The Customer Service Skills that Matter
1. Patience
Sometimes customer needs require time to process and to resolve. Allow the customer time to share their concerns.
2. Attentiveness
Actively listening is important when communicating with customers. Taking the time to hear their concerns can ensure you create a plan of action to address their needs.
3. Clear Communication Skills
Sharing specific actions you will take to address their needs, in a clear way, is important to creating an experience where customers feel they have been heard.
4. Knowledge of the District, Campus, Content or Service
People feel confident in the service they are provided when staff is knowledgable about policy, procedure and practice. Familiarize yourself with District, Campus, and Department policies and procedures so you can assist customers.
5. Ability to Use "Positive Language"
Small changes that utilize "positive language" can greatly affect how the customer hears your response...
- Without positive language: "I can't get the new grades in until this Friday; I am teaching all day."
- With positive language: "The updated grades will be available this Friday. I can contact you as soon as they are ready to discuss your student's progress."
The first example isn't negative by any means, but the tone that it conveys feels abrupt and impersonal, and can be taken the wrong way by customers.
Conversely, the second example is stating the same thing (the grades will be ready on Friday), but instead focuses on when/how the customer will get to their resolution rather than focusing on the negative.
6. Smile Skills
Sometimes you're going to come across people that you'll never be able to make happy.
Maintain a cheery persona in spite of dealing with people who may be just plain grumpy. Be genuine and don't take it personally.
7. Time Management Skills
The trick here is that this should also be applied when realizing when you simply cannot help a customer. If you don't know the solution to a problem, the best kind of support member will get a customer over to someone who does.
8. Ability to "Read" Customers
You won't always be able to see customers face-to-face, and in many instances you won't even hear a customer's voice.
That doesn't exempt you from understanding the customer's current emotional state.
This is an important part of creating a personal experience for them.
More importantly though, this skill is essential because you don't want to mis-read a customer due to confusion and miscommunication.
Look and listen for subtle clues about their current mood, patience level, personality, etc., and you'll go far in keeping your customer interactions positive.
9. A Calming Presence
There's a lot of metaphors for this type of personality: "keeps their cool," "staying cool under pressure," etc., but it all represents the same thing: the ability that some people have to stay calm and even influence others when things get a little hectic.
10. Goal Oriented Focus
Know the guidelines and processes for working with customers and the "go-to" fixes for common problems.
11. Ability to Handle Surprises
Be able to think on your feet and create guidelines for yourself in these sorts of situations.
Come up with a quick system for when you come across a customer who has a problem you've never seen before...
- Who? One thing you can decide right off the bat is who you should consider your "go-to" person when you don't know what to do. Define a logical chain for yourself to use, then you won't be left wondering who you should forward the problem too.
- What? When the problem is noticeably out of your league, what are you going to send to the people above?
- How? When it comes time to get someone else involved, how are you going to contact them?
12. Willingness to Learn
If you read all the way to this point, you likely already have this skill (nice job!).
This is probably the most general skill on the list, but it's still necessary.
Those who don't seek to improve what they do, whether it's building relationships, skills, or helping customers, will get left behind by the people willing to invest in their skills.
