It doesn’t matter how outstanding your product is; if your customer service falls short, be prepared for complaints and customer attrition.
The positive aspect is that improvement is always possible. Transforming customer service from mediocre to exceptional is a journey, not an overnight fix. It demands a deep commitment to meaningful change, a team of exceptional support professionals, and a company-wide effort.
This discussion is part of our Ultimate Guide to Running a Customer Service Team. Explore further chapters when you’re ready to delve deeper.
Understanding Customer Service
Customer service is fundamentally about providing assistance to both potential and current customers. Customer service experts typically address customer inquiries via various channels such as in-person interactions, phone, email, chat, and social media. They might also be in charge of developing self-service support resources.
Organizations often tailor their customer service definitions to align with their core values and desired support approach. For instance, at Help Scout, customer service is defined as delivering prompt, empathetic support that prioritizes customer needs in every interaction.
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The Significance of Customer Service
Given that 86% of customers will cease doing business with a company after a negative experience, every customer interaction is crucial. It’s an opportunity to attract, retain, or upsell customers.
Excellent customer service is a revenue driver. It provides customers with a holistic and coherent experience that resonates with a company’s mission.
Research indicates that U.S. businesses lose over $62 billion annually due to inadequate customer service management, and 70% of consumers report spending more with companies known for great service.
Recognizing that customer service is the cornerstone of customer experience allows businesses to use it to not only satisfy but also to excite and deeply engage customers.
Core Principles of Excellent Customer Service
Four key principles underpin excellent customer service: personalization, competence, convenience, and proactivity. These elements significantly shape the customer experience. These principles serve as foundational tools in defining and achieving superior customer care.
- Personalized: Human interaction is the bedrock of good customer service. Personalized engagement significantly elevates service quality and assures customers of your company’s genuine care for them and their issues. Instead of viewing service as a mere expense, see it as a continuous opportunity to re-earn customer loyalty.
- Competent: Customers prioritize competency as the most crucial aspect of positive customer experience. A competent support professional must possess comprehensive knowledge of the company and its offerings, along with the authority to resolve customer issues effectively. Deeper knowledge directly translates to greater competence. Tools for enhancing competence include robust training programs and readily accessible knowledge bases.
- Convenient: Customers expect to reach customer service effortlessly through their preferred channels. Offering support across the communication channels your customers use most and ensuring easy access to contact information are essential. Convenience tools include multi-channel support platforms and clear website navigation.
- Proactive: Customers value proactive communication from companies. Whether it’s a product backorder or impending website downtime, reaching out to customers with timely explanations is key. While they may not be pleased with the issue, they will appreciate being informed. Proactive tools include automated notification systems and customer communication management platforms.
By building your customer service strategy around these four core principles, you establish a positive and seamless customer experience for everyone interacting with your company. These principles act as a checklist, a ‘Must-have Customer Care Definition Tool List’ in themselves, guiding businesses to refine their approach.
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21 Essential Customer Service Skills
While delivering consistently excellent customer service requires organizational commitment, focusing on your customer service team is a great starting point. Hiring individuals genuinely passionate about customer success and offering competitive compensation to attract skilled professionals is vital.
Finding the ideal support team member goes beyond resumes and degrees. It’s about identifying innate qualities. Look for individuals who thrive in community interactions, enjoy problem-solving, and are naturally warm, approachable, and adept at explaining things.
Here are 21 essential customer service skills that every support professional should cultivate and every leader should seek during recruitment. Developing these skills is akin to building a personal ‘customer care definition tool list’ for each team member.
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1. Problem-Solving Acumen
Customers often don’t accurately pinpoint their issues. Support representatives must take initiative to replicate the problem before devising a solution. This requires understanding not just the error but the customer’s underlying goal.
For example, a password reset request stems from the desire to access their account. Excellent service anticipates this, potentially resetting the password manually and providing new login details, while also guiding the customer on future self-resets. Tools like remote access software and detailed troubleshooting guides can aid in problem-solving.
2. Patience
Patience is paramount for customer service professionals. Customers seeking support are often confused and frustrated. Being heard and treated patiently significantly reassures customers that their concerns will be addressed. Patience, in essence, is a crucial tool for de-escalation and building trust.
Rushing through interactions is counterproductive. Teams must dedicate time to fully understand each customer’s problems and needs.
3. Attentiveness
Actively listening to customers is crucial for excellent service. It’s vital to pay attention to individual experiences and broader feedback trends. Customer feedback analysis tools can help identify recurring themes.
