Customer service may not be the most glamorous job in the world, but it’s important and necessary work for keeping consumers consuming.
Contrary to popular belief, being in customer service isn’t all parrot talk, passive aggression, and awkward silences. Today, a lot of customer service is about practicing more nuanced soft skills such as empathy, patience, active listening, and self-awareness (we’re looking at you, Dwight Schrute!) while learning how to engage with people on a more humanizing level.
To a large degree, company growth relies on customer service as a lifeline of business longevity. Without a strong customer service team, customers will hit a brick wall with your business and seek out competitors who can meet their practical and emotional needs.
We think it’s time to change the narrative about contemporary customer service and learn how to improve its skillset to meet the needs of an evolving audience.
Introduction to Customer Service Skills
Good customer service skills are integral to business success. The role that customer service reps play in providing your consumer market is the key to unlocking longer-lasting relationships with customers, cultivating a strong brand reputation, and competing with other businesses at peak industry level.
Excellent customer service may fall into the technical occupation category (answering calls, corresponding with customers online, operating CRM tools, working across multiple departments, etc.), but when you really distill good customer service, soft skills are where it’s at.
Quality customer service professionals should embody a range of different soft skills in order to deliver a positive customer experience. Some of the most notable ones include communication, empathy, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, and extensive product and brand knowledge.
These emotional and socially attuned skills can enable your customer service team to tackle even the most cantankerous of customers with enviable grace, ease, support, and positivity. That’s what good customer service is all about.
8 Core Skills Of A Great Customer Service Professional
Before we dive into our Schrute-worthy strategies for improving customer service skills for growth, let’s establish what some of these skills are. People who work in the customer service industry need to be a lot of things at once—salespeople, product experts, and sometimes even spur-of-the-moment therapists. There’s a surprisingly mixed bag of expertise needed to keep customers happy!
But underpinning all of these skills is the ability to connect with customers. Without that, cultivating strong, loyal relationships with your company’s audience will be virtually impossible.
So, outside of individual business specifics, what core skills and characteristics make a great customer service professional? Here are six that every business can benefit from focusing on when training and re-training their cohort:
1. Empathy
“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, “Would an idiot do that?” And if they would, I do not do that thing.” —Dwight Schrute
When someone rings up or reaches out to customer service, chances are they have an issue that needs sorting. By that point, they’re likely to be feeling a range of emotions—frequently frustration, confusion, or anger. Often, lots of anger.
The best way to respond to those kinds of feelings is to empathize with them and to show genuine concern—not shut them down or dismiss them. Ergo, empathy is crucial.
2. Problem-solving
On the topic of customer’s issues that need sorting, this is the most common reason for reaching out to a customer service line. It’s very seldom they get in touch just to say thank you for an awesome product (even if your product is awesome).
Unfortunately, not all problems can be solved immediately, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to figure it out. You just need to think outside the box, and that requires the skill of creative problem-solving.
3. Effective Communication
“I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me.”—Dwight Schrute
Without clear communication skills, the rest of your customer service may fall flat. People need to be able to understand what solutions you are offering them and how they can use them to their benefit. Customer service employees who can clearly explain what the issue is and how to fix it efficiently are much more likely to get a positive response from callers.
4. Adaptability
You never really know what a customer is going to throw at you! If you’ve worked in the industry for some time, you likely have a couple of horror stories and quite a few hilarious ones, too.
It’s part of what makes the job interesting—but it’s also the reason why agile, adaptable-minded people thrive in a problem-solving industry like customer service. Problem solving skills can turn an irate customer into a happy one. Or, at the very least, one who is less incandescent with rage.
5. Patience
“There’s too many people on this earth. We need a new plague.”—Dwight Schrute
People, bless them, can sometimes be somewhat of a rear-end-ache. We’re all human, after all. But this can make dealing with demanding strangers’ problems frustrating. Patience is one of your greatest assets in dealing with tedious, long-winded clients.
