In the current retail market, providing first-class customer service requires more than just help desk software and call scripts.
Introduction
When the founder is the sole person dealing with customers at the beginning of the business, it’s crucial to understand what it takes to deliver excellent customer service as an e-commerce brand. Once you can handle the skills mentioned below, you can develop them in yourself and look for them in future employees.
1. Effective Communication Skill
Effective communication is essential because customer service representatives must communicate clearly, empathetically, and timely. They are responsible for conveying more than just words – they must also convey solutions, guidance, and emotions.
Good speakers share internal product information in a way that’s easy for customers to understand. You should be able to do this in real-time. Communicating effectively also means being clear rather than clever, especially when the customer is upset. Many companies lose customers due to not using the right customer service phrases that provide clarity to the customer. Use straightforward language and easily understandable words.
2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
Empathy – the ability to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and understand the situation from their perspective – is a vital skill for customer service representatives. Those who deal with customer support should also be emotionally intelligent and allow it to guide interactions.
When customer service representatives combine empathy with emotional intelligence, it becomes possible to achieve another important skill: advocacy for customers. As a customer advocate, you can strive to proactively solve their problems with the best solution, not just the easiest one.
3. Active Listening and Attention
Listening and paying attention to customers’ feelings and issues is one of the most important customer service skills you need. Before you can apologize and offer assistance, you must listen and understand your customers.
Attention also applies to how you read emails, chats, texts, or messages on social media. Understanding context by asking the right questions and reiterating what customers say is also essential for active listening.
4. Teamwork Ability
Teamwork is another important element in customer service. Service representatives will need to consult with staff, partners, and contractors to pool knowledge, leverage collective experience, and find the best solution.
Excellent customer service also means working as a team with the customers themselves. The key is to recognize that you all want the same outcome: a workable solution. When you approach customer service this way, it becomes easier to see the customer as a partner and ally rather than an obstacle or annoyance.
5. Patience
Patience is required in the following situations: when the customer is angry and expressing it, when the customer takes a long time to explain the issue, when the customer disappears for a few minutes in the middle of the chat.
At the end of the day, patience underlies many of the other skills needed for customer service. With patience, you can remain calmer, actively listen, and stay observant while customers vent their anger and explain their problems and test solutions.
6. Ability to Handle Pressure and Take Responsibility
A fundamental rule in customer service is the ability to take responsibility for customer issues. At the end of the day, customers are looking for brands that own the problem and the process of resolving it. This requires a mix of humility, integrity, and sincerity. The last thing you want to be is defensive.
7. Adaptability and Flexibility
Good customer service requires a lot of preparation. Many support teams use scripts and pre-prepared responses for common issues so that they can deliver customer service quickly.
But
It is impossible to prepare for every situation, and often customer service issues must be approached on a case-by-case basis. You must know when to let go of scripts or adapt them to find customized solutions – based on a deep understanding of the product and the customer.
8. Product Knowledge
A deep product knowledge is especially important when it comes to customer service. When you have strong knowledge of the product and its use cases, you can engage in conversations with customers equipped with more context. This makes you more confident and flexible in finding solutions that fit the context of each specific issue for each customer.
9. Growth Mindset and Willingness to Learn
The next skill in customer service is harder to quantify but equally important as the other skills on this list: willingness to learn.
Your product may evolve, your business may shift, customer preferences and habits may change, and throughout all of this, customer service teams must be able to adapt to the changing realities of their daily functions and grow within them.
10. Time Management and Organization
There was a time when customer service was primarily conducted over the phone. Representatives would answer calls and work until the customer’s issue was resolved. Today, customer service representatives are pulled in many directions – from social media to chat to phone – making it difficult to focus on individual customer conversations.
Therefore, solid time management and organizational skills are essential. Customer service representatives must be able to handle multiple conversations at once. They should prioritize channels and tickets and use their time in the most effective way.
11. Sales Skills
Customer service is often the last line of defense before a customer turns to a competitor. By effectively resolving customer issues, service representatives can reduce churn and help foster customer loyalty.
Additionally, with support chat, customer service representatives can field pre-purchase questions and help potential customers understand and choose the right product for them. When this happens, those same representatives can become your best salespeople, helping to drive sales to customers. However, the representative must have emotional intelligence and the savvy to know when and how to do this best.
12. Confidence
All the skills mentioned here are less effective when you lack confidence in your own abilities – whether that’s confidence in creative solutions or interpersonal and emotional intelligence skills or the ability to manage and organize time and work.
When you lack confidence, you may stick too rigidly to scripts (at the expense of customers) or spend too much time prioritizing atypical cases. Confidence in your own abilities can be very helpful in rebuilding customer confidence in your business.
13. Flexibility
The first solution you propose may not be the one that resolves the customer’s issue. Companies may face widespread problems, requiring customer service representatives to deal with many similar complaints. Some customers may not be satisfied with any solution.
It’s important to be flexible when solutions aren’t working and apologies aren’t satisfying customers. You need to be able to persist when solutions and apologies don’t please customers. Flexibility doesn’t mean rigidity. In fact, it can mean exactly the opposite. Customer service representatives often win over customers with kindness. When faced with an angry or frustrated customer, they try to remain empathetic and kind towards the situation. You can offer customers alternative options to swiftly resolve the issue.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/customer-service-skills
Leave a Reply