Outstanding Customer Service, Brand Tone, and Soft Skills
Updated: Aug 3, 2022
Outstanding customer service is providing stellar solutions to customers.
To provide this type of service the representative would need to exercise patience and be an attentive listener.
Knowing how to provide exceptional service, being patient, and being a good lister are vital parts of keeping consumers happy, but continuing to practice good customer service is even more important.
Why Should it be a Good Practice?
It should be a good practice to continue doing the thing that is attracting shoppers and bringing them back for repeated purchases.
Repeated customers make for a more successful business, happier bosses, a steady flow of income, and a way to continue providing for yourself while continuing to succeed.
What is Customer Satisfaction and Why is it important for you to maintain
Customer satisfaction is offering a service to customers that will leave them with a feeling of being welcomed and wanting to come back.
For example:
If a representative is providing email support services and a customer emails about a missing package. If the representative apologized and provided the customer with quality information that's a good start.
If details on why the package was not yet delivered were provided with a new delivery date, and if permitted the customer was offered any kind of discount or reward for their inconvenience, this may satisfy the customer.
The customer is most likely to overlook the situation and continue doing business with the company the representative represents.
The other scenario could be that the representative did not apologize to the customer, did not provide adequate information on the delayed package, and did not try to compensate the customer in any way for the inconvenience caused.
The first scenario would be providing and maintaining customer satisfaction especially if the same is practiced across the board for every customer.
The second scenario would not be providing and maintaining customer satisfaction which would not be a recommended practice.
Skills Required to offer Good Customer Service Representation
The six basic skills required to offer good customer service at a representative level are:
Active listening
Basic research skills
Product knowledge
Professional brand tone
Soft skills and Hard skills
Active listening: is carefully listening to what the consumer has to say without interrupting, if the consumer is communicating via live chat or email then the representative would have to carefully read and try to understand the consumer's request or reason for messaging as best as possible.
By actively listening to what the customer has to say the agent will be able to resolve the issue within a quicker time period.
Basic research skills: will help to find a suitable resolution.
To find a befitting resolution, one would need to go through all resources available to find the most satisfactory answer to resolve the issue.
Product knowledge: is having access to and knowing the products a business offers. This goes a far way in offering assistance. The consumer feels more confident in the agent when the information provided is provided in a professional and experienced way.
Professional brand tone differentiates a brand from other brands. The tone of a brand helps the customer to identify and understand the brand and the way in which the brand interacts.
A professional-friendly brand tone will let the customer know that the brand is polite, and professional but does not come across as too serious.
A serious brand tone is more of an assertive tone that gets to the point immediately and has a lesser friendly approach.
Both tones can be seen as acceptable, the difference is in the way both tones come across.
Soft skills: are the skills you naturally have. If a person is able to emotionally connect and feel what someone else is feeling or if a person is able to offer empathy and sympathy towards anyone without being taught how to do so, then that individual clearly possesses soft skills.
Hard skills: on the other hand are skills that a person learns over time.
Hard skills are teachable skills such as how to communicate through writing, tone of voice, and holding one's self-accountable.
Ways to Practice and Maintain Good Customer Service
Good customer service is practiced by continuing to build on skills acquired, learning from mistakes, and continuing to improve on being a better version of the person you were the day before.
Maintaining good customer service is continuing to communicate in a respectful manner and offering the best service you can provide with limited expectations.