For instance, subtle cues might indicate UX issues, even if customers don’t explicitly request “UX improvements.” Phrases like “I can’t find the search feature” or “Where is (function) again?” signal underlying usability problems. Attentiveness involves recognizing unspoken customer needs.
4. Emotional Intelligence
Exceptional support representatives connect with diverse personalities, especially frustrated individuals. They remain composed, understanding the customer’s perspective and prioritizing empathetic communication. Emotional intelligence training and feedback tools can enhance this skill.
Feeling immediately heard can diffuse customer grievances. Demonstrating empathy, even by simply acknowledging the issue, validates the customer’s frustration and fosters goodwill.
5. Clear Communication Skills
Customer support teams are at the forefront of product problem-solving and act as a vital communication bridge. Clear communication tools, such as templated responses and internal communication platforms, can ensure consistent messaging.
They represent the company’s voice to customers, simplifying complex information into easily digestible terms. Conversely, they relay customer needs and insights back to the company. Avoid overwhelming customers with technical jargon; clear, concise communication is key to preventing misunderstandings and dissatisfaction.
6. Writing Proficiency
Effective writing conveys reality through words. Strong writing skills are often underestimated but essential in customer support. Writing quality assurance tools can help maintain high standards.
Unlike spoken interactions, writing nuances tone. Sentence phrasing can drastically alter perception, distinguishing between unhelpful abruptness (“You have to log out first”) and caring guidance (“Logging out should quickly resolve the issue!”).
Good writing includes complete sentences and proper grammar, projecting company credibility and trustworthiness. Even in phone-centric support, writing skills are crucial for internal documentation and signify clear thinking and communication.
7. Creativity and Resourcefulness
Solving problems is good; finding innovative and personalized solutions is exceptional. Resourcefulness training and access to diverse problem-solving tools can foster creativity.
Injecting personality and warmth into customer interactions elevates service from satisfactory to memorable. A naturally enthusiastic support representative transforms “good enough” service into “worth recommending” experiences.
Chase Clemons of Basecamp advises hiring individuals who require minimal rigid rules. Someone who intuitively understands a customer’s bad day and proactively sends flowers demonstrates unteachable, exceptional service.
8. Persuasion Skills
Support teams often encounter pre-sales inquiries. Persuasion skills are valuable in convincing interested prospects of your product’s suitability. Sales enablement tools and training can enhance persuasion abilities.
This isn’t about aggressive sales pitches but about preventing potential customers from slipping away due to a lack of compelling communication about your product’s value.
9. Positive Language Application
Effective customer service involves consciously using positive language. This small shift significantly impacts customer happiness. Language analysis tools can help identify and refine communication patterns.
Language shapes perceptions of you and your company. Consider a product backorder scenario:
- Negative Language: “I can’t get you that product until next month; it is back-ordered and unavailable at this time.”
- Positive Language: “That product will be available next month. I can place the order for you now and ensure it’s shipped as soon as it reaches our warehouse.”
The first example, while factual, sounds abrupt and impersonal, potentially causing negative perception, especially in written communication where tone can be misconstrued. The second example conveys the same information but focuses on resolution and positive action, emphasizing when and how the issue will be resolved.
10. Product Expertise
Top customer service professionals possess deep product knowledge. Without it, effective customer assistance is impossible. Product knowledge tools include comprehensive training programs and internal wikis.
New Help Scout employees, for instance, undergo customer support training in their initial weeks, highlighting its criticality in onboarding.
According to Help Scout’s Elyse Roach, solid product knowledge equips you with the best strategies for complex situations and fosters understanding of the customer experience, enabling you to advocate effectively for them.
Bridging Product Knowledge Gaps
Building comprehensive product knowledge takes time, especially for complex products. It may take years to master every detail. However, the right customer support tools can mitigate these gaps. Knowledge base systems and collaborative support platforms are vital tools here.
For example, with Help Scout, you can: (Original article continues with Help Scout features, which would need to be adapted or generalized if not focusing on Help Scout specifically). Whether you’re using Help Scout or its alternatives, explore features that empower your teams to deliver exceptional customer service.
11. Acting Skills
Occasionally, some customers are simply unappeasable. Customer mood tracking tools can help anticipate and manage challenging interactions.
External factors, like a customer having a bad day, can impact support interactions. Customer service professionals need basic acting skills to maintain a positive demeanor despite dealing with negativity.