The mute function is also useful because no one can hear you scream.
6. Product knowledge
In addition to the above crucial soft skills, it’s imperative that every person in the customer service industry has a comprehensive knowledge of the product or service they are selling and what the company that manufactures it represents. This skill is essential for devising quick, reliable solutions that customers feel confident will meet their needs.
7. Time management
When it comes to providing excellent customer service, time is absolutely of the essence. Customers don’t want to stay on that call or email thread any longer than you do, so being able to navigate through complex customer questions and issues is a critical customer service skill to hone.
Having strong time management skills not only means that you can work through common problems more efficiently, but you can also leave customers feeling fully prioritized while delivering a positive outcome.
8. Creative thinking
Sometimes, the solution to a customer’s problem isn’t 100% clear. In fact, often it is not. When faced with situations that don’t have clear solutions, customer service reps need to be able to think creatively so that the problem at hand can still be solved.
Benefits of Strong Customer Service Skills
Good customer service is an advantage for every business on a number of levels. Not only does it give existing customers a strong incentive to stick around and stay loyal to your business, but it also allows for a more sustainable internal workflow for employees and agents.
Here are some more benefits to consider:
Improved Customer Satisfaction
This is undoubtedly one of the most significant advantages of investing in the development of your customer support team’s service skills. Simply put, the more skilled your customer service agents are, the faster and more effectively they will be able to satisfy your customer’s needs.
A high level of customer satisfaction is one of the most important components of a sustainable business. Satisfied customers will not only leave better reviews and testimonials, but they’ll also stick around for years to come if you keep up the good work.
Enhanced Company Reputation
Customer service is highly valued by modern consumers. In a world with so many businesses and brands fighting for the public’s attention, those that are able to deliver efficient, simple, and authentic support experiences are going to develop healthier reputations on the market.
If you want your customers to speak highly of you (and maybe even refer you to their friends and family) cultivating good customer service skills is an excellent place to start.
Increased Customer Loyalty
Great customer service motivates customers to stay loyal to your brand. If a customer has a bad experience with your support team, they aren’t likely to want to do business with you again. But if you can charm their socks off, chances are they’ll be back for more.
Competitive advantage
Efficient customer service is hard to come by in this world, but increasingly, businesses are making it a priority. That means any company failing to keep up with the rising standard will battle to compete with others in its target market.
Being able to offer amazing customer support to your customers gives you a competitive edge on other businesses in your sector and makes it easier for customers to choose you in the face of so many other options.
Stimulates feedback
The more feedback you receive, the more customers you can attract. This is because feedback offers crucial insight into where you are failing and where you are succeeding with regard to customer support. Knowledge is power, and the more you know about what you’re doing right, the easier it will be to develop customer support strategies that people actually respond to.
All in all, strong customer service skills give your business the upper hand when it comes to understanding customer preferences and cultivating customer trust. It’s the key to unlocking customer satisfaction.
Developing Good Customer Service Skills
There are numerous ways to teach and upskill your team of customer service agents to provide the best customer support possible.
All of these skills can be developed and strengthened over time to enhance communication styles, support agents’ growth, and promote customer retention and trust—but it requires a well thought-out training strategy.
Here are four different ways to equip your customer support teams with all the resources and education they need to improve customer service skills.
Training Programs
A robust training program is one of the most effective ways to impart useful, practical knowledge and skills to your customer service team. They can be adapted to the size, industry, and budget of your business so that all the most relevant skills are included in the program, producing a more tailored learning curve.
Customer service training programs should cover everything from technical skills, such as using CRM tools and navigating calls to soft skills such as practicing empathy, patience, and problem-solving in the face of difficulty.
Workshops
Customer service training workshops are another effective way to continue upskilling your team and ensure that all the most important customer service skills are up to date with industry trends. You can host workshops regularly so that new and experienced recruits are constantly improving their skills.
