A customer service representative is a professional who works either directly or indirectly for the customers and prospective customers of a given company. Representatives are often seen as the outward face of their company because they are usually the first people customers talk to when they have a question or concern. Sometimes they are problem solvers and other times they are trying to initiate sales. They may also simply help clients find information. They may work in different kinds of companies and their job description can be quite varied. All have one thing in common, which is helping connect to outside people with inside information.

What to look for when Hiring Customer Service Representatives?

Why does Customer Service Matter?

We all love to receive great customer service, as consumers, it makes us feel good. So much so that consumers now rate customer service as the most important factor when deciding to do business with a company. This means the traditional competitive advantages, such as price, location and product are rapidly disappearing.

In the technological era, customer service is king. Sad to say but when it comes to customer service we’ve all had a bad experience and news of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for good customer service.

So it’s really important to understand and avoid certain behaviors that make our customers angry. In a survey of Consumer Reports, 57% of customers expressed frustration that the company was not available when needed. 56% of customers felt that customer service is still too slow.

42% of customers felt that they have to speak to multiple agents before their problems are resolved. 34% of customers feel like just another number and the service they receive is too impersonal. With 24% of consumers feeling they know more about the product than the agent they were speaking to.

This is the reason it is extremely important to hire excellent customer service representatives.

What to Look For When Hiring Customer Service Representatives?

1. Empathy Level

Handling support tickets and customers of different kinds can be quite challenging. So, one of the most essential qualities to look for in a customer support representative is a high level of empathy.

Without empathy representatives can break quickly and it may reflect badly on how a customer conversation is handled. They need to have the ability to handle frustrated customers.

Your interactions may begin with someone who is frustrated or unhappy. It is important that you understand and identify with the feelings of others and communicate accordingly. 

2. Ability to Troubleshoot

Troubleshooting ability doesn’t necessarily mean technical ability but the ability to take a scientific approach or perform a root cause analysis when they approach an issue.

It is also important to look for customer service representatives’ ability to anticipate the customer’s needs in advance and go the extra mile in proactively offering the solution. A good customer service representative should understand that not every customer is the same. As a result they should know how to read the customers.

For example- You might have a customer that wants a little conversation and just wants to quickly get in and out. While the other hand there are also the customer who loves conversation and tell you all about their day before they get to the issue at hand.

3. Internal Voice of the Customer

Your customer service representatives need to be the internal voice of the customer, who will continuously take feedback from the customer and try to push them into the development cue.

Of course, this comes with their ability to judge once mutually beneficial for the company and the customer and if it’s worth pursuing it. Focusing on positive language can highly improve your customer service. However, this means much more than overly nice and cheery. 

It’s all about reframing the conversations to be positive. For example- Reframing conversations to be solution focused rather than problem focused. A phrase such as “that’s no problem, in fact, we have multiple solutions that can easily get you back on track in no time”

4. Creativity 

Being a great customer service representative isn’t just about their ability to solve problems for the customer but being able to find easier and clever ways to do so. The creativity also extends to how they respond to a situation.

The phrasing of a response makes all the difference. For example- “Logging out and logging back in should help resolve this” sounds much better than “can you log out please?”

In the world of customer service, curveballs are extremely common. Customers with odd requests to customers who might end up being incredibly rude. The ability to adapt to any situation and more importantly know when to ask for help will be key in these kinds of situations.

At the end of the day, the representative should never want to follow the wrong protocol for any given situation. Knowing how to properly approach these conversations to ask for help will make the difference between good and bad customer service.

5. Communication Skills

The ability to communicate effectively with the customer is key.it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should look for the vocabulary and language skills. Effective communication is all about making sure the communication to the customer is simple and easy to understand.

For example- At times it makes more sense to say that the issue will be resolved in 4 hours than explaining the technical issue in depth. 

Customer service is used in many jobs at every level. To succeed in a customer service role, you will need a variety of communication skills and personal attributes in your employee such as : active listening, How to handle conflict resolution, having empathy, nonverbal communication like body language and eye contact, negotiation skills, and professionalism.

6. Knowledge About the Product or Service

Your customer service representatives should be highly knowledgeable about your customer’s product and services. At the end of the day, your customers will see them as experts that are ready to help.

This is why in the retail fashion industry, sometimes employees are required to wear their retailer’s clothes and come up with fashionable outfit combinations to show off the customers shopping at the store.

Ideally, your customer service representatives will also be power users and fans of your products and services.

7. Willing to Share Insights

The customer service representatives you would hire will witness to infinite scenarios surrounding your customers and your products and services. At the end of the day, your most experience customer service representative might be the ones that best know your customer.

As a result, a good customer service will be willing to share these insights with the rest of your team and company. These insights can help you develop new products or strategies to better help your customers.

