Customer Service Skills That Really Matter

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When it comes to customer service, listening skills help to build better relationships with customers, avoid misunderstandings, resolve conflicts and solve customer problems faster and more efficiently.

Customer service skills can actually make a huge difference between the average customer service agent and the one who is able to provide that WOW service your customers will remember and certainly appreciate.

While there are plenty of critical skills all customer-facing employees need to master, we would like to highlight two most essential of them, that will truly make you stand out and help you succeed with every support interaction.

 1. Active Listening

Listening is a master skill for personal and professional greatness. The best way to improve your listening skills is to practice ‘active listening’. It means making a conscious effort to hear not only what is being said, but also, more importantly, pay attention to what is left unsaid in order to understand the complete message being communicated.

How to develop active listening:

  1. Show that you are listening (eye contact, posture, smile etc.)

2. Be attentive, focused and relaxed

3. Keep an open mind with no judgement or mental criticising

4. Don’t interrupt – let them speak out

5. Wait for the customer to pause to ask clarifying questions

6. Give the customer regular feedback

7. Summarise to ensure understanding8. Pay attention to nonverbal cues

2. Clear Communication

Your ability to communicate is an important tool in your pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers. Needless to say, clear oral communication is a ‘must-have’ skill for everyone working in customer service. It implies using plain and proper language, no mumbling and grumbling, avoiding jargon and slang, maintaining proper tone of voice and being able to speak with confidence. But as digital technologies continue to take over customer service, written communication skills have become just as (or even more) important, especially for those service agents dealing with customers primarily over email, messengers, live chat or social media.

How to improve written communication:

  1. Write short sentences and short paragraphs that are easy to read

2. Make sure your message is clear, precise and relevant

3. Provide a complete response in one message

4. Look for potential misunderstandings and edit if necessary

5. Write in a friendly but professional tone

6. Use positive language and avoid negative phrases

7. Check your spelling and grammar using special tools8. Always proofread your message before sending it

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Is your social media customer service helping

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Or is it hurting your customer experience?

Consumers who receive prompt responses through social media channels are more likely to remain brand loyal and provide word-of-mouth referrals. When implemented correctly, social media customer service encourages consumer spending, improves operational efficiency and increases organizational performance.

Customer inquiries on social are increasing. Twitter found, in recent research, that customer service conversations had increased by 2.5x in the past two years. Since it is social media, customers expect a fast response. Fast responses are an essential part of meeting customer expectations for social care.

When customers receive favourable service, advocacy increases. When companies engage and respond to customers over social, those customers spend 20-40% more with them.

Make Social Customer Service a Valuable Piece, companies that gets this right achieve the ultimate balance. They improve the customer experience while driving operational excellence, which translates into reduced costs.

But, a common mistake that many brands make with a social customer service program is to manage it as a soloed initiative. As a result, customers get frustrated and post negative comments about their experiences.

This is not good when 75% of consumers expect a consistent experience wherever they engage be it web, social media web or in person.

When social media is integrated with other channels, so data and insights are shared across the organization, brands can use these insights to tailor each interaction to improve the customer’s overall experience. Adding social media data into the mix only makes customer journeys richer. Building a comprehensive view into journeys helps brands understand, predict and address customer expectations.

Therefore, to have a truly omnichannel customer experience, it is vital that social customer service be a valuable component.

Meanwhile, omni-channel is defined as a multi-channel sales approach that provides the customer with an integrated customer experience. The customer can be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, or by telephone, or in a bricks and mortar store and the experience would be seamless.

Implement Best Practices To Make Social Customer Service Stick.

Social Customer Service is a big deal. In fact, social customer service serves as an inflection point – it can determine whether a customer continues to do business or stops doing business with you!

