Most Important Customer Service Skills

The most important customer service skills

When working in customer service, or when you’re trying to put together a customer service team for your business, there is a list of particularly desirable traits and skills that each member of the team should bring to the table.

Putting it bluntly, without these traits it will be hard for your customer service team to actually be a service team, instead of a sounding board for angry customers. If you want to avoid this kind of situation, you want to a customer service team that possesses the following skills and attributes:

Product knowledge

The first thing necessary to become successful in any customer service is knowledge of the company and its products. Constantly referring to the page in front of you and stalling for time is not a good look; it’s important that the customer service staff is able to provide an encyclopedic level of knowledge on everything that is offered within the business. Without this, it’s really hard to ask customers to stay on the phone.

Empathy

It never hurts to have a bit of genuine empathy for someone, and with customer service it’s more important than ever. If you can give someone a chance to just settle down and relax when discussing things with you because they can see that you understand (and care) about their plight, finding a solution is much easier. Empathy is the most important trait in any customer service team.

Social Comfort

Another big thing to have in in a customer service role is social comfort and an ability to just feel alright even in tense in situations. Having a laugh with the customers? Great! Dealing with an abusive customer? It helps to be socially-minded as it’s much easier to not take things personally and just brush them off. All good customer service members need this attribute if they wish to succeed.

Patience

Customers can at times be hard to work with for customer support, but try and understand that it might not be down to them entirely. Accept that tempers flare and limitations on both ends may exist, so patience is vital for any good customer service team member.

Whether you are applying or employing in customer services, these traits and factors are the most important way that anyone can act within the call floor. Understanding these traits and making them a key part of day-to-day working within a call support team is so vital and it really has to be done if there is to be a legitimate chance of success within what is a very challenging and difficult industry.

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