Do you know, every year, several companies across the US lose around $60 million due to poor customer service? This is enough reason for you to polish your customer service skills today. Gone are the days when aspiring customer service personnel had to attend seminars for improving their communication methods. Today, with much advancement in technology and the internet being omnipresent, one can easily learn new skills online. Here are a few tips for you to improve your customer service skills:
1. Practice Active Listening
The key to becoming a good customer service professional is to inculcate good listening skills in your personality. If you don’t have the strength and patience to listen to what the customer is saying, it will be difficult for you to carve space for yourself in this industry. When a client calls you, they want to be heard and served. This is when your active listening skills can win a customer’s heart. If you don’t have hands-on experience of interacting with a lot of people before, tune on to YouTube and listen to recorded phone calls on the web. Because YouTube is a cosmopolitan platform, you will come across intriguing content.
2. Use Positive Words
Not to forget, more than half of the customer’s problems go away as soon as customer service personnel use a positive language throughout the conversation. Because you will be representing the company, as soon as the customer interacts with you, they will feel relaxed. It is then up to you as to how the customer is navigated through the issue on the phone call. As a gesture of goodwill, always inquire about the health of the customer and take personal email addresses to wish them on their birthday. Because there are many competitors in the market, you need to stand out with your communication skills.
3. Know Your Product and Service
To help your customer, it is imperative that you have complete knowledge of the product and service. If you sound vague on the phone call, your prospective customer might churn to the competitor. It is recommended you spend some time with your manager to understand the product and service. If you are debuting as customer service personnel for the first time, it is essential that you spend some time with your peers and ask them about the kind of questions they receive from the customers. It will help you in preparing to answer the tough questions of the clients. You can check the phone answering messages on YouTube to know how professionally businesses connect with their clients.
4. Communicate Clearly
One of the easiest ways to improve customer service is to communicate easily, both in writing and verbally. The key to a customer’s heart is through simple communication. Because every country is inhabited by foreign nationals and immigrants too, you can expect to interact with people having different accents on the phone. Even if you’re working as a customer service professional in a country like the US, you cannot expect every phone call to be well versed in English. So when you answer the questions, your language should be clear and simple. Despise using terminologies that can make a customer feel inferior.
