Customer Service is the value added features or services offered with the product that the customer has bought in order to make him happy. Customer Service basically means giving something extra to the customer to add more value to the original product/service. Here, are the best skills to enhance customer services delivery.

Consequence of Wrong Customer Service Delivery

The consequence of getting customer service wrong can be damaging. A massive 89% of customers have reported that they have stopped doing business with companies because of bad customer service. 

Nobody wants to work for a failing business and even worse if the trend continues, there might not be a business at all. Poor customer service is a factor in 8 out of 10 businesses that go bust. This proves that every good business needs excellent customer service delivery.

Do Complaints Matter?

With complaints on the rise in today’s connected world, customers don’t just get mad, they even get much more. A recent study revealed a staggering 38 Million UK consumers made a complaint last year. That amounts to a complaint every 1.2 seconds. 

It’s important to recognize the ever increasing influence of the internet and social media on customer service. Social media outlets have given customers a megaphone to voice to an increasingly connected population. Twitter, Facebook and others are rife with customer stories, mostly negative with game changing impacts on customer’s service.

A study by SITEL Groups shows that a massive 30% of consumers would now take revenge on a company by posting a negative comment online and social media was the channel for over 20 Million complaints across all sectors during the past 12 months.

What’s the True Value of Customer Service?

Avoiding customer complaints is only one of the many reasons why you need to get customer service right. There are lots of benefits for you and the company you work for. It’s true that nobody enjoys working for an organization that feels like a sinking ship. If the customer is happy you will be too.

It will allow you to focus on proactive opportunities and stop you feeling like you are in constant reactive firefighting. Good customer service delivery fuels positive publicity in the media, allowing you to be proud of what you do.

Most importantly, happy customers become loyal customers and loyal customers are very valuable indeed. They are willing to spend more, refuse to switch services, and crucially they are very likely to spread the love and recommend your services to others.

Top 10 Essential Skills to Enhance Customer Services Delivery

1. Empathy 

Empathy is one of the core customer service skills. It is one of the principles of customer service success. Empathy is your ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.

It’s about putting yourself in the other person’s position and imagining what you would want if you were them. There’s more to it, however, than just thinking about what you would want if you were them.

You must consider what they want and need, based on their experiences, influences, and beliefs. In other words, you must think about how they want and need to be treated in the moment. Not just how you would want to be treated if you were them.

“To fully empathize you must make a connection with the other person, it’s feeling with people.” -Brene Brown

2. Great Listening Skills

Be a great listener and listen intently. Ask questions and summarize the answers of your customers. This will surely show that you care and want to offer the right solutions. 

Learn how to effectively communicate with your clients. Know when to listen, when to speak and how to speak. It will make the communication process much simpler.

Get familiar with human psychology, body language and tone of voice when talking to customers. Learning about human behavior will make it easier for you to influence others and make genuine connections with customers.

3. Speed

Customers expect speed and response. How quickly you respond to a customer is crucial. How quickly the phone is picked up and how long it takes from the customer’s question till the answer or problem is resolved is crucial.

Some companies feel it’s okay to wait, sometimes days, before they respond to a customer’s tweet, email or a text. But the best and world class companies have set minimum standards. Some of those standards are several hours but a lot of them are trying to respond within minutes. 

Speed and response to the customer reflects how much you care about your reputation which is very important for great businesses.

4. Be Calm & Have Patience

Try to manage your emotions and stay calm. This will help to deal with disgruntled and confused customers. When you stay calm, your customer will feel much more respected.

Double check your customer to see if the customer is happy with the offered solution. Ensure their complete satisfaction and help improve your reputation with these customers.

Maintaining a good body language is also important even when you are talking with your clients over the phone. Smiling frequently and expressing happiness in your conversation helps to improve the customer’s experience. 

5. Keep the Business

Develop the ability to manage expectations of customer complaints. Stay up to date with company policies to ensure that any promise you make to a customer can be delivered.

Being honest and transparent with your customers proves that you truly care about their happiness and satisfaction, even when the message you are sharing is not positive.

Become an expert and learn everything about each product and service that you are selling to your clients. Spend time on studying them as well as various solutions you are offering various circumstances.

Having computer skills will also help when you are a customer service representative, it is much easier to quickly communicate with clients, customers and other individuals of your company.

6. Use Positive Language

Using positive language that is motivating and in ways persuading is the best way to reach your customers. If you sound confident in your conversation over the phone then convincing your customers for any kind of deal or solution will become easier.

Knowing how to solve problems, thinking ahead and maintaining your composure at all times will help you offer the best solutions to your customers.

7. Negotiate and Persuade

Knowing how to reach mutually acceptable compromises between you and your customer is essential for reaching win-win results. 

Doing more than a customer expects will definitely result in great solutions and loyal customers. Taking time to reflect on any mistakes you have made is the way for you to gain insight into how to properly manage customers and effectively communicate at all times.

8. Leadership 

Showing you are capable of providing new solutions for customers proves your leadership and increases your professionalism. Along with leadership, show a friendly and compassionate attitude to your customers. 

It will surely help in creating the right atmosphere for coming to the best solutions. Know your organization and interact with your colleagues. Being friendly with them will help you if you are ever stumped in the future with complex problems. 

The more people you get to know in your organization, the easier it is to work together to ensure that all of your customers are satisfied. 

9. Time Management

Managing your time properly as a customer service representative can ultimately mean the difference between falling behind in minimum calls required and excelling in the position you are holding.

Analyzing problems as soon as you begin to speak with the customer is a way to show your professionalism while also boosting your own ability to solve problems and discover new solutions.

