3 Ways To Develop Your Team's Customer Service Skills

In any industry, a business must work continually to improve their service team’s skills with customer service courses and training. Some of the most important assets are really personality traits, which aren't necessarily easy to teach, but even so they're skills that can be developed and improved upon.

Empathy and Patience

When a customer contacts a service representative, it's typically because they have a complaint or query. Some customers are angry and some are impatient; regardless of the situation, a rep needs to handle each with a high level of diplomacy.

Skill development: empathy means stepping into someone else's shoes, and understanding why they feel the way they do. A great rep is naturally empathetic, a skill that can be learned to some degree. One way to develop empathy is by getting to know people from different backgrounds and understand what is important or less important to them.

Empathy naturally helps to improve patience, too, but just as important for a service rep is understanding what can make them lose their patience. Knowing what those cues are can help them stay calm under pressure.

Communication Skills

Service reps must be able to communicate with customers clearly and concisely so that customers understand what's being said. They also need to be able to use positive language and remain calm and cheerful in any situation, no matter how irate a customer becomes. Listening is also an essential skill: each customer is different, and each customer interaction will vary; a great rep can quickly sense a customer's mood, and adapt their service strategy accordingly.

Skill development: dealing with customers involves active listening, which means listening to what a customer says, and clarifying and rephrasing what has been said by repeating that back to the customer. This confirms that each party understands what's happening, and ensures that the customer feels heard.

Knowledge

Customers rely on service reps to help them solve their problems, so reps need to have good working knowledge of the business's products or services. A rep should be able to solve most problems, and know what to do in cases where solving a problem requires special knowledge or skills. This skill is one that customer service training should cover in depth and on an ongoing basis.

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Key Elements To Great Customer Experiences

One of the key ingredients to a successful business is having happy customers. If your customers feel they have had a good experience doing business with you, then you have won a large part of the battle. Some of the key elements to great customer experiences are:

Make Sure Your Products are Relevant to your Potential Customers

Social media can be used to reach people likely to be interested in your products. If people post problems online, brand bloggers or retailers sometimes respond to offer advice and solutions.

Use Mobile Devices to Your Advantage

Mobile phones are carried by the majority of people so you can locate a service or product user easily. For instance, Scrabble offer free wi-fi minutes in Paris but only if the mobile phone user unscrambled some Scrabble letters. This way of promoting a product gives the customer a great experience while advertising the Scrabble brand.

Create an App for Your Business

Create an app for your business so that consumers can order your products using their mobile phone. It’s quick and easy and eliminates the need to recite credit card numbers or make a call. The simplicity of use enhances the customer experience and makes them more likely to choose your business. The pizzeria that offers online ordering and can let you pay instantly with paypal is more likely to attract customers than the pizzeria that only accepts cash, even if the one with an online presence costs more.

Let Them Come to You

Letting the customer find you – or behavioural relevancy – ensures that your customers are motivated and interested in what you have to offer. You can achieve this by using internet search ads (these appear on the consumer’s computer in response to their search engine queries. For instance, if they’re looking for vitamin supplements and that is your speciality, your advert could appear after they search for vitamins). Another idea is to send automated emails prompting the user to shop with you or to accept a special offer. If a person visits your website, they could receive this email suggestion alerting them to products they already expressed an interest in.

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Customer Service: How to Approach the Expectations of New Customers

Customers are increasingly savvy when it comes to making purchases, and increasingly demanding when it comes to customer service. With the abundance of choice available to modern consumers, it's more difficult than it's ever been to attract new buyers, and turn them into loyal long-time customers. Meeting expectations no longer means that customers are automatically satisfied; when a customer calls a service centre, they already have the expectation that their problem will be solved, which means that solving the problem doesn't guarantee repeat business. In this kind of context, what customer services skills are needed to encourage customer loyalty?

Consider your Customers

Understanding who your customers are is crucial, and thanks to the massive technological change of the past two decades, the average customer is virtually a different species compared to twenty years ago. Millennial customers who call an internet provider service centre, for example, are these days likely to know just as much as the call centre agent about their problem, and they tend to become frustrated when asked to perform routine troubleshooting tasks. And in general, younger customers are more likely to spend time performing basic research before calling a service centre, and they have the expectation that the agent they talk to will have a much higher level of familiarity with the product, and be able to quickly and competently solve whatever problem they have. All in all, the requirement for intensive customer service training is high.

What do Customers Want?

While technology has changed, and the concept of customer loyalty has changed, what customers actually want from service performance is surprisingly constant.

Seamless service: customers have always become frustrated when transferred multiple times in a single call, especially when they have to repeat their problem over and over again to each new agent. These days, however, customers expect that the person they first talk to is the one who will coordinate and solve their problem.

Attentive service: customers want to be dealt with quickly, politely, and respectfully, even if they themselves become frustrated and difficult. The nature of customer service is and has always been about making each customer feel that there's nothing more important than their particular problem.

Service that engenders trust: customers want to feel that the agent they speak to is capable of handling their problem, and by extension that the company is capable and trustworthy. They expect that their problem will be solved without errors or delays, and they expect that if a particular solution is promised, it will be provided.

Customer Service Tactics to Boost Customer Loyalty

If there's one thing that could be described as the Holy Grail of business, it's probably customer loyalty. Garnering such dedication that a consumer will actively 'fight your corner' is something that any sensible company should aspire to. We've got a few tactics you may not have considered; try slipping them into your next customer service training session, then just watch your customer loyalty skyrocket.

Tip #1: Create memorable moments

When a customer chooses your business to fulfil their requirements, they do so with an image of who you are as a business in their mind. In order to maintain this image and then build on it, you should try to create memorable moments for the customer. Examples may include: how cared for they feel when they enter your premises, the tone of staff members they speak to, any special treatment they receive as new customers.

Tip #2: Meet the three most important needs

Customers have needs, and tending to them is your core objective. There are three very important needs you may not know about, and tackling each one will boost your customer loyalty in new ways. The first need is that of meeting a customer’s business expectation (providing the basic service). The second is the need to interact with a person, and giving your company a face. The final need is more behind the scenes, and it manifests itself by way of your company processes, attitude and presentation.

Tip #3: Never forget about personal interaction

This should be a staple of all customer service courses: always providing a personal experience to the customer by actually meeting them face-to-face or at least over the phone. The internet is great for business, but it can alienate customers. By treating a customer as a real human being, you’ll win their loyalty fast.

Tip #4: Always meet service expectations

Don’t forget the distinction between services (which is what you offer) and service (which is how you go about providing what you offer). The customer will have a certain expectation of both the product or service, and the way in which it’ll be delivered. If you can nail down both of these areas, your customers will keep coming back.