Continuous Learning
Skills like proper time management, creative problem solving, and great service in general are all aspects of customer support that can be improved over time. By taking an ongoing training approach to teaching customer service skills, your support team will always be primed for customer interactions.
Feedback Mechanisms
Getting customer feedback is a crucial part of improving customer service skills. Honest testimonials and experiences will tell you a lot about your business’ customer satisfaction rating and which areas need the most improvement going forward.
How to Improve Your Customer Service Skills (even when you want to nosedive off a cliff)
Let’s be honest: Customer service can be a tedious job. It will test your patience, push your buttons, and, at times, make you want to bury your face in the sand. Any person who works with a large demographic of strangers on a daily basis can attest to this.
However! Every professional role comes with its pros and cons, and customer service is no different.
Once you have been equipped with the right skills for meeting customers on their level and offering them the solutions they require, the world becomes a much brighter (and more growth-oriented) place. Here are some strategies for improving customer service skills for enhanced customer satisfaction and business expansion:
Personalize your conversations
William Shakespeare’s Romeo once said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any name would smell just as sweet,” to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant.
But the modern consumer might disagree. In fact, a Shep Hyken study found that 81% of consumers are looking for a personalized experience when dealing with a business in 2024. And yes, that includes the simple trick of using people’s real names when addressing them.
It sounds simple, but little details like this can often set the tone for a productive customer service conversation!
Admit to your mistakes
One of the most important things you can do as an agent or customer service employee is to apologize when you or the business you represent are at fault. After all, the customer is a customer, and they are presumably paying for a quality product or service.
Expecting that product to meet their needs is 100% fair, and when it doesn’t, your apology can mean a lot. If something has gone sideways from your end, don’t be slow to recognize where it went wrong.
But while an apology is also a good start, an apology and flowers are even better. If possible, offer some sort of discount to rekindle the customer’s trust and promote loyalty. This shows them that you’re not just saying the right words; you really care about fixing your mistake.
Practice active listening
If there’s one thing a customer doesn’t want out of an email thread or phone call, it is to be bombarded with information that they feel is as relevant to them as a bicycle is to a fish.
As far as they’re concerned, and they are essentially correct, your job is to hear their problem and resolve it as soon as humanly possible. Needless waffling will get you nowhere—and that goes for both personal and professional situations.
Instead, focus on practicing the important social art of active listening. Allow them to speak for as long as they need to before responding, and take what they say seriously. Process the information in a measured, attentive way so that you may work together to achieve your goal.
Humanize yourself and your customers
When someone shouts at you to fix something that you aren’t responsible for or makes a rude comment about something inane, it can be hard not to want to punch them in the face (or toss your computer out the window).
But while it’s okay to indulge these fleeting thoughts for a moment in time, it is a much better use of your energy to use them as opportunities to humanize both yourself and the person who is causing you frustration. Humanization and empathy are closely intertwined, and honing both of them as a skill can be a huge advantage in this oft-demanding industry.
Automate tedious services
The faster a problem is solved, the better the customer service experience is for everyone. While getting humans to handle the human side of things, getting machines to do the machine side of things can bring the necessary speed and efficiency to the table.
Routing more complex requests to the right agent, processing bulk information, and answering FAQs are all services that can—and should—be automated.
By embracing automation technology, you can not only offer customers a more streamlined and satisfying service experience, but you, as the service provider, can also save precious time and energy. It’s a win-win situation for both sides of the corporate coin!
Keep calm and stay strong
It’s no secret that working in the customer service industry can sometimes feel like a thankless task. But it’s important to remember that you are playing a powerful role in the operation of the greater business machine that would not be able to function without you.
When people get bad-tempered, weepy, or straight-up annoying, don’t lose heart. We’re all just humans, after all, and embracing that fact is often the key to finding mutual success.
5 Supplementary Soft Skills for Customer Service
As we’ve touched on, there are several core skills associated with customer service. They need ample industry knowledge, the ability to anticipate common customer pain points, empathize with irate customers, and be able to problem-solve with ease.
