What are Customer Service Skills?
These are the skills which make for good customer service by an employee, as well as by the company as a whole.
They are what guarantees customer satisfaction, thus increasing company sales.
These skills are sometimes called “soft” skills, because they are not highly technical professional skills. An employee might be naturally good at customer service. Companies are always on the lookout for such naturals but often also provide special training to improve every employee’s customer skills.
List of Customer Service Skills: What Are Excellent Customer Service Skills?
They may not require professional education, but effective customer service is indispensable for good business and requires good interpersonal communication abilities, intelligence and professionalism.
Having great customer service division in a company means Good Business for the company.
What are Top Customer Service Skills?
Here is a list of essential skills:
- Patience – Before any other skill is possible, a company representative must be patient and able to listen attentively.
- Tact – Customers are easily displeased or disappointed; a company representative should always be tactful, never aggressive or defensive, and never blame the customer.
Tact also implies positive language – using yes-words rather than no-words.
For example, it is better to say that a service or product will be available in the foreseeable future, rather than saying that it is not available now.
- Empathy – This is the ability to understand the customers, his/her needs and mood. Let’s say a customer expresses feeling cheated or disappointed — a company representative with effective customer skills will respond in a tone and manner that will appease and reassure the customer.
- Assessment – Good assessment works together with effective empathy. To assess is to ask questions and gather customer-related information through observation to gauge the needs and potential of a customer.
- Negotiation – All of these skills come together in effective negotiation. To negotiate well, you need patience and tact, empathy and assessment. You need to be able to make quick and shrewd decisions regarding customer needs and company policy to satisfy both ends.
Customer Service Skills: Examples of Good Customer Service Skills
What makes good customer service skills and how to have good customer service skills?
There are several ways in which good customer service skills may be a part of your job depending on your position.
Here are a few examples:
- If you are a cashier, you should make sure you have enough change and that you give back change correctly. You should also be quick yet friendly.
- If you work in technical support, you must have the technical knowledge, experience and the background required to serve your clients. You also need to have problem solving abilities to troubleshoot malfunctioning.
- If you are a salesperson for a car dealership, assessing customer needs without embarrassment to the customer is crucial. What should follow is a deal which satisfies the client financially, while making profit for the company.
A frequent mistake of salespersons in different venues is to insist on selling the client something they cannot afford and had no intention to consider in the first place.
This only confuses and annoys the customer. They are very likely to leave and never come back. Or they will buy, but immediately realize they had made a mistake. This may mean trouble or simply a customer who will not return and will not promote the company by word of mouth.
Customer service skills list: Listing Customer Service Skills in a Resume
These examples can help you list key customer service skills that an employer in your area is looking for. Write Key Skills such as:
- Personality characteristics, like – patience, poise, tact.
- Self-Presentation and communication skills.
- Negotiation and sales skills.
- Positive attitude
- Attention to detail
- People oriented
- Problem analysis – Problem solving
- Analytical thinking
- Organizational skills
- Adaptability – Ability to work under pressure
- Initiator
In addition, include relevant skills, like proficiency in Microsoft Office. And if you had any customer-service training, you should always include it on your resume.
- Relevant customer care courses
- Computer skills – Customer service software
- Knowledge of Administrative procedures and
- Relevant technical/products’ knowledge
- Languages knowledge