The Quickest Magic in Service Recovery

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Acting quickly, taking responsibility, making an empowered decision, and compensating the customer will result in customer loyalty that will increase your sales and profits and help to ensure your success in an increasingly competitive world.
In today’s fast-paced world we are needing service recovery in almost everywhere we go from the grocery store, to our banks (everyone has had a problem here), to our cable (very frustrating), to service providers at home and so on and so on. It’s frustrating and customers can vent their problems and dissatisfaction in person, on the phone, on the internet, and to their friends and family.
But, the exact opposite is true also if the magic of Service Recovery is used. Service recovery can have a major impact on an organization’s bottom line with word-of-mouth advertising as customers tell their family, friends, and coworkers about the exceptional service they received from your company. Including compliments and “Atta-boys” up on the internet, they recognize you and call you by name.
Service recovery is putting a smile on a customer’s face after you’ve screwed up. Now it may not be your fault, but it is your problem. How you handle those mistakes is what separates you from the rest of the pack and…keeps customers for life.
We have developed the following techniques for providing quality service recovery:
Act quickly.You must acknowledge the mistake within 60 seconds. That’s when the magic happens. The employee at the point of contact is the person in the best position to successfully implement service recovery.
Front-line employees should have the power to resolve more than 95 per cent of customer issues without having to pass the customer on to another person
Take responsibility.No matter who is at fault, you must own the mistake and sincerely apologize. Don’t place the blame on someone else; the customer doesn’t care whose fault it was, he merely wants it rectified.
It’s also important to thank the customer for pointing out the problem and for giving you the opportunity to correct it. It works like magic.
Be empowered.Employees aren’t making empowered decisions mainly because they’re afraid they’re going to be reprimanded, fired, or have to pay for whatever they give the customer.

Empowerment is the backbone of service recovery, and organizations that truly want to serve the customers and retain their business must not only allow, but insist, that employees bend and break the rules in order to keep those customers coming back. They are your magicians.
Compensate.Give away something that has high value and low cost. You must give the customer something of value, something that will impress the customer and give them the feeling that you really do value their business. Every company has something that doesn’t cost a lot but has value in the eyes of the customer.

Practice the magic every day when customers confront you with a situation or problem. No business can afford to lose customers, if only because it costs much more to replace a customer than it does to retain one – five times more.
Those that go out of their way to please customers and correct problems or screw-ups will soon have more customers than their competition. 
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Customer Mission Statement: Put The Customer At The Center Of What You Do

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The customer should never be an afterthought. Your customer’s requirements and needs should be at the core of everything that your business does, so always work in this way, thinking first and foremost of your customers rather than what you perceive the business needs. That is the same with your marketing approach: it should be about how to engage with your target audience.
Putting customer firstThe fact is, users, understand when they have been put first, and understand very well when they have not. If you value what your customers think and say about you, and want to build repeat business, it is essential that you are recognized as a business that has a customer focus, which means everything from great customer service, to doing everything possible to fix things if and when they don’t work out (which happens).
Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep
It is imperative that you deliver on your promises, every single time. A broken promise cannot be recovered from, so just don’t do it. What kind of promises can you make?
Well, you can promise to always put the customer first, and work to this end, but you may not be able to promise that you always deliver the best price, because there is always someone somewhere who may undercut you.
Be realistic in what you promise: customers are experts at spotting an empty promise from a mile away,” says Russell Gomes, a marketing analyst at Write My X and Brit Student.
Deliver With ConsistencyOne central aspect of good customer experience is being consistent in how you deliver. What customers want to see is an approach that they can become familiar with and rely upon.
No one likes surprises when it comes to business, and so prevent these from occurring by having a well-defined and trained approach to delivering on customer experience. That means defining roles and responsibilities from the very beginning, and training staff to work to that end, with a series of checks in place which prevents anything falling between the cracks.
Regularly Audit Your Customer Service Experience
The secret shopper approach is a popular means of gathering valuable feedback on customer experience, and is employed by hotels and restaurants around the world. It’s a tried-and-tested approach, but is by no means the only one when it comes to auditing your customer experience.
Regularly auditing and testing ensures that the systems you have put in place are working as seamlessly as possible, and tweaks can be made where necessary. Once again, this is all about having the commitment to deliver fantastic customer service.
Invest In Your StaffThis point has already been touched upon in the form of training, which is certainly an essential ingredient for delivering great customer experience. However, it is certainly not the only element.

