What Customer Service Skills Do I Need to Get Employed?

Customer service personnel help businesses close more sales by guiding prospective customers through the purchase process. They are also there to help these customers resolve any challenge or complaint they might have.

However, not all customer service applicants would be hired – for some reasons. If you want to increase your chances of being hired, it is time you cultivated some of the relevant customer service skills.

Who is a Customer Service Representative?

This is the person that helps the company make more sales by convincing the prospective customers on why they need to buy a product or get a service.

Investopedia defines customer service as the “direct one-on-one interaction between a consumer making a purchase and a representative of the company that is selling it.”

Below are some of the customer service skills, which if presented in your Curriculum Vitae, can help you land a job:

Customer Service Skills That Can Help You Get A Job

1. Communication Skills

As a customer service representative, you will be doing more of communicating with new and existing customers. Therefore, it is expedient for you to possess clear communication skills.

Interestingly, communication in this sense is not limited to verbal communication skills. It also includes how you make gestures, your reading and speaking skills.

Here are some of the communication skills that employers look for:

Lucid Communication

Can you hold a conversation? Do you know how to use certain direct questions to find out what the customers might be trying to express?

Platform-Specific Context

Some companies now include social media management in their job descriptions. If you are a customer service personnel, you are expected to interface between the brand and the customers on social media.

In light of this, employers expect customer service representatives to understand the platform usage and how best to handle complaints on such platforms.

In addition, customer representatives also need to understand the underlying meanings of the different emojis so they don’t end up using an inappropriate one.

2. Excellent Conversational Patterns

The language we use to communicate might not be as powerful as the way we communicate with it. The way you say something might have a positive or a negative effective effect on the listener.

Companies are looking to win over more customers and make more sales. If your customer service skill doesn’t include knowing how to use the right conversational patterns or positive statements, there is a chance that you wouldn’t be hired.

Here is an example: a customer is looking to place an order for a product but it has been exhausted. Interestingly, the product has been available for a couple of weeks and the customer has received a series of promotional emails on the same but took no action until then.

Naturally, you want to yell at the customer and ask what he or she had been doing all those while. But that would result in losing the sale. Instead, you want to speak nicely to the customer and say how sorry you are the order wasn’t placed earlier. You can then offer to make an order for the product for the customer as soon as it is available.

Between the two scenarios above, you can tell that the second makes a better impression.

3. Service and Product Knowledge

We have seen some customer service representatives only focusing on how best to talk to the customers to buy a product or use a service. But how possible would that be when you don’t understand what you are even trying to encourage them to take advantage of?

It is therefore imperative for you as a customer service personnel to have considerable knowledge of the service or product of the company you represent.

That way, you can answer questions, make recommendations and even help the customers maximize the product or the service.

4. Patience

Being a customer service representative is beyond speaking, listening, and taking notes. You also need to be patient – like a vulture. What does being patient have to do with this type of job?

Patience is an abstract customer service skill that helps the customer service representative to attend to queries and resolve complaints without bursting out in anger.

It is imperative to have this customer service skill because you will most likely attend to “problematic” and “angry” customers who will try all they can to get you worked up.

Therefore, being patient or having considerable control over your temperament helps you to manage the situation better.

5. Time Management is a Good Customer Service Skill to Have

Are you good at managing time? We don’t mean knowing how to read the hands of the clock or literally working round the clock to justify your pay.

Can you manage your time? Depending on the type of company you work for, timing is of the essence. Sometimes, callers or emails will be queued because there is little or no time to attend to them.

Therefore, you must be good at allotting time and managing it effectively. Try to resolve any complaints over the phone as soon as possible.

If you are handling the emails, be proactive and send out new emails, reply to the incoming emails and schedule new emails to make the job faster.

Also read: Top Professional Negotiation Skills you Need to Succeed in Business

6. Problem-Solving Skills

You need to be a problem-solver, even though the company’s product or service is designed to solve one or more problems.

Your problem-solving customer service skill comes in handy when helping the customers tackle some of the challenges or issues they might have encountered when using a service or product.

The following should help you become a better problem-solver:

• Understanding the fundamentals of the problem, including whether the problem emanated from the company or from the user/customer.
• Evaluate the extent of the problem to see if it is something that can be handled immediately. The evaluation also helps you determine if you are the right person to attend to it or if a higher authority should take it up.

Final Words

Having the right customer service skills place you many steps ahead of other applicants for a customer representative job opening.

What customer service skills do you possess and how do you intend using it to improve the growth of your employer’s business?