10. Tenacity

Being goal-oriented, focused and determined shows your professionalism and dedication to representing the company you are working for.

Understanding how to close the deal or get to a solution and finalize the call is an essential part of the communication process.

7 Ways To Improve Your Empathy to Enhance Customer Service Delivery

1. Don’t Judge

Sometimes, what you don’t do is as important as what you do. There is certainly a time and place for judging, but it’s not when you want to show empathy to another person.

Their experience and their feelings about it are not something for you to judge. Accept that the other person has had different experiences from you and has different feelings from you.

Your role in empathizing is not to evaluate their feelings. Your role is to accept the way the other person feels and to validate their feelings, even if you disagree with them.

2. Just Listen

Listen to the other person with the goal of understanding them. Again, you don’t have to agree with them. You simply listen. If you speak at all, it’s to acknowledge what they are saying.

You might ask questions to gain clarity on what happened or how they are feeling. If you choose to ask questions, do so as a student, not as a prosecutor. 

3. Imagine Their Perspective

Often , in teaching empathy, we talk about the importance of putting yourself in the other person’s position. That recalls the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

A better way to look at this is using the Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” In other words, the other person may not want the same things as you.

For example, Think about a technical support session. You might prefer the support technician to just get to work to solve the problem. You might not want any small talk. Someone else, however, might want a more personal touch including a little chit-chat. 

To be fully empathetic, imagine the other person’s perspective. You can do that by mirroring their actions. If they initiate small talk, be prepared to respond accordingly. That’s a great example of customer service skills in action.

4. Remember Your Experience

While being fully empathetic involves imagining the other person’s perspective, you must still recall your own experiences. Think of the times when you were frustrated, nervous, or scared.

Recall how you felt at those times. Think about what helped you return to a more normal feeling. Think, also, about what wouldn’t have helped. Doing so may help you understand what the other person is feeling and provide some insights into words and actions you can use.

Bearing in mind that what worked for you may not necessarily be right for the other person.

5. Be Curious

Be curious about others. Try to learn about people who are different from you. Talk to new people. Engage in small talk while waiting in line. Some people say they don’t have any use for small talk, but small talk is the prelude to big talk.

What are some of the life experiences of people who differ from you by language, dialect, heritage, economic status, race, gender, religion, or anything else. As before, don’t judge. Listen and learn.

6. Caring About the Other Person

Have compassion for others. That’s one of the most basic of customer service skills. Compassion is when you notice someone hurting and want to help. Be careful about making your compassion conditional on your judgement of the other person.

Think instead about how you can make the other person’s experience a little bit better. Think about how you can make the world a little bit better. It doesn’t need to be big, it could be something as small as picking you a piece of trash.

7. Connect, As One Human To Another

Work on building relationships. Relationships can be intimate and deep, such as a marriage. They can also be brief and shallow such as when you provide technical support to an end-user.

Regardless, work to ensure that the other person in the relationship is having a good experience that you are affecting them in a positive way. Connect with other one human to another.

Your ability to master customer service skills is based on both technical competence and the ways in which you build relationships.

4 Ways to Increase Customer Satisfaction

1. Exceptional Customer Support

This may seem obvious but it’s often neglected. Your company has to deliver exceptional customer support. In today’s society, social media is a game changer and any negative experience at your company can be broadcasted to others immediately.

As a result, it can sour the entire perception of your company. The same goes for every other online review site. All it takes is one bad customer experience to cast a shadow.

Customers have so many options. So, there’s no way to guarantee they will stick around to give your company a second chance. Treat each customer support experience like it’s their last.

Strive for long term satisfied customers versus optimizing for short term potential gains.

2. Multi-Channel Support

When it comes to offering customer support, you should implement a variety of channels. There’s email support, public support forums and putting an FAQ page on your website.

With technological advances, we can offer real time responses through online chat and social media. You can offer support via direct messages as well as mining the public posts for comments and questions from customers.

You could also take social media support up a notch and create a company page that’s main focus is supporting your customer base. Overall, you want to give your customers and potential customers as many avenues as possible to reach your company.

3. User-Experience 

Let’s say your products or services are based online. It’s key to focus on the first set of interactions with the user. Make sure your website is easy to navigate. Make your pricing structure understandable and provide clear and concise ‘how to use’ information.

Your main focus here is providing a frustration free experience that makes understanding and purchasing your product as seamless as possible. A great way to maximize your user experience is to streamline your online customer support.

If your company requires specific information prior to answering a user’s questions, make sure that the first point of contact requests that info. You can also use drop-downs for customers to select what type of help they need.

This will speed up the process of getting their questions answered. If your customers can purchase your products online, simplifying the checkout process will be greatly appreciated. This also gives them the option of saving their information for future transactions so they don’t have to re-enter it next time. 

Add product images, so customers are confident that their order is right before clicking the purchase button. If you are a non-profit, give customers a recurring donation option.

4. Listen To Your Customers

The surefire way to gain customer satisfaction is to listen. Just listen to what they have to say. Their grievances are worth looking into because adjusting these issues could ultimately better your company.

You can gather this helpful info by analyzing support requests, monitoring discussion about your brand online, extracting info via social media and soliciting feedback with customer satisfaction surveys.

Nobody wants to spend an extended amount of time filling out a boring survey. Instead, create them to be short and to the point. Ask a few top-priority questions and then leave a text box at the bottom to gather qualitative info.

You can even use conditional logic which shows or hides fields depending on answers to previous questions. Once you have gained feedback directly you will know what adjustments to make going forward.