 A staff member who feels valued, rewarded and motivated is much more likely to deliver the levels of customer service that you desire.
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Implement Best Practices To Make Social Customer Service Stick

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Respond immediately

The reality is social media implies immediacy, and customers expect brands to respond immediately. In fact, Facebook Pages show a company’s response times to resolve issues.  Brands need to respond in minutes. Social customer service isn’t only about solving problems; it’s also an opportunity to connect authentically, engage, and leave a lasting positive impression that will drive loyalty. In fact, 71% of customers who have a positive social media service experience are likely to recommend that brand.

Be consistent.

Consistency is one of the most important things to providing a great experience. It builds trust. It illustrates what customers can come to expect from a brand. Consistency also drives retention, loyalty, and advocacy, and helps you acquire new customers in the process.

Personalize the experience.

According to Accenture, 81% of consumers want brands to understand them better. Being authentic and showing empathy creates experiences that drive loyalty. You’ll be able to connect and engage on a deeper, more personal level and customers will leave feeling happy.

Be proactive.

Social customer service isn’t only about resolving issues timely and effectively. It’s also about anticipating needs and acting accordingly. And that means regularly monitoring customer activities on social media to determine when it’s appropriate to engage with a customer or alert other employees to get involved.

It also provides an excellent opportunity to obtain customer feedback, encourages customers to share their experiences with their social networks or offer additional tools to help customers be more successful. Brands should always be on the lookout for opportunities to drive customer value.

Share insights with other organizational teams.

The information you obtain from engaging with customers is vital to be able to improve the customer experience. Thus, you should share insights with other stakeholders so these insights can be acted on and improvements to existing processes can be made to enhance customers’ experiences.

Measure and monitor.

Measure the social customer service you’re providing through such metrics as CSAT, CES, NPS, and others. Be methodical. Know the KPI’s you need to achieve your desired outcomes. It’s important not only to measure but also to monitor and analyze trends so you can make improvements to enhance a customer’s experience.

Bringing it all Together

Providing an excellent customer experience is a must. Including social customer service in the mix will help brands create experiences customers expect. Social Customer Service will help brands shape conversations by engaging customers before and after purchase to drive customer lifetime value.

Job brief for a customer service representative

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The following are duties and responsibilities for a customer service representative: 

A customer service representative, or CSR, will act as a liaison, provide product/services information and resolve any emerging problems that our customer accounts might face with accuracy and efficiency.

  • Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries
  • Generating sales leads that develop into new customers
  • Identifying and assessing customers’ needs to achieve satisfaction

The best CSRs are genuinely excited to help customers. They’re patient, empathetic, and passionately communicative. They love to talk. Customer service representatives can put themselves in their customers’ shoes and advocate for them when necessary. Customer feedback is priceless, and these CSRs can gather that for you. Problem-solving also comes naturally to customer care specialists. They are confident at troubleshooting and investigate if they don’t have enough information to resolve customer complaints.
The target is to ensure excellent service standards, respond efficiently to customer inquiries and maintain high customer satisfaction.

Responsibilities

Customer Service Responsibilities list:

  • Manage large amounts of incoming calls
  • Generate sales leads
  • Identify and assess customers’ needs to achieve satisfaction
  • Build sustainable relationships and trust with customer accounts through open and interactive communication
  • Provide accurate, valid and complete information by using the right methods/tools
  • Meet personal/customer service team sales targets and call handling quotas
  • Handle customer complaints, provide appropriate solutions and alternatives within the time limits; follow up to ensure resolution
  • Keep records of customer interactions, process customer accounts and file documents
  • Follow communication procedures, guidelines and policies
  • Take the extra mile to engage customers

Requirements

  • 1. Proven customer support experience or experience as a client service representative
  • 2. Track record of over-achieving quota
  • 3. Strong phone contact handling skills and active listening
  • 4. Familiarity with CRM systems and practices
  • 5. Customer orientation and ability to adapt/respond to different types of characters
  • 6. Excellent communication and presentation skills
  • 7. Ability to multi-task, prioritize, and manage time effectively.

