When your customers have been the foundation of your business’ growth, it’s understandable (and even expected!) that there’s a high importance on those relationships. As an expert in conversational marketing, we know what it takes to form and maintain the relationship with your customers.
Whether you have an in-house contact center or you have an outsourced partner, these customer service skills need to be top of mind for all of your call center agents.
Don’t have time to read this blog post right now? That’s okay! Download our customer service guide by clicking the image below.
1. Clear Communication
Since you aren’t face to face with the person on the other end of the line, you don’t have body language to help convey what you mean. Speaking clearly and effectively during your conversation will make the call more efficient and ultimately lead to a happy customer.
2. Listening Skills
You can’t help a customer if you don’t know what they are struggling with! Ensure that you contact center agents are listening to understand rather than listening to respond so they can better assist.
3. Positivity
Ever listened to someone that was constantly positive and immediately felt reassured that you were in good hands? Positivity conveys confidence in being able to solve the problem at hand so despite how angry the customer is, remaining up-beat is essential.
4. Empathy
Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes is key to solving the problem in a way that serves them the best. Whether they are frustrated with something to prompt the call, or finding a simple answer is taking a little longer than expected, understand that they don’t know what’s happening on your end.
5. Timeliness
No one wants to wait ages for their problem to be solved, even if it is a more difficult problem to tackle. From being timely with answering their call to finding a solution, an agent that is efficient with their time will likely yield a happy customer. A couple key tips to being timely include short wait times (or offering callbacks as an option) and on-going training for your agents so they are knowledgeable on products and how to handle a variety of different situations.
6. Time management skills
Timeliness is important when it comes to answering the call and supporting the customer, but post-call activities are just as important. Recording the call and actions taken in a timely manner is essential to get back into the queue to keep call wait times down and customers happy.
7. Knowledge of the product or program supported
A key aspect in customer service is understanding the product or program being supported. Not only is it essential for an agent to know in detail whatever they are supporting, they should also have a high-level understanding of other products/services the company provides to be able to assist if any of those questions come up.
8. Patience
As the phrase goes, patience is a virtue and that most certainly includes customer service agents. The customer is likely already frustrated by the time they reach you, so staying calm and letting them explain their issue is important to an agent’s success.
9. Problem-Solving Skills
It’s no secret that when a customer service call comes in, there’s typically a need for a problem to be solved. Customer service agents need to be able to problem solve on their own without constantly needing to transfer the call to a higher level agent or putting the customer on hold to ask someone on their team for help. While asking for help is always preferred over replying with “I don’t know,” involving a wide range of people to assist your call isn’t timely or efficient.
10. Adaptability
While an agent may be supporting a specific program, the questions or problems that come in may vastly vary. Customer service agents must be able to go from answering simple complaint questions to technical issues (or at least knowing who to route to if it’s a higher level problem).
11. Desire to learn
With products changing or something new coming out on the market constantly (or so it seems), an agent that goes above and beyond to stay current on both their products and CRM/operating systems used will be successful at helping customers and keeping a positive brand image. From learning in between calls to signing up for a new training class, aspiring to grow and learn will only improve your customer service skills
Looking for a call center partner that focuses on these skills (and more) to ensure that our customer service agents and fully support your business? Let’s talk about how Incept can help you!
Download our guide to improve your customer service!
When your customers have been the foundation of your business’ growth, it’s understandable (and even expected!) that there’s a high importance on those relationships.
As an expert in conversational marketing, we know what it takes to form and maintain the relationship with your customers.
Whether you have an in-house contact center or you have an outsourced partner, these customer service skills need to be top of mind for all of your call center agents.