Customer service skills go beyond ensuring a positive experience for customers. More and more internal customers, the employees your workers engage with day-to-day, expect a high level of satisfactory responsiveness. However, not all workplaces follow an ethos that ensures customer service skills are applied to daily interactions with both customers and team members.
In the same way consumer confidence increases when customers trust a company for customer service, employee loyalty also increases when organizations invest in customer service skills for cross-functional teams. That’s why leading organizations like Zappos continue to invest in training all employees with new CS skills.
What customer service skills do all workers need to thrive in the year ahead? This article takes a look at the top three skills that will help your entire organization excel in a hyper-competitive future.
What is Great Customer Service?
There is a difference between good customer service and great customer service. We don't need to touch on bad customer service because we all have experienced that sometime in our lives. When it comes to great customer service, three integral attributes are necessary:
- acting professionally,
- having the capacity to be patient,
- and maintaining a focus on the customer's needs.
For staff to be productive, they must have access to vital information. Providing internal support is beneficial to employee satisfaction and retention as it enables them to resolve any hindrances they encounter while working, and they are assured that there will be a helping hand available if they need it.
Important Customer Service Skills For Employee Satisfaction
It is almost essential to ensure that employee satisfaction is as vital as that of the clients. When workers are pleased, they offer superior service to the customers. Conversely, when they are disgruntled or lack enthusiasm, their performance is also adversely affected. Maintaining your staff motivated and prepared is a fundamental part of succeeding in managing a productive team.
#1. Creating a Climate for Rapport
Communication is key to any relationship – but this is especially true in customer service. The best customer service teams know how to communicate effectively with all types of people, whether they be a customer who is very satisfied with their experience or a customer who is angry and ready to take their business elsewhere.
When training your teams to create a climate for rapport, make sure you teach them how to use active listening and how to use open-ended questions to create solution-focused conversations.
Establishing a good rapport with internal and external customers can be done by demonstrating a concern for them. For instance, if a colleague mentions they broke their arm, inquire about how the healing process is going. If you were speaking with someone in person, and they revealed that they had recently had surgery, it would be polite to ask how they are doing.
#2. Handling Anger and Hostility
While it’s crucial to know how to handle positive and constructive conversations, it’s just as important to know how to deal with people who are angry and hostile. This can happen when a customer (or workmate) experiences a problem with your product or service (work) and want a solution right away.
When training your teams to handle these types of situations, make sure they know how to stay calm, how to defuse the situation, and how to remain civil even when someone is being rude. This can often be tricky, but it’s crucial to creating a positive experience for the customer and for your team.
When an individual is difficult or angry, it is rarely a reflection of the person they are interacting with. These reactions are usually caused by external circumstances or strong psychological factors. Employees need to put their communication skills to the test, recognize the context of the situation, and utilize psychological approaches to deal with the difficulty with a difficult person effectively, colleague, or customer.
#3. Maintaining Rapport
Communication is also crucial when resolving issues for customers and teammates. The best customer service teams know how to maintain rapport with customers throughout the entire customer service experience. They also know when to escalate the situation or end the conversation if necessary. Employees can apply the same skills when dealing with colleagues at work.
When training your teams to maintain rapport, make sure they’re aware of how to use language that’s respectful and appropriate for any situation. You can also help your teams out by providing training on different situations, so they know exactly what to say and how to do so in a way that maintains rapport.
If people in the workplace don't get along, it can lead to a decrease in productivity due to disagreements, arguments, and lack of communication. On the other hand, when employees understand and appreciate one another, as well as are able to collaborate effectively, the whole company runs more efficiently. Furthermore, good relationships between coworkers can increase morale and make employees feel more satisfied and likely to stay.
Customer Service Skills Online Training
Offering employees the right training for customer service can equip them with the capabilities to deliver excellent customer service to both clients and staff, which offers multiple advantages, including:
- Higher customer and employee satisfaction
- Positive word-of-mouth publicity for the brand
- High customer and employee retention levels
Vubiz offers an extensive Customer Service training library for customer service teams, as well as courses for all employees to develop the soft skills needed for more effective and collaborative work. To learn more, request a demo today.
Conclusion
It is not enough to just provide positive experiences for customers; it is also important to have good customer service skills when interacting with internal customers, like employees, on a daily basis. But unfortunately, not all companies realize the benefit of having a culture that fosters customer service skills in all interactions, both with customers and colleagues.
Just as customers' confidence in a company increases when they can trust it for customer service, employees will be more loyal when businesses invest in customer service skills for different teams. This is why it's important for leaders to persist in training all their employees in new customer service skills needed in the year ahead.