknown issues. How to cultivate teachability
Good customer service skills don’t have to be a mysteryUse the tips above to develop you and your team’s core customer service skills. Look for the same capabilities in the customer support reps or customer experience specialists you hire. Have any of these skills made a marked impact on your career? Which ones do you develop consciously? And did I miss any? What customer service skill has the ability of putting yourself in a customer's shoes?Empathy is the ability to sense and understand the emotions of others. It's essentially putting yourself in the emotional shoes of the customer. Many will argue that empathy is the most important customer service skill out there.
What is attitude in customer service?Demonstrating a superior customer service attitude involves understanding expectations, going above and beyond, and being a customer advocate. Demonstrating behaviors of helpfulness, genuine interest, and respect influences customer behavior – moving them from indifferent to loyal.
What is empathy and sympathy in customer service?Sympathy involves identifying with and even taking on another person's emotions. A sympathetic response is, “That really makes me angry, too. I promise to fix it.” Empathy refers to acknowledgment and affirmation of another's emotional state.
Which listening type prevents mind wandering or thinking about what you are going to say next?Mindful listening is a way of listening without judgment, criticism or interruption, while being aware of internal thoughts and reactions that may get in the way of people communicating with you effectively.
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