Our Business Call Center Brings You 5 Customer Service Skills Every Employee Needs

A Courteous Communications is a leader in the telecommunications industry when it comes to providing top-level, elite customer service. With countless customer service awards under our belt, our business call center decided it was time to share the wealth of experience and various tips we have learned in the three decades of operating.

Customer service skills that can benefit any employee

An Outgoing, Friendly, Can-Do Attitude

Being a customer service based business ourselves, we know how an excellent attitude can help your business succeed. If you are looking to hire new employees or train the customer service representatives you currently have, we suggest looking at the employee’s general attitude.

People buy and do business with people they like. Your customers also care about how your business makes them feel. An outgoing employee will bring your customer service game to another level by consistently spreading positivity and good cheer throughout your business communications.

Of course every employee should have a friendly demeanor and a can-do attitude to get an assignment or task completed. Pay attention to those employees who bring an A-game attitude when handling your customers’ queries and needs. Positive energy attracts positive energy so be sure to feature the most outgoing personalities in your internal pool of staff on your business’s frontlines.      

Patience, Empathy and Active Listening Skills

These attributes are better understood by taking each skill apart to define them separately.

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• • Patience Defined: The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.
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• • Empathy Defined: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
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• • Active Listening Defined: A communication technique used in training and conflict resolution, which requires the listener to feed back what they hear to the speaker; confirming the understanding of both parties.

When your employee has mastered the virtuous art of patience, your business has a representative that can tackle just about any customer service issue thrown their way. Being able to keep calm during high pressure moments is a priceless asset to your company’s customer service department.   

Having an employee that can fully understand the emotions and feelings of another does not stop at just helping your customers and leads. This rock star team player can also use their empathy skills to help and encourage their colleagues as well.

Active listening, especially as it relates to telephone customer service because you are not face-to-face with customers, is vital for every single one of your employees. Customers are smarter than you may realize and can easily spot an employee placating or fake listening. You want to train your employees to actively listen then repeat and paraphrase what they have heard to the speaker. This reduces any chance of miscommunication in your workplace.   

A Professional and Knowledgeable Presence

Professionalism is a monumental component of each and every employee’s day to day duties and overall job description. You are not running a business that caters to your friends and family; you need a certain level of professionalism in your employee pool. You are not running a monopoly where you hold all the cards and your customers do not have the option to turn to your competitors.

Even if your business brand and culture is casual, you still want your business to have a voice that showcases authority and industry-specific expert knowledge. You need to make sure your employees are always on time, prepared and ready to perform their work duties with skill and tact.   

Solution and Goal Oriented, Self-Starter

No business owner wants to have the headaches of micromanaging each and every decision within their establishment. Hire employees you trust to delegate work to so you don’t have to be called in for every little task.

A solutions and goal oriented worker will be able to use their common sense to make sure the production of your business continues in the right path. They will be able to think on their feet when a customer issue comes up and will have the wherewithal to gently control the situation without the help from upper management.      

A Thick Skin and Oscar Winning Acting Abilities

And the Oscar for best customer service goes to…. Yes, a certain level of acting skills is needed to be an outstanding customer service representative. Our business call center handles millions upon millions of calls each year. Our virtual receptionists are real people that may have off days, but we take great pride in sharing that you will never notice these off days. Whether we having customer service calls coming in at 3:00 am on a Saturday morning or 4:30 pm on a Wednesday, our employees can act with the best of them and put on a happy face. A great customer service agent knows how to turn on the smile and charm to make a customer feel special.

The acting abilities definitely transitions well into the need for your employee to have thick skin. Taking a certain level of heated abuse from disgruntled customers is all in a day’s work. Your employee that handles the customer service portion of your business needs to understand that complaints, frustrations and grievances are not to be taken personal. When an employee starts taking customer service complaints personal, that employee is opening up to becoming mad and defensive in their reactions. You don’t know what you customer service employees being anything but friendly and eager to help.     

We Hope Our Business Advice Helps You Improve your Customer Service Skills

Our business call center enjoys sharing customer service tips and tricks that we have been building upon since 1986. Each week we post three articles to help you understand various subjects and scenarios within the customer service industry.

If after reading this article you realize that you need an awarding winning team of customer service representatives to help your business, give us a call at 1-800-785-6161. During a free consultation you can speak with an account specialist to discuss our affordable services and learn more about how we can help your customer service department.