Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a customer service representative and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Customer Service Representative is tasked with the primary role of serving customers by providing relevant product and service information and offering viable solutions to the entire client's product and service problems. Also, he or she has the duty to escalate any unresolved issue to the appropriate personnel and to follow up to ensure it is resolved.
Duties he or she will handle from time to time include; recording and maintaining customer records, updating customer details when required, conduct follow-ups on product and service issues, conduct customer satisfaction surveys, handle customer complaints, handle and manage incoming calls, generate leads when it comes to sales and identifying and assess customer needs with the aim of achieving customer satisfaction.
Core Skills Required to be a Customer Service Representative
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 service representative should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Delegation:
Delegation is assigning responsibility or authority to another person a junior or subordinate to carry out specific activities while remaining accountable for the outcome.
A Customer Service Representative must be equipped with skills on how to make the delegation work correctly to save the organization time and money and to allow the subordinate make wise decisions, skills, and motivation to become better and grow the company.
Planning and Scheduling:
Planning and Scheduling are the act of establishing a plan for a set of tasks that needs to be completed and including when they should be done.
A Customer Service Representative needs creativity in balancing both planning and scheduling by clearing defining what and how activities will be carried out by when and who in particular to ensure there are a clear flow and accountability to every staff.
Enthusiasm:
Enthusiasm is an intense enjoyment or a lively interest in a certain thing with a zest and a strong belief that can be felt by those around you.
A Customer Service Representative ought to be enthusiastic as well as create a friendly atmosphere that makes the staff comfortable with the surroundings, with the other employees to create a less passive working place.
Conceptual Thinking:
Conceptual Thinking is the ability to recognize a situation or problem by identifying patterns or connections while addressing the underlying issues.
A Customer Service Representative must be a conceptual thinker who has a keen understanding of why things have to be done the way they are; he has to think at an abstract level and apply his insights to the situation across all facets to compete in the diverse and growing economy.
Following Directions:
Following Directions is the skill of carefully considering the given instructions and following them closely without fail.
A Customer Service Representative must ensure that his workers are paying attention and listening to instructions provided as well as taking careful steps in doing what they are supposed to do and understand what it means to the business and bring satisfaction to their superiors.
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 Service Representative 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.
Goal and Objective Setting:
Goal and Objective Setting is the strategic plan that is set and laid down identifying how goals should be accomplished, by who and by what time.
A Customer Service Representative must detect and schedule each employee's goals, strategy, and objectives and keep motivating them to ensure all of them are met within the set time bringing growth to both the company and the employee.
Organizational Skills:
Organizational Skills is the ability to make use of time, energy and resources available in the most efficient manner to achieve their goal.
A Customer Service Representative should organize the work for the employees to ensure overall organization, planning, time management, scheduling, coordinating resources and meeting deadlines is handled most efficiently by each employee for both personal and professional growth.
Quality of Work:
The quality of Work is the value of work or products produced by the employees as well as the work environment they are provided with.
A Customer Service Representative needs creativity in assisting all teams in identifying characteristics that will result in a quality product and lead to greater efficiency and increased productivity by following the four critical outcomes of employee retention, customer satisfaction, profitability, and productivity.
Computer Skills:
Computer Skills are the necessary computer working skills that each employee need to have while seeking to get admitted into the professional world.
A Customer Service Representative ought to be technologically oriented and hire employees with strong computer skills because they fare better in the job market than their tech-challenged counterparts bringing a high level of quality employees in the job seeking category.
Hard Skills Required to be a Customer Service Representative
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 service representative should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.