Four Key Skills for Excellent Customer Service
Read any customer service blog and you’ll see the same thing–there are many ‘essential’ skills needed for excellent customer service. If you break it down further, you can narrow this list down to just a handful of necessary skills.
Here are four key skills required for excellent customer service.
Empathy
Empathy is always mentioned as a crucial skill for customer service success. Simply put, empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s emotions so that you can understand why they feel the way they do.
Being able to empathize with someone, especially someone who is angry and yelling at you, means you’ll be able to help find a solution that meets their emotional needs. This is actually very important because emotions tend to rule a lot of our behaviours. Once you understand how your customer feels, you can find the best way to solve their problem.
Persistence
Getting to the root of your customer’s problem can take some time. The solution isn’t always easy to see or achieve, but if you are persistent and willing to do what it takes, you will always provide great customer service.
This may mean you have to go above and beyond what is ‘expected’ from you, but it can pay off in big ways. Customers will appreciate your dedication and you’ll earn their respect as well as their loyalty.
Flexibility
No two customers are ever the same, so no two problems will be the same, either. You need to be flexible enough to adapt your customer service technique to meet the needs of every customer. This may mean wearing many ‘hats’ in your customer service role, but with practice, it will become easier. You may also need to be able to solve problems both face to face and over the phone or the internet. Being flexible means you’ll be able to help your customers wherever they need you most.
Resilience
As hard as you try, you may not be able to satisfy every single customer. Being able to let the bad experiences roll off your back so you can carry on is a very important skill to develop. It will help you bounce back and provide excellent customer service to each new customer you meet.
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