If You Don’t Take Care of Your Customers, Someone Else Will

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Why you have to care for your customers

The basic truth is, to be successful in sales you need to be a Jack of all trades and a Master of looking after your customers, else, you will realise that, other outlet will take your customers away from you. So there is a HUGE financial link between high levels of customer satisfaction and the bottom line of a company.
 For example,  if a company eliminates just four representatives in a call center of about 36 agents (that’s about a 10% layoff), the number of customers put on hold for four minutes will increase from 0 to 80.  

Understand the following and work on the lapses if you are on this table: 

  • 90% of customers dissatisfied with the service they receive will not come back or buy again.
  • Only 4% of unhappy customers bother to complain.  For every complaint we hear, however, 24 others go un-communicated to the company.  Imagine that.  So, in theory, if you have 10 complaints in a month, that means that potentially 240 customers also have complaints but just didn’t share them with you.  But they did share them with others…
  • Unhappy customers tell his or her story to at least nine other people.  That’s not the “word of mouth” you want about your organization.  And with today’s social media, I think the number is growing.
  • Of the customers who register a complaint, between 54-70% will do business again with the organization if the complaint is resolved.  That number goes up to 95% if the customer feels the complaint was resolved quickly.  This is commonly referred to as “service recovery”: we all make mistakes, but it’s how quickly and thoroughly a company resolves those mistakes that determines whether a customer will remain loyal and engaged.
  • 68% of customers who quit doing business with an organization do so because of company indifference.  In other words, if you don’t respond and/or resolve a customer-related issue, your customers perceive that as not caring about their business.  And it takes 12 positive incidents to make up for one negative incident in the eyes of customers.

The following are the possible way out:

  • Develop listening and learning approaches to capture the voice of the customer.  We need a way to hear – and understand – their needs, expectations, and requirements, not just of the products and services they are buying but how they prefer to buy them…the whole customer experience pre-, during, and post-sale.
  • Consider the touchpoints you have with your customers – the phone calls, the face-to-face interactions, the emails, and so forth.  And then proactively think about how you can create positive interactions – experiences that satisfy or exceed customers’ expectations.  Consider doing this in a team or department meeting to get everyone on the same page and exchange ideas for better service touchpoints.
  • Identify processes that touch the customer – ordering processes, inquiry processes (like call/contact centers and your website), complaint and suggestion processes, physical space (your lobby, your “store”), and certainly service/product delivery processes – and ensure that each of these customer-facing processes is designed to ensure more service “deposits” than “withdrawals.”  Then,
  • Focus on your workers: train your staff to ensure that they have the skills and tools necessary to serve customers, internal and external.  Cross-train employees so they can step up to fill a variety of needs, which also gives you capacity and flexibility in your staffing model.
  • Reward staff for their good customer service (and for service recovery).

These tips don’t only apply to retail, service-oriented businesses.  They apply to manufacturers, schools, healthcare providers, non-profit and governmental agencies.  Remember, 90% of dissatisfied customers won’t come back: so there is a huge financial return for those organizations which truly focus on customers rather than just talk about customer service.

Think like a customer to deliver the best Face-to-Face service

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How can you think like a customer in other to deliver the best? 

You need to be aware of your body language and your tone of voice and how both are affecting the perception customers have of you and your company.

“Using professional actors to deliver immersive and interactive training makes perfect sense because they are the experts in voice, body language and how to calm nerves if someone lacks the confidence to approach customers or interact with them,” Lucy Morgans.

She adds: “Actors spend years understanding their body and characteristics. They are also aware of how their mood changes their body language and how energy levels can fall during a busy shift as tiredness kicks in and what to do.”

The importance of body language

  • Do you come across as bored and disinterested?
  • Be aware of your facial expressions and/or any physical habits (we all have them)
  • Does the customer look unhappy or confused? Or angry?
  • Are you making eye contact with the people you are talking to?
  • Are you coming across as friendly? Think about the power of a smile
  • Think about how you perceive people in different situations based on how they appear and act
  • You also need to be able to read other people’s body language so you can react accordingly.

