Customer Service Skills: What Your Customer Support Team Lacks and How You Can Fix It

Enhancing the relationship between your business and its customers takes more than just offering discounts or encouraging ambassadorship. Before you can have those loyal customers, you first need to ensure that you have a team of dedicated and knowledgeable customer support team who are ready to answer every query and resolve issues that customers are having as they use your product or patronize your service.

There will always be problems that your customers would encounter along the way and if your business is to succeed and acquire even more loyal customers, having an efficient customer support team that’s equipped with every crucial skill is a very important matter. But hiring such agents is a big challenge not just salary-wise but also on other aspects like work ethic and skills enhancement and additional training.

Everything takes both time and money and even if you already have an existing team, ensuring that they work for the common cause of building customer trust and advancing your overall business growth plan is an enormous undertaking. If you already hired some customer support specialists for your business but still fail in terms of customer feedback ratings especially on after-order matters then you need to start learning looking into the reasons why it is happening.

It’s More Than Just Excellent Communication Skills

Customer support specialists get hired mostly because they are good at communicating. Some speak perfect English and others are proficient in other languages. But an excellent customer support agent is one that not only communicates and deliver’s the company’s message to customers very well but is also able to engage and empathize with them.

Your customers want real human interaction as they contact your support team. If there’s something that they hate then it’s being treated as a faceless, nameless agent whose sole purpose is to bring in profit for your company. They want to talk to a real person who understands and relates with the disappointment that they feel.

Finding a customer support agent that has these skills is like finding needle in a haystack but such skills can actually be learned and acquired. With proper training and persistent encouragement, your existing customer support team is capable of transforming into an effective pillar of business growth. So let’s explore some possible aspects that your team lacks and seek to solve them as we move along towards the end of this article.

1. Your Team Needs Further Customer Service Skills Training

Hiring the best customer support agents out there who’s got all the needed experience entails a big amount of money in salaries and bonuses. But if you’re just starting with your business or brand and you’re still working on a tight budget, choosing agents who would accept lower hourly rate will be your only choice. Most will need further training along the way and that’s where you need to invest time on. Here are some key customer service skills that your new-hires must possess.

- Strong Character: Customer is always right as we often say it. For your agent to become an effective mediator, moderator, and communicator for your business, they must have a strong character and the innate ability to swallow pride and be able to accept any negative feedback and hurtful words that irate customers would oftentimes throw at them. Whether your customer support team is dedicated at communicating directly with customers or they are assigned to gather feedback from your social media pages and other channels, they always need to put customers first all the time and that keeping customers happy is always the top priority.

- Thorough Knowledge: Your customer support agents are going to be on the frontlines. They’re going to absorb all the hurtful words, issues, problems, and disappointments that customers want to be heard by your company. If they are to become effective support/relationship agents then they need to have thorough knowledge of what the product is, what its features are, its common issues, and the ways such common issues can be resolved. Aside from those details, your customer support agents must also know every detail of the business processes like order processing, shipping and delivery time (if it’s an online shop), warranty terms, the terms and conditions (for service and subscription type products), etc. Your agents need to be informed thoroughly on this crucial business information so they can respond to your customers with honesty and consistency especially when queries become too technical.

- Clarity in Communicating: Your agents need to learn how to convey the exact message that you want them to deliver to your customers for every particular issue that may arise. You surely don’t want customers to think that they are going to receive 50% discount when what you really meant is they’re going to get 50% of the total value of products they purchased as a reward. Be clear and train them to use genuine positive language so customers will stay encouraged after every conversation. The end goal here is customer satisfaction and being able to communicate clearly plays a big role in reaching that.

- Excellent Work Ethic: Your agents need to have a good work ethic. That type of person who will assist your customers to the end until the issue is resolved. Being able to manage time so more customers are served in every shift is another point that you need to emphasize. The key here is training and equipping your agents with the right knowledge and skills so they can effectively handle every customer efficiently and professionally.

- Being Adaptable: Your customer base is composed of people from all walks of life especially if you’re selling a variety of products or offering entertainment services and general subscriptions. Your agents need to be able to learn how to deal with every type of customer and handle them in every kind of situation. There will always be surprises along the way and irate customers will be a part of everyday shifts. Adaptability is crucial in your team and they need to be willing to train for that so that in the long run, they’ll be able to work efficiently no matter to what department they get assigned to (e.g. technical issues, refunds, saves department, customer acquisition, etc.)

- Consistency, Patience, and Empathy Above All: Customers would at times be very particular with the details. They don’t want to be played around or feel like they are being fooled or taken advantage of. Some are irate while others are sarcastic. Your agents need to be consistent all throughout every engagement and ensure that patience always rules their every word and action. Train them how to speak with empathy in every type of situation and emphasize the goal of providing the same level of professionalism and sincerity for every customer no matter what the issue or mood is.

2. Examine Every Point of Engagement

When customers feel bad in any stage of their overall journey of dealing with your business, the end rating will always be leaning toward the negative side. This means that your relationship with them is bound to get ruined at some point. That is why aside from making sure that your customer support agents are equipped with the right skills, they also need to be consistent and apply those skills in every point of their engagement with your customers. Be wary with every level where your agents get in touch with customers and make sure that the overall customer experience at these levels are on the good side. Not paying attention at this will get you into the risk of having lapses in certain aspects which can be very harmful to your business’s reputation as a whole.

