Customer service skills are the skills necessary to communicate with others, solve problems, demonstrate patience and understanding, ensure customer satisfaction, and resolve customer complaints
Essentially, the 3 important qualities of customer service center around three: professionalism, patience, and a “people-first” attitude
Customer service is the support you provide to your customers before, during and after they buy and use your products or services.
Excellent customer service should be proactive, personalized, convenient and competent.
Customer service is both a type of job and a set of job skills. As a job, customer service professionals are responsible for addressing customer needs and ensuring they have a good experience. As a skill set, customer service entails several qualities like active listening, empathy, problem-solving and communication
While traditionally you might think of customer care as a service from a business to a consumer, it is also applicable within a business. For example, you may be in a role that provides services to other internal teams. In this case, you would want to ensure that you understood and were able to meet their needs.
Good customer service is the quality and timely assistance provided by a business and its employees to the people who use or buy its products and services
Proactive: Instead of waiting for customers to reach out to you, it can be helpful to offer help or recommendations before they ask or contact them first if you’re aware of an issue.
Personalized: Providing great customer service means knowing who your customers are and what they want. In order to find out what your customers needs, you can ask questions, use social media and conduct surveys to gather valuable insight.
Convenient: Give your customers several options for getting the service they need so they can reach out in their preferred channel of communication. You can work with customers in person, over the phone or online through email, chat or social media direct messages.
Competent: It’s important for you to be very knowledgeable about your company and the products and services it provides so you can appropriately help your customers as issues arise.
For many businesses, people working in customer service roles or using customer service skills are the human face of the company. These businesses rely on employees who can create a positive dialogue with customers, helping to foster loyalty and a good reputation.
Anyone can benefit from improving their customer service skills. Being a good communicator, having empathy and actively listening, for example, will help you be a better employee and colleague overall. Additionally, expanding your technical knowledge and skills will make it easier to provide service to others.