Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a customer service specialist and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Customer Service Specialist is assigned the primary role of ensuring that all customer care services are offered in the right manner and at the highest quality and with great professionalism. He or she will work closely with the customer care operation manager in managing the affairs o the call center.
He or she will also get to perform the following tasks; reply to all telephone, emails and social media messages in a timely and appropriate manner, escalate any unresolved tissues to the higher management personnel, ensure proper recording of all client data and information, conduct follow-ups on all client issues to ensure the cases are closed and attending to all customer service related meetings and training.
Core Skills Required to be a Customer Service 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 service specialist should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Teamwork Skills:
Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.
A Customer Service Specialist needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.
Knowledge of Company Processes:
Knowledge of Company Processes is the in-depth understanding of a collection of related, structured activities that serve a particular goal for a group of customers or clients who are valuable to the enterprise.
A Customer Service Specialist ought to maintain consistency across the daily processed while keeping a keen eye on the overall plan of the organization by ensuring the company processes are performed and followed.
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 Specialist 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 Specialist 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.
Self Confidence:
Self Confidence is the ability to know who you are and what you are capable of doing which shows in your behavior, your body language, how you speak, etc.
A Customer Service Specialist must be confident enough to inspire confidence in others while encouraging them to handle daily tasks and their personal lives with self-confidence that will, in turn, produce a well-rounded individual.
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 Specialist 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.
Practical Thinking:
Practical Thinking is the skill to think creatively about projects or work that requires your full attention to be completed and to bring great results.
A Customer Service Specialist must ensure the decisions he makes are well sought after using professional characteristics for employees with high-level responsibilities to feel included and to allow growth for everyone in a constantly changing world that requires creativity.
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 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.
Long Range Planning:
Long Range Planning is setting long-term goals and objectives for your business or project to ensure its growth and sustainability is reached by all the employees.
A Customer Service Specialist needs creativity in defining long-term goals that ought to be proactive, putting together a full employee focused management strategy that analyzes the major initiatives and translates them into functional goals that employees handle.
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 Specialist 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.
Hard Skills Required to be a Customer Service 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 service specialist should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.