Rev up your customer service to take your CRM to the next level

If you want your employees forward-face with your customers, you need to ensure that they are power-packed with the essential skills that makes them a winner at customer support.

No matter how great your product or service could be, a poor customer service that lacks the skill of addressing the prospect’s concern in the right manner will only result in the downfall of the customer satisfaction rate.

There is a universal law that applies to customer service, as representatives carve their way into the minds of the customers to establish brand authority and improve the overall confidence level of the customers on the brand. The customer support wing in your organization is one of the most vital departments, and efficiency is inevitable here.

The following skills should become the pledge of every single member of the customer service department.

Patience

If this is not on the top of the most needed skills in your customer service department, you perhaps should stop reading this article at once. Your prospects are confused and irate, and that’s the only reason why they come to the support to solve their concerns. The situation will only get worse when they encounter an aggressive or a ruthless customer support executive.

We are talking about exceptional service, and not fast service. When dealing with your customers, ensure that you are patient with them while solving their concerns, however, being patient should not go to an extent that you end up giving a slothful service.

In addition to that, your conversational pattern, which forms an essential part of persuasion should not be hurried up. People will create perceptions of you, and more importantly the company based on the your communication skills. Be positive in all your interactions.

Be attentive

Listening is one thing, while understanding is something different. You may be listening to your customer, as ultimately you are supposed to give one pre-determined solution for them to relieve them of their pain points. Or, you could understand their concern, empathize with them, and provide a solution that is designed specifically to meet their pain points. This makes a huge difference. The ability to listen and understand the customers is so, very crucial for your customer service to be rated A+.

If you are looking to innovate your business, or discover some creative way to market your products or services, it’s time to pay attention to the customer’s concerns, as these are the mediums that will help you in getting creative. Be mindful to the feedback that you are receiving as they help you in implementing the required changes to your products/services, or your whole marketing strategy.

Knowledge

Try to work on this every single day, as there could be industry updates coming up. Try to build up the product in your mind with each passing day from its foundation, so that you are able to refer to any feature of the product with ease.

The best customer service executive is the one who has deep insights of how a product or a service works.

Each and every member of your marketing team should put themselves in the customer’s shoes and figure out what would be their common questions pertaining to the product/service. If the employee doesn’t know the product/service from top to bottom, they won’t know how to help the customers when they face some problems.

An efficient training system is what it takes to put the product/service into the head of your employees. Regular updating sessions will ensure that they don’t miss out on important industry updates.

Ability to read the customer’s mind
You are not likely to see all your customers face-to-face. In case of an online support, you may not even get to listen to the customer’s voice.

However, that doesn’t deprive you off understanding some of the basic principles of behavioral psychology and being able to read the customer’s emotional state.

This particular aspect of understanding the psychology of your customer will help in building an important personalization process. Also, this process helps in keeping misinforming and any other type of confusion at bay, as you are able to interpret your customer’s thinking with the help of extensive training and experience.

Improve your persuasion skills
Most of the times, the customer support personnel will get messages in the inbox that come out our curiosity about the product, rather than having problems with it.

In order to take the customer service skills to the top gear, you need to master the art of persuasion to convince the curious customers that your product is the right fit for them.
An expert customer service executive is not the one who just makes sales pitch, but he is the one who doesn’t let the customer just slip away as they didn’t get an interesting message to go with your product.

Goal oriented
It is extremely important for the customer service personnel be goal oriented. The executive has to work towards achieving business goals + customer satisfaction to work hand-in-hand without compromising with good quality service.

The executive needs to be educated as far as the business goals are concerned, so they know how ultimately they need to shape up the conversation. For most business houses, the common goal would be to increase business. Handling each and every customer concern should work towards this goal. If it is an existing customer, the goal should be that they become your brand ambassadors owing to the good quality of the customer service.

Should be spontaneous for live chat

If the customer has some question in the retail store, they would head directly to the store manager. As things have moved online and people are utilizing online stores to buy products and services online, the customers need someone to talk with online while they are considering a purchase on the website. eCommerce merchants could take their online customer support to the next level by providing live chat support by providing a chat window.

Address complaints with a positive mindset

Disappointment is the biggest enemy for any business house. Rather than getting disappointed by negative feedback from the customers, look upon it as an opportunity to improve your product/service.

If you face a customer complaint, take it seriously and act instantaneously on it. If you take your online reputation seriously, ensure that you check out all the platforms where your brand is being mentioned, for if you are not addressing the negative comments on Twitter, Facebook, or any other online channel, chances are that your brand may be affected badly.