Essential Customer Service Skills Every Customer Service Representative Needs to Be the Exceptional

Article By Valentine Okolo

In our everyday dealings with customers, one of three things is bound to happen. We either:

   -fail to meet customer expectations

   -meet customer expectations

   -or exceed customer expectations

Exceeding customer expectations is no mean feat. In today’s business world, customers are increasingly knowledgeable about product choices, service standards and above all consumer rights. And so exceeding customer expectations has become a must do for any business that is serious about gaining market share, loyalty and customer trust.

So what are these essential customer service skills every customer service representative needs to be exceptional?

Work on Your Attitude

Your attitude is a representation of who you are; what you believe and the choices you make. Guard it with your life because it is your life. Attitude is everything. Make a subconscious decision to be excellent at delivering customer service; in fact at everything you do. Resolve to be the best in your office, the best in the industry and enjoy doing it. When you put your mind to it you will begin to notice improvements in your results.

Resolve to control your subconscious. Understand that the subconscious controls the judgments you consciously make. Learn to feed it positively. This is where you begin to take control of your decisions. When you positively manage your decision making process, you will discover that you will be better able to manage your attitude towards customers especially problem customers, your colleagues, your employers and the community.

Exude Integrity at All Times

Integrity is arguably the highest moral standard one can achieve. The word integrity in itself stands for moral excellence, wholeness and in many ways honesty. People should be able to see you as someone who says only what he will do and does what he says. Above all, that which you say you will do should always be morally right.

Customers trust and are loyal to you when they know you maintain a high sense of integrity. This means that you will always treat customer transactions transparently, exclude moral excellence in all deals, keep to commitment and accept full responsibility for your actions. An employee of integrity gains customers’ trust and the trust of his employers over time and when you develop trust you gain loyalty and respect from everyone.

Professionalism

Be the professional they can trust. This means that you must perform your duties quickly and accurately. To be able to do this effectively, you must have excellent product knowledge. Learn the act of patience. You can go beyond basic and expected levels of service to provide your customers with desired and even surprising service interactions. Try to ensure you make your business or service the determinant of the standard for service in your industry, and then go the extra mile by making a way to always go beyond it.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to learn or understand the feelings of others. When translated to service delivery, emotional intelligence becomes the ability to learn or understand the feelings of your customers.

One key characteristic of emotional intelligence is empathy.

Empathy means that you will always try to put yourself in your customers’ shoe. You must understand how your customers’ expectations are rising over time, understand what your customers really want from you and understand what they value and what they believe they are getting (or not getting) from your business.

Do not treat a customer in a manner you would not like if you were placed in their own shoes.

Develop Your Personal Standards

You must have a clear understanding of yourself and the concept behind customer buying. To do this effectively, you must first develop your personal standards. You must equally understand what drives customer behavior.

The word standard means a level of excellence required or specified. The drive to always achieve excellence should form a part of your character. To maintain high personal standards, you need to make quality decisions based on moral strength and principles. You should be able to make compelling commitments and stick by them even when there are no factors enforcing or restricting you to keep them. These areas of standards include growth, honesty, integrity (earlier discussed), relationship, energy and action. All these have been extensively treated in my course on Basic Sales, Marketing andBusiness Development Skills.

Article By Valentine Okolo