8. Sales Skills

Your customer service representatives should be good in sales skills. It’s no-brainer for any customer service representatives. After all, these representatives will interact with many undecided customers that with the proper guidance could become long term loyal customers.

On the other hand, great customer service representatives will also identify upsell opportunities that can lead to larger purchases from existing customers. Customer service representatives should know when not to push the envelope of being salesy. No-one likes to be pressured into buying something.

9. Positive Scripting

Your customer service representative should have the ability to make minor changes in your conversational balance. This can truly go a long way in creating happy customers.

• Without Positive Scripting

“I’m sorry I can’t get you that product until next month, it is back ordered and unavailable as of the moment. Wre can’t do anything about it.”

• With Positive Scripting

“That product will be available next month. I can place the order for you right now, and I will make sure that it will be sent to you once we have it on our warehouse!”

10. Acting Skills

Sometimes your customer service representatives are going to come across people that they will never be able to make happy. It’s a situation outside their control. They probably had a bad day or they are just a natural complainer.

Sometimes representatives will be greeted with those angry customers that seems to want nothing else but to pull you down. Every great customer service professionals needs basic acting skills to maintain their usual cheery persona, inspite of dealing with people who are just plain grumpy.

Benefits of Having Great Customer Service.

1. Adds Value to Product or Services

Adding great customer service to your product or service offering can increase its perceived value. This means that when compared to competitive products or services, yours can stand out and beat the competition.

All thanks to your great customer service. As a result, your products and services, end up delivering more value to your customers.

2. You Can Charge More

It can let you charge more for your product or service. Following from our previous point, this add a value to your product and services can be carried over to your pricing strategy.

The truth is that customers will pay more for some products or services, if they come with really great customer service. It can be considered as an added premium. As a result, great customer service can tranlate into increased revenue for your business.

3. Increases Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is hard to build and hard to keep. One way to create and nurture customer loyalty is through top-notch customer service.

This process begins from the moment a customer becomes interested in your product and continues way past the post-purchase stage.

4. Increases Recurring Revenue

Acquiring new customer is more expensive than creating repeat business from an existing customer. Increased customer loyalty makes it more likely for those customers to purchase from business again.

This would then increase your recurring revenue as well. Make sure you are implementing customer service strategies that can translate into recurring revenue or upsells. 

5. Build Brand Value

Great customer service can translate to increase value to your product or service. Overtime this can increase the value of your brand as customers become loyal to you, your brand and your brand’s perceived value increases.

This can play a key role in the success of a new product launch or valuation of your company when it comes to selling ownerships stakes.

6. Boost Employee’s Morale

By this point, you might be able to see how offering great customer service can translate into increase customer’s loyalty and brand value. All these advantages can snowball into higher customer satisfaction scores across your organization.

As a result, this can have significant impact on your employee’s morale. After all, people don’t like working for companies with a negative reputation. This can translate to decrease in employee turnover which can be incredibly expensive.

How to Improve Your Customer Service?

• Be Present

As a business owner so often we are thinking about either the past or future. However, the first step to great customer service is to be present. This isn’t about thinking what you have just done or what you are going to be doing next but instead focus on only the person that is infront of you.

By doing so, you will make people feel acknowledged and appreciated, which people will love you for.

• Ask Questions

One of the biggest criticisms I hear about sales people is that they talk too much. When a salesperson gets an inkling that “I might be interested in something “ they then proceed to tell me as much as I possibly can about their product.

There’s an old saying that ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’. The best way to show people that you care is to ask them questions.

For example- “What made you coming to our store?” or “What type of coffee table are you looking for?”. Just be genuinely interested in the other person and ask questions from the heart.

• Match Energy

Some people say that in order to be effective you have to be really enthusiastic and excited all the time. This might work for some people but for others it’s going to completely turn them off.

Instead great customer service is all about being flexible and being able to adapt your approach to fit in with the other person. If the other person is talking quite loud, you might wanna do the same as well. 

However, if they are a bit more centered and talking quite slowly, then you might wanna do the same. Remember, people like people like themselves. Extend your range and use other person as a guide and be flexible in your approach.

• Discuss Constantly

The topic of customer service should be mandatory in every business meeting. As a business owner, you can ask people to share “What’s been your best customer service experience of the week?”

The first time you do this, you probably going to get a lot of blank looks and that’s because a lot of staff just aren’t present. However, keep asking the question because staff will soon becoming more conscious of their interactions and overtime this is going to lead to a lot of positive stories to share.

• Recognize Effort

What get’s recognized, get’s done. Consider introducing some new awards to your staff. I am not talking about ‘Staff of the Month’ because pretty standard in every company. You should also have an award called “Customer Service Champion” or something along those lines.

If you make people feel special, your staff will soon start competing and strive to achieve that award. It will help people be more focused and more conscious of getting customer feedback.

Once you have all of these stories, then you might be able to turn a whole lot of those into testimonials for your business as well. This will drive more sales and more success.