12. Time Management Proficiency
Balancing patience with efficiency is key. While thoroughness is important, there are time constraints. Time tracking and ticket prioritization tools are essential for effective time management.
Excellent customer service professionals quickly recognize when they cannot assist a customer and efficiently direct them to someone who can.
13. Customer Reading Ability
Understanding basic behavioral psychology helps in discerning customer emotional states. Customer sentiment analysis tools can provide insights into customer mood. As Emily Triplett Lentz notes:
“I rarely use a smiley face in a support email when the customer’s signature includes ‘PhD,’ for example. Not that academics are humorless, it’s just that
<span>:</span><span>)</span>isn’t likely to get you taken seriously by someone who spent five years deconstructing utopian undertones in nineteenth-century autobiographical fiction.”
Skilled support professionals observe subtle cues about customer mood, patience, and personality, fostering positive interactions.
14. Unflappability
This is about staying calm under pressure. Stress management tools and techniques are valuable for maintaining composure.
Unflappable individuals remain calm and even influence others during stressful situations. Top customer service representatives remain composed, serving as a “rock” for customers who feel overwhelmed by their issues.
15. Goal-Oriented Approach
While empowering employees to “wow” customers is appealing, unstructured empowerment can be ineffective. Goal-setting and performance tracking tools ensure alignment with business objectives.
Without goals, employees lack direction. Business goals and customer satisfaction should be complementary. Frameworks like Net Promoter Score (NPS) provide guidelines that allow agent autonomy while prioritizing solutions and common issue resolutions.
16. Adaptability to Surprises
Customers will sometimes present unexpected requests or reactions. Scenario planning and decision-making frameworks prepare teams for unusual situations.
Teams need to be adaptable and think on their feet. Ideally, they should proactively create guidelines for handling such situations for future reference.
17. Tenacity
A strong work ethic and commitment to thoroughness are vital. Quality assurance tools and processes reinforce tenacity.
Exceptional customer service, the kind that generates positive word-of-mouth, often stems from an employee going beyond standard procedures to assist someone.
18. Closing Capability
Closing effectively means ending conversations with customer satisfaction confirmed and the customer feeling fully supported. Customer satisfaction survey tools and closing scripts can improve this skill.
Leaving issues unresolved is detrimental. Ensure your team confirms complete resolution with each customer.
19. Empathy
Empathy, the ability to understand and share another’s feelings, is crucial. Empathy training programs and feedback mechanisms can enhance this trait.
While perhaps a character trait, empathy can be developed. It’s a critical skill for customer service aptitude. Even when delivering unfavorable news, empathy conveys care and understanding, improving outcomes.
20. Methodical Approach
In customer service, haste is wasteful. Detail-oriented individuals are invaluable. Project management and task management tools can promote a methodical approach.
Methodical individuals thoroughly understand problems before responding, preventing ineffective “solutions.” They proofread meticulously, ensuring clear, error-free communication. Crucially, they follow up consistently, building lasting customer loyalty through proactive updates on resolved issues. Maintaining composure and methodicalness under pressure is essential.
21. Willingness to Learn
This is perhaps the most broadly applicable yet vital skill. Continuous learning platforms and knowledge sharing tools foster a learning culture.
Willingness to learn is foundational for professional growth. Team members must be eager to deepen product knowledge, improve communication, and discern when to follow protocol versus taking initiative. Those who prioritize continuous improvement will excel.
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Addressing Skill Gaps Within Your Team
What if team members seem resistant to improving their customer service approach or lack necessary skills? Help Scout’s Mathew Patterson suggests that perceived skill deficits or unwillingness to learn often stem from work environments that didn’t reward exceptional service.
Providing clear expectations and examples of excellent customer service within your company, while recognizing and celebrating small improvements, is key. Performance recognition tools and positive feedback systems are essential here.
As team members experience acknowledgment and reward for their efforts, engagement will increase, revealing whether genuine skill gaps require further attention.
The Evolution of Customer Service
As Seth Godin noted, customer service definitions vary across organizations. However, viewing customer service solely as a “cost-cutting race to the bottom” is detrimental.
The fundamental truth is that excellent customer service is a growth engine, not a cost center. It’s that simple. By focusing on the ‘must-have customer care definition tool list’ – principles, skills, and supportive tools – businesses can transform customer service from a cost to a competitive advantage.
