Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a client service associate and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Client Service Associate is responsible for maintaining customer relationships by responding to inquiries and documenting actions.
The primary obligations of this position are preparing for customer inquiries by studying products, services and customer services processes, accomplishing client service and organization mission by completing related results as required, updating job knowledge by participating in educational opportunities, responding to the client's enquiries by understanding inquiry, reviewing previous inquiries and responses, gathering and studying information, assembling and forwarding information, confirming customer's understanding of information and answer, improving quality service by recommending improved processes, identifying new product and service applications, contacting clients to discuss their accounts with them and answer questions or arrange meetings.
Core Skills Required to be a Client Service Associate
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A client service associate should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Customer Oriented:
Customer Oriented is a skill that focuses primarily on the client as the King offering quality services that meet the customer's expectations with an aim to inspire people rather than just try to sell their product.
A Client Service Associate needs to be customer oriented to boost the image of their company, stand out from the rest of the people and devise innovations of tomorrow that focus its sights on a new target ? satisfying the customer expectations.
Interpersonal Skills:
Interpersonal Skills are a set of abilities that enable a person to positively interact and work with others effectively while avoiding office disputes and personal issues with each other.
A Client Service Associate must learn the importance of these skills in the workplace and emphasis on every employee possessing them to build a more cohabit able and productive workplace with the help of each.
Knowledge of Job:
Knowledge of Job is essential to every employee who needs to have a clear understanding of how their jobs fit into the overall organization to eliminate carelessness and laxity.
A Client Service Associate must be able to evaluate this criterion when selecting an employee and know the common descriptions of a person with either right or inadequate knowledge of the job early enough to either keep them or let them go.
Personal Growth:
Personal Growth is the improvement of one's awareness, identity, developing talents and potential to facilitate the growth of oneself and the position they handle at the workplace.
A Client Service Associate ought to assist his employees in finding themselves by introducing or referring them to methods, programs, tools, techniques and assessment systems that support their development at the individual level in the organization.
Customer Service:
Customer Service is the ability to cater for the needs of the client by providing excellent customer service without compromise.
A Client Service Associate must understand that pleasing customers is directly connected to the success of the business, therefore, must create a superior customer experience culture in the company that every employee should follow in ensuring all the customers are treated as they should.
Meeting Management:
Meeting Management is the skill to know and understands the reason why an official meeting should be held and who should attend.
A Client Service Associate must learn how to properly organize and conduct meetings to contribute to organizational effectiveness by determining situations that require a meeting, understanding types of meetings, planning the meeting, running the meeting to the close and managing people after the meeting.
Process Improvement:
Process Improvement is the creation of new processes or improving the existing ones that will work and take your corporation to the next level.
A Client Service Associate must maintain the continuous improvements in the workplace that are favorable to the current investors, potential investors, and stock owners while working with methods that can serve as a foundation for future business decisions causing a profitable growth.
Research:
Research is the ability to stay updated on the latest trends in different fields as per your concern or the concern of your company or business.
A Client Service Associate ought to stay up to date on the latest trends in hiring, leading, retention, technology and much more by using the newest research methods that allow him to make better decisions and improve productivity.
Data Entry:
Data Entry is a skill to key in information from various sources as directed by the management while keeping to the policies and procedures of the company and ensuring they are accurate.
A Client Service Associate should prioritize hard skills over educational backgrounds when it comes to data entry because experience and familiarity with the common workplace software, attention to detail, confidentiality and databases is critical.
Product Knowledge:
Product Knowledge is an essential sales skill to understand the features of your product allowing you to present the benefits compellingly and accurately to the customer.
A Client Service Associate should ensure the teams understand the company's goods or services and can quickly take a client through them, therefore, instilling faith, trust and respect in the customers which in turn creates a positive customer experience.
Hard Skills Required to be a Client Service Associate
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A client service associate should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.