Ten Customer Service Skills Your Team Should Have

Customer service plays a crucial role in the success of many businesses. If your business delivers great customer service, you will be able to get ahead of your competitors and consistently delight your customers. In a world where great customer service is often the exception rather than the norm, there is a significant opportunity to differentiate your business and stand out even in the most competitive sectors. To deliver great customer service, your business will require a skilled and experienced customer service team. Building this takes significant time and resources, which many businesses lack. Whether your business has an in-house team or an outsourced customer service team, the skills that your customer service agents require are very much the same.

While some customer service skills have remained the same for many years, new skills have emerged in response to changes in technology and customer expectations. If you are looking to upskill your in-house team or are looking to choose an outsourced customer service company, it is worth considering the key skills that your business will need. In this article, we explore the top ten customer service skills that your team should have to deliver great customer service to customers.

Top Ten Customer Service Skills

Effective customer service teams are equipped with all the required skills to consistently deliver great customer service. Delivering day to day customer service requires a diverse range of skills and the ability to respond to the range of issues that customers encounter. The customer service skills vary significantly from being positive, friendly and professional, through to taking ownership of issues and being respectful of customers and clients.

By exploring the many skills in more detail, businesses will be well placed to upskill internal teams and identify desirable customer service skills in any customer service outsourcing companies that they may be considering.

1) Right Attitude

Customer service agents with the right attitude during customer interactions are more likely to deliver positive outcomes. Whether that is resolving the issue at hand or answering a customer question/query, effective agents will care about the service that they provide. The passion that an agent has for customer service is evident in every interaction that they manage. Customers appreciate speaking to passionate people with a can-do attitude when they are facing an issue or have a query about a product/service.

Empathy is an important part of this, and an effective customer service agent should be able to understand and identify with a customer’s point of view. By having a caring and positive attitude, it is much easier to understand the feelings that a customer is experiencing. Customers want to be listened to and feel like they are being understood when they encounter an issue or have a query. At Impact, our agents strive to put themselves in a customer’s shoes, gain perspective of the issue at hand and achieve a positive outcome.

When it comes to having the right attitude for customer service delivery, patience is just as important as empathy. Some customers may not be able to easily convey the problem/issue that they face, so taking the time to listen to their story will make them feel valued as a customer. This is especially the case if a customer is confused or frustrated as their problem/issue may not be straightforward and could require greater explanation.

2) Effective Communication

Effective communication is at the heart of every great customer service interaction. Being able to clearly and succinctly respond to a customer and address their concerns requires significant skill and experience. Clear and logical communication helps to ensure that all aspects of a customer issue are addressed and that no important points are missed. By communicating clearly, opportunities for confusion are reduced and both the agent and customer remain well informed as to the issue and any relevant next steps.

Customer communication is at its most effective when agents are positive and friendly during every interaction. Customers will feel that the company is approachable and that it cares about its customers and their problems, which in turn creates a great impression. Being positive and friendly towards customers does not need to be at the expense of professionalism, and a skilled customer service team can strike the perfect balance. Interactions should also be jargon-free to ensure that there are no barriers to communication and that the customer can understand the agent and follow the conversation with ease.

Finally, and most importantly, it is critical that customer service teams are adept at listening and truly understanding the issue that each customer faces. By listening, a customer service agent will be best able to respond to the customer and reach a good resolution.

3) Problem Solving

Solving problems is a key responsibility of every customer service team, and each customer service agent requires strong problem-solving skills. At the heart of this is the ability to gather information from customers and use it to understand problems and formulate a suitable solution that delights not only the customer but also the client that they represent. While many problems that a customer service team will encounter are similar in nature, they are rarely the same.

Customer service agents that ask suitable questions will be most able to understand the nature and scope of the problem. Customer service problems can be multi-faceted with different aspects but often there is a priority aspect, which if addressed first can delight the customer and leave a positive impression. By confidently presenting a suitable solution to a customer, it is possible to delight frustrated and even angry customers who are eager for a solution to their problem.

4) Resilience

Managing customer service issues on a daily basis can be challenging, and customer service agents require resilience to respond to and overcome challenges. As the first point of contact for a business, agents can be presented with frustrated and angry customers who may be disappointed with their customer experience to date. Skilled agents remain positive and focused on providing a great solution even when they are faced with difficult customers or conversations. Being able to consistently deliver good outcomes while overcoming obstacles requires a level of resilience.

At Impact, we have developed comprehensive training programmes to equip our agents for the challenges that they are likely to encounter in their role. Our training develops resilience and equips each team member with everything that they will require to turn customer interactions into positive experiences, even for those that involve significant challenges and levels of frustration and anger from a customer.

