They say that customer service is the holy grail of a business. No matter how great your product, service or offering is, without good customer service, your business is less likely to flourish. It’s never too late to turn things around. While good customer service and support is a time-consuming process, businesses can benefit substantially by creating a team of efficient support professionals.
The search for effective successful customer service comes with a detailed roadmap of what the organization needs. Let’s look at the secret ingredient and essential skills required for customer service that bring success to an organization’s doorstep.
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The Importance Of Customer Service
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Skills Required For Customer Service
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Try The Compelling Communication Program
The Importance Of Customer Service
A study published by Oracle, a leading multinational American technology corporation, reported that 86% of customers quit doing business with an enterprise because of a poor experience. Good customer service provides a customer with a complete experience that aligns with an organization’s strategic goals. It brings in revenue and boosts profitability.
The interesting thing about customer service is that it’s both a job role as well as a set of skills. As a job position, customer service professionals address customer needs to ensure a pleasant experience. As a set of skills, customer service encompasses multiple qualities such as effective communication, problem-solving and empathy, among others.
Strong customer service skills equip individuals to provide a positive experience to their customers or clients. Here are some advantages of customer support skills:
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The greatest benefit is retaining customers and improving customer loyalty; satisfied customers are likely to return for another purchase and often contribute to word-of-mouth marketing (brands become part of regular conversations)
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Good customer service creates business value; when the customer receives proper treatment and their queries get resolved, their trust in the product increases, which furthers the relationship
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Proper customer service prevents or reduces the risks associated with business failure; for example, if buyers become frustrated, they are likely to share their views publicly, affecting the brand’s credibility adversely
Organizations need to prioritize good customer service and equip employees with essential customer service skills.
Skills Required For Customer Service
To deliver consistently good customer service, a good place to start is the support team. It’s important to hire professionals and train them to optimize customer satisfaction. Here’s a list of key skills for customer service that every professional needs to troubleshoot problems and provide speedy solutions:
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Communication
Communication skills top the list. The customer support team should be able to respond in a timely and appropriate manner. Effective communication skills, such as active listening and effective speaking, help resolve issues in a clear and time-efficient way. Employees also need to be responsive and agile, therefore, they must pay attention to details.
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Problem-Solving
Typically, customers reach out to the support team because they have questions, concerns or complaints. Therefore, the team needs to be able to solve problems quickly by thinking on their feet and take decisions immediately. Technical knowledge of the product or service can help them formulate accurate answers and resolve queries quickly.
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Empathy
At the core of customer service skills lies empathy. It helps the team keep an open mind and recognize the pain points of customers with greater ease. It further leads to improved interpersonal relationships, encouraging friendliness and responsiveness. The ability to read physical or emotional cues is a superpower.
Assisting others isn’t as easy as it looks. One of the best ways to build a strong customer support team is to help them develop their social, behavioral and cognitive skills.
Try The Compelling Communication Program
Effective communication is what drives successful customer service. If you want your employees to display strong customer service skills, you need to get to the root of it. By empowering them with effective communication skills, you can achieve greater success with customers.
Harappa’s Compelling Communication Program is designed to help anyone who wants to communicate with impact. Armed with transformational learning outcomes, your employees will learn to articulate with precision, tailor messages according to the audience and craft well-structured and coherent narratives. They’ll learn to leverage moments and leave lasting impressions on others. The program is built on Harappa’s 10 on 10 pedagogy, which is guaranteed to deliver transformative learning solutions. Make a difference in your world of work by choosing Harappa today!
Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as Business Skills, Examples Of CRM, Basics Of Communication and Interpersonal Communication that will help organizations tap into their employee’s potential.