It isn’t just what you say, it’s how you say it

Remember to be articulate. The words and phrases that are crucial to the information you need to convey must be spoken clearly

  • You need to add light and shade to your voice to sound interested and engaged
  • Think about accentuating key words to help you communicate more effectively
  • Use an upward inflection at the end of a sentence from time to time
  • Actors talk about he 5 ‘p’s’. These are Projection (can people hear you if you are talking to a table of people in a noisy restaurant, for example), Pace (how fast are you talking? If you are reading a list, give people time to take in the information), Pause (you pause for effect if you are talking about something important? Perhaps a special offer or meal), Pitch (how does your voice sound? Is it monotone, too high or too low, and is this affecting how people react to you?), and Power (do your words have the right impact? You may have certain words or phrases that have to resonate with the customer).

“It is also important to be a good listener so you take on board what the customer is saying and can offer the correct service. Sometimes we can be so focused on what we have to say that we do not actively listen,” says Morgans.

Dealing with complaints

If you are asked difficult questions or someone is complaining remember to remain calm and truthful. Authenticity, empathy and a willingness to help will go a long way.

  • By sympathetic that a problem has occurred. This is not admitting fault (unless this is obviously the case) but accepting that there has been some inconvenience for the customer
  • Explain why something went wrong. Why was the food cold/late? Why was their room not ready? Why are you out of stock? Why was there a delay in the service being offered? Basically, what happened?
  • Inform them of how you have responded. What changes have you implemented. What has happened to solve the problem and (hopefully) ensure it won’t happen again

How Healthy Employees and Customer Experience Are Connected

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Did you know that prioritising your physical and mental health can help you have more?

  The fact is being healthy has a different definition for everyone, which means when you’re in a good head-space and feel energised physically, you’re more likely to be productive and excel at work. 
Working at an office all day usually means a lot of sitting. Sitting at a desk has been proven to have detrimental effects on the body, including poor posture and even being linked to diseases like diabetes. There are plenty of ways you can achieve more movement throughout your day but first, try setting a goal for yourself.

Again, sitting at your desk all day, you’re likely looking at your computer screen. Did you know that the light coming off of your screen can actually cause symptoms like headaches and dry eyes? So, the best way to help reduce the strain on your eyes to avoid these symptoms is to ensure that the brightness of your screen is close to the brightness in the room you’re in.
There’s no denying that work causes a lot of stress for people. Being able to properly manage stress inside and outside of work can make you excel at your job, which means knowing and using the mental health tools that work best for yourself.

Managing stress at work and being mindful for your physical health can have amazing effects on the rest of your life. Small steps like this set you on a path for a happier, healthier lifestyle

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Easy Way to Level Up Your Customer Feedback Program

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Great impact of feedbacks.

The only way to know if your customers are satisfied or what issues constrain their positive experience with your brand is through customer feedback. Most customers are reluctant when it comes to filling out surveys or answering questions, which makes the compiling of information challenging.

Email marketing is still a leading form of digital advertising, even though it’s one of the oldest channels on the internet. There are two basic methods in which you can choose to implement a survey that your website visitors can fill out. Both methods are highly effective because they allow users to provide their answers on the spot without leaving the page.

The simplest way is to place your survey somewhere on the page where it’s easy to see and doesn’t affect the usability of the website. The other way is to create a pop-up survey that activates by various triggers. Per example, if you’re running a dissertation service, ask for feedback when the client confirms the reception of the order. This is inarguably the most cost-effective solution which can significantly improve the amount of data you can gather from your customers.There are more than 3.5 billion active social media users in the entire world. Analyze which network entertains the largest number of your clients to see where you should focus your attention. Keep in mind the audience engagement with your social media profiles because you want to address the audience that’s most likely to show interest in sending their feedback.

you can forget about surveys and simply create amusing posts and ask for opinions in the comments, whilst paying attention to the number of likes and shares as indicators. Numerous custom essay services could produce engaging social media content that captures the attention of your audience and provokes a response.

Progress is most commonly the result of creative and dedicated work as well as repeated testing and failing.