5) Tech-Savvy

Technology is at the heart of business across almost all sectors, with day-to-day operations being reliant on the use of technology. It is equally as important within customer service, as a customer service agent will need to use a range of different software and systems across the clients that they are responsible for. The importance of being a tech-savvy customer service team is particularly high as you will be providing support to customers with varying levels of competency when it comes to technology. If your team are confident with technology, it will be able to advise and guide customers through technology related issues with ease, which results in a great customer experience.

As the first point of contact between a business and its customers, a customer service team is responsible for gathering and accurately recording information during each customer interaction. In order to do this, each agent will need to be competent at using CRM systems, order systems, career portals and knowledge base systems to name but a few. The requirement for tech-savvy customer service agents is even greater within a customer service outsourcing partner, as they are likely to use several systems per client. At Impact, we take the time to train and equip our customer service agents in all the systems that they use to ensure that the quality of customer service delivery is maintained for clients.

6) Knowledgeable

Knowledgeable customer service teams that understand the products/services that they are providing support with are infinitely more effective than those that do not. The requirement for product/service knowledge is equally important across both in-house and outsourced customer service teams. In outsourced customer service call centres, the level of knowledge that each customer service agent will need to retain is far greater. This creates a challenge, but this is one that we embrace at Impact. We have created comprehensive training programmes which equip our agents with all the required knowledge of systems, products, services, and processes for each client. This empowers them to deliver great customer service for clients.

Helping customer service teams to not only retain but also acquire further knowledge as products/services change is a critical task for businesses. Customers always want to speak to knowledgeable customer service agents, so investing in developing knowledge across customer service teams will pay dividends in terms of the quality of the customer service experience and the outcomes.

7) Take Ownership

Customer service agents that take ownership of the issues and problems that are presented to them deliver the best customer experiences. Being passed from person to person is a significant source of frustration for customers. It can make them feel unimportant while also frustrating them and taking up more of their time than it should. By getting the right person to answer a call, passing a customer to another agent can often be avoided. This creates a much more seamless experience while also increasing the likelihood of a first call resolution.

Taking ownership does not end with the initial call as not every customer service issue can be resolved during the first call. In this scenario, the customer service agent assigned to the customer will need to keep the customer informed of progress and ensure that any follow-up calls are made as promised. Even if an issue cannot be easily resolved and is on-going for a period of time, if customer services take ownership of it, a customer’s patience and respect can be earned and maintained.

8) Team Orientated

Many customer service operations involve effective teams and rarely can any one customer service agent deliver excellence alone. When the members of a customer service team are team-orientated, day to day operations are so much smoother and more successful. Fostering a spirit of collaboration and a sense of working together to achieve a common goal helps to achieve much more than many would believe is possible. Customer service agents can share best practice and support each other by stepping in should someone encounter a problem or situation that they are unsure of.

At Impact, we are particularly passionate about how team-orientated our people are. The culture of care that we have for our clients, employees, suppliers, and the wider business community is key to our on-going success. We maintain a supportive and collaborative environment across all our teams, including our customer service team, to ensure that everyone can thrive. We strongly believe that when we look after our agents, they will look after our clients. Fostering a culture of care in every aspect of our call centre is a priority and we help our team members care for the people that they work alongside too.

9) Respectful

Being respectful goes a long way in business and it remains an effective part of customer service. Customer service agents that are respectful of clients, their customers and colleagues are more effective and are able to achieve better outcomes. When agents are respectful during each customer interaction, it is far easier to earn the respect of the customer. Once the respect of a customer is earned, the whole interaction becomes easier and often results in a positive experience.

Customer service agents work as part of a team and being respectful to their colleagues is key to everyone’s success. The best agents are often team orientated and supportive of their colleagues as after all, everyone is working towards the same goal: to provide a great customer experience. This also links to the culture of care that we have at Impact, which differentiates us from many other UK call centres.

10) Adaptable

Customer service is very much a dynamic and ever-changing business area. New challenges are presented almost every day during customer interactions. The customer service function often needs to respond to changes and events within a business, sometimes at short notice. These events can take many different forms but may include product recalls, service disruptions or system failures. In every case, the customer service team remains the first point of contact and will need to respond to the challenge in a positive and professional manner. Effective customer service agents are adaptable by nature and able to manage changing situations with confidence.

At Impact, we pride ourselves on the adaptability of our business as a whole but also on the adaptability of individual customer service agents. We are incredibly passionate about delivering world-class customer service to our clients and support our agents to be adaptable in everything that they do.