But these are all relatively practical skills that don’t fully encompass the emotional range needed by a customer service agent. So, beyond those tactical hard skills, which supplementary soft skills can help customer service reps up their game for even higher customer satisfaction scores? Here are five.
1. Emotional Intelligence
To truly help someone find a solution to a problem, customer service agents need to be able to tap into an elevated emotional mindset. Emotional intelligence is defined as the capacity to be aware of and control one’s own emotions and navigate interpersonal relationships discerningly.
A lot of the time, providing excellent customer service is about reading between the lines of what someone is saying and getting to the root cause of what a customer needs.
An irate customer isn’t just irate for the sake of it—there is likely a more nuanced emotional need at play, and the task of a great customer service agent is to meet it wherever professionally possible.
2. Positivity
A huge part of high customer service quality is maintaining a positive attitude and using positive language. This kind of behavior can help relax tense customers and encourage them to be more receptive to your solutions.
Without the right mentality and attitude of positivity, even the most experienced customer service representative will struggle to produce satisfied customers.
3. Composure
When people feel frustrated, they can lash out and say things they don’t mean. Maintaining a sense of composure and calmness in the face of these unpleasant responses is an extremely important customer service skill. Don’t let ’em get you down!
4. Resilience
To put things quite loosely: people be acting crazy sometimes. And it takes a real mental suit of armor to not get swept away by the gripes and complaints of dozens of random customers every day.
The soft skill of resilience equips customer service reps to persevere with innovative solutions and continue providing good customer service no matter what gets thrown at them in the moment.
5. Passion
I know, that sounds a little far-fetched, right? Passion and customer service are two words not often strung together in the same sentence. However, it is customer service agents with a tangible sense of genuine interest, a positive mindset, and a passion for what they do who are most likely to produce impactful customer interactions.
If customers can tell you are authentically invested in helping them solve an issue and make their experience better as consumers, they are far more likely to be receptive to your help.
Pollack Peacebuilding Systems’s Approach
Pollack Peacebuilding Systems has developed a customer service strategy that incorporates all of the most important customer service skills, qualities, and tactics.
Conflict resolution, communication skills, and client etiquette are all topics broached in the system of tools and resources that our company provides. This is achieved through a variety of mechanisms, including:
Customized Training Solutions
All customer service teams are unique, and using a training program that meets the particular needs of yours is crucial for developing a strong customer service strategy.
Pollack Peacebuilding System’s customized approach to training solutions allows businesses to design a training program that is attuned to the needs of specific sectors, brand identities, and business objectives. Without a customized training plan, it can be difficult to impart the exact skills that your business values while still ensuring that a high level of training is being facilitated.
Just like individual customer interactions, customized training solutions result in more specific solutions for both agents and consumers.
Interactive Workshops and Seminars
Pollack Peacebuilding Systems also offers a range of interactive workshops and seminars that customer service agents and entire teams can attend to further their understanding of service quality and discover new ways of approaching customer queries.
The interactive workshops and seminars that Pollack Peacebuilding Systems offers don’t just accommodate customer service teams—they also cover skills and strategies relevant to healthcare workers, team leaders, police officers, social workers, and more.
Ongoing Support and Resources
Pollack Peacebuilding Systems offers businesses a broad variety of different educational resources for improved internal organization and service upskilling.
You can find free eBooks on mediation and de-escalation, as well as case studies, workplace statistics, podcasts, articles, and even a YouTube channel dedicated to all things peacebuilding.
Final Thoughts
Great customer service really is the backbone of most successful businesses around the world. No matter how great your product is or how big your budget might be, without humanizing and optimizing your customer service offerings, consumers won’t stick around for dessert.
By focusing on adaptable, human-centered soft skills such as empathy, patience, active listening, and perseverance (and just a dash of automation), your company can find a healthy, sustainable middle ground between consistency and growth.