3. Improve Your Overall Customer Support Strategy

The staff that you hired may already be equipped with the right skills and are consistent at every point where they become engaged with your customers but without the right customer service strategy, everything will still fail. Be sure to create the perfect organizational systems and strategies that are aimed at pleasing customers in every point. Being proactive is a good place to start with so that customers feel happy right before experiencing any issues with your product or service. Here are some pointers that will help you achieve that.

- Treat Them Like A Real Person: Your customers want to speak with real people and not just read FAQs or chat with programmed bots. Avoid the mistake of just using automated emails or sending them to automated prompts over the phone which all eventually lead to an assurance of a resolution only to get disappointed after days of waiting and their issue still not resolved. You can use social media as a live chat channel and ensure that an agent is assigned at responding to the comments that they post on your FB page. Make them feel that your agents are there to help them and be sure to train agents to do that every single time. Tell your agents to use photos for their agent account so customers see that it’s a real person talking to them and helping them to resolve their issues. This would ensure that they are satisfied with their every engagement to your customer service team.

- Always Be There For Them: Adding that personal touch to your customer service strategy means ensuring that your agents are available whenever your customers need them. Most successful businesses offer 24/7 customer support so customers from all over the world are served no matter in what time zone they are from. Others also offer zoom meetings or Skype conference calls to serve those who badly need technical assistance. For the more advanced cases, remote desktop access is also offered to customers so their issues can be resolved. This increases the trust rating of your business and raises its customer satisfaction levels higher. You can also offer additional reason for them to trust your brand by adding a physical address which they can visit for repairs and other technical issues that can’t be resolved over the Internet.

- Offer Special Help To The Most Loyal Customers: Another strategy which you fail to do in your current customer service strategy is offering VIP treatment to your most loyal customers. You can assign a team to help them in their issues and always let them know that you appreciate their loyalty to your product or brand. To learn which customers deserve this, you can set up a survey or arrange some interviews. If it’s an online shop that you’re running, you can use apps and other software tools that smoothly integrates with the e-commerce platform that you’re using and voila! You’ll have that all-important list of your top customers in no time!

- Create a Home For Your Customers: Your customers will eventually turn loyal to your brand especially as you improve your overall customer support strategies. These best customers that you have will appreciate it even more if you build a community for them where they can discuss everything concerning about your product or brand. There are several ways in how you can bring them together and that includes social media pages, forums, online communities, interactive websites, hosting webinars, podcasts, and for offline forms, you can host trade shows and conventions when you see fit. These channels work great in enticing prospective customers to come and purchase your product since they also act as a great promotional tool. Just be sure to assign a customer relationship agent in these channels to monitor the contents being posted and mediate in case conflicts arise.

4. Train Agents On How To Establish Good Rapport

Training your agents to have the right customer service skills is a good starting point but if they are to become effective on their job, you’ll need to ensure that they are able to create rapport so that every interaction with your customers turn into a fun and informative conversation. Here are some effective strategies that you can adopt:

- Listen Attentively: Even the most irate customers will tend to calm down once they feel that your agent is actively and attentively listening to what they’re trying to put across. Learn the value of emphatic statements like “I totally see where you’re coming from”, or “I understand that this must have upset you”. Another magic statement is “I can see why you feel disappointed” or “I can totally relate to your experience so please let me help you with it”. Saying such things will drive away the disappointment and establish a trust relationship between the customers and your customer support agents.

- Find a Common Ground: Your agents can start showing customers that they really care by finding a common ground between them and the customers that they serve. Topics like hobbies, interests, how’s the day going, etc. are great conversation starters but your customers need to know when to apply them and when not to. Humanizing every customer interaction is the key towards establishing that crucial relationship that your business needs to have with your customers

- Follow-up To Make Sure Every Issue is Resolved: Showing sincerity and making the impression that your customer support team is really serious about helping every customer can simply be done by doing follow ups. This can be in the form of a follow-up email or a confirmatory question just before the call, chat, or other forms of customer interaction ends. When customers see that your agents are sincere, they will trust your brand even more and even recommend it with their family and friends just on the basis of that genuine interaction that they had with your customer support team.

- Proactively Accept and Admit Mistakes: Train your agents to be brave and honest by admitting mistakes especially on those crucial moments where customers didn’t notice yet. This boosts their confidence and trust on your brand and your business as a whole. It also gives your agents better control of every situation so customers can focus on the real issue as your agent helps in having it resolved.

5. Offer Customers a Way to Provide Feedback

No matter how keen you are in providing the best customer service for your customers, you just won’t be able to monitor every issue from every customer who comes in contact with your support agents. If you want to learn what customers really think, which business, product, or aspect of your brand is good or bad, and what ugly experiences they had as they interacted with your business, you will need to provide a way for every single one of your customers to be able to give feedback.

Here are some feedback collection methods that you can try:

- Contact Us Page

- Survey Emails

- Survey Pages

- Feedback SMS after a Support Call

Of course, you are not limited to such options alone. You can try other methods or even combine multiple ones if you really want to know where the issues take place and what kinds of issues are dragging the progress of your business down. Asking customer feedback is crucial in ensuring that issues are dealt with in a timely manner and by doing so, you effectively prevent it from getting worse.

The Ultimate Goal: Customer Satisfaction

As you ensure that every one of the tips that we gave above are being followed and implemented by your customer support team, always remind them and even yourself that the ultimate goal of all these measures is customer satisfaction. A satisfied customer turns into an effective promotion agent for your business and if you are able to turn every customer who gets in contact with your customer support team into a super loyal one, you’ll have a great source of authentic endorsement working for you at a very low cost.

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