Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a customer care specialist and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A customer care specialist has the primary responsibility of handling inquiries from the company clients from time to time via mail or calls. He/she ensures that the inquiries are handled and escalated at all time. Also, he or she can be assigned the role of updating client details on the database.

Besides that he/she can handle the following tasks: escalate unresolved clients issues to the appropriate personnel; do regular follow up of client issues to ensure they are solved; document the various cases handled on a day to day basis; maintain adequate knowledge of all integral software and systems used and attend all customer care meetings.

Core Skills Required to be a Customer Care Specialist

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 customer care specialist should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Organized Workplace:

Organized Workplace is a vital characteristic that helps the business to thrive for long term due to the sense of structure and order which efficiently promotes the team spirit.

A Customer Care Specialist must be organized in the general organizing, planning, communication, time management, scheduling, coordinating resources and meeting deadlines to support the staff in being well structured and run the company successfully.

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 Customer Care Specialist 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.

Empathy:

Empathy is the understanding of another person's condition from their perspective by placing yourself in their shoes and feeling what they are feeling.

A Customer Care Specialist ought to practice empathy with his staff by learning to be a good listener and understanding what his employees are going through and choosing to feel it with them through the use of imagination and accommodate them.

Attention to Detail:

Attention to Detail is the capacity to achieve a thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task.

A Customer Care Specialist needs to have this prime characteristic and utilize it in a high performing organization that allows both the customers and staff to understand the need to be keen to all the details required to avoid massive costs for overlooked details that are common in the workplace.

Personal Accountability:

Personal Accountability is the feeling that you are entirely responsible for your actions and consequences taking ownership without blaming others.

A Customer Care Specialist should provide a list of duties and responsibilities that every employee is expected to perform and define timelines and supervisors who oversee the work to ensure each knows what she /he should do and remain accountable without passing blame.

Using Common Sense:

Using Common Sense is the ability to see what is missing in a situation or a project and supplying it without necessarily being assigned or asked to do it.

A Customer Care Specialist needs to creatively train his employees always to see the missing element that is typically crucial in any workplace or project and take the opportunity to do business out of it.

Customer Service:

Customer Service is the ability to cater for the needs of the client by providing excellent customer service without compromise.

A Customer Care Specialist 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 Customer Care Specialist 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.

Training others:

Training is the ability to expand the knowledge base by learning new truths that are useful in the workplace.

A Customer Care Specialist needs to creatively schedule training for his employees in a focused manner that will allow the employee stay useful in the workplace and get new knowledge so that both the business and the worker not suffer from delays and work related stress.

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 Customer Care Specialist 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 Customer Care Specialist

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 customer care specialist should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Customer Care Specialist: Hard skills list

Accident Investigator
Accounting (Accounting Software)
Adjuster
Adjustment Clerk
Administrative
Analyzing Data or Information
Appraiser
Arson Investigator
Auto Claims Adjuster
Benefit Authorizer
Bodily Injury Adjuster
Building Appraiser
Business
Catastrophe Claims
Claim Adjuster
Claim Agent
Claim Approver
Claim Examiner
Claim Inspector
Claim Investigator
Claim Processor
Claim Representative
Claim Specialist
Claims Adjuster
Claims Adjustor
Claims Analyst
Claims Examiner
Claims Service Adjustor
Claims Specialist
Claims Software
Clerical
Clerical Adjuster
Compensation Adjuster
Computers
Communication
Cost and Benefits
Customer and Personal Service
Deductive Reasoning
Designing Forms
Disability Examiner
Disability Specialist
Documenting
Document management
Estimator
Evaluating information
Examiner
FDA Health Regulations
Field Adjuster
Field Liability Generalist
Finance
Financial Analysis
Fire Adjuster
General Adjuster
General Mathematics
Health Claims Examiner
Identifying Information
Independent Insurance Adjuster
Inductive Reasoning
Inspector
Interpersonal
Interrogation
Insurance Adjuster
Insurance Appraiser
Insurance Claims Adjuster
Insurance Inspector
Interviewing
Investigative
Job Estimator
Law and Government
Litigation Claim Representative
Negotiating
Management of Financial Resources
Material Damage Adjuster
Medical Claims Analyst
Medical Claims Examiner
Medical Claims Specialist
MS Excel
Multi-line Claims Adjuster
Processing Information
Property Adjuster
Property Claims Adjuster
Recording Information
Reporting
Research (detail and substantiate each aspect of the claim and other)
Residential Insurance Inspector
Resource Allocation
Salvage Determiner
Statistical Analysis
Technical and Functional Expertise
Technology
Time Management
Verbal Communication
Written Communication
Writing
Word Processor
Workers Compensation Claims Adjuster

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