The 6 most important skills for customer service jobs

While understanding your customer’s question/complaint/feedback is the single most important factor, this is closely followed by an ability to empathise with their situation. Even if you know that, ultimately, you can’t give them what they want (for example, a refund request that falls outside their consumer rights), you still want to provide the most positive experience possible. Why? Because even if they’re dissatisfied with the outcome of their interaction with the business, if they feel that they have been treated reasonably and with respect, they’re more likely to come back, than if they feel that you simply don’t care about their issue.

This doesn’t mean you need to be a pushover, or to actively undermine your employer’s stance (for example, saying something like: “If you ask me, it’s a stupid policy not to give refunds on this”), but being able to connect with them on a human level will at least count for something.

Any experienced customer service professional will tell you that patience is worth its weight in gold in this field. At some stage, you’ll encounter an angry or upset customer, or someone who doesn’t seem to understand anything you’re telling them. As frustrating as this might be, you’ll need to stay calm and professional at all times. Reacting negatively isn’t going to help anything, and will likely make the situation worse.

Another element of this is resilience. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for upset customers to take out their dissatisfaction on the customer service agent they’re communicating with, even if the issue has nothing to do with them. While, of course, you can terminate conversations with people who become abusive, this can still be an upsetting experience. Therefore, you’ll need to develop methods, either individually or with your teammates, to help you process these encounters and not let them get you down.

One of the awesome things about some customer service jobs is that you can do them with no prior experience necessary. This is because it’s very common for new starters in the customer service space to receive plenty of on-the-job training that will help you understand the company and its products/services. However, despite this training, you’re going to encounter some questions which are not in the company manual and this means you’ll need to think on your feet. We’re an unpredictable bunch, so expect curly questions and complex issues to resolve.

This isn’t something that employers will usually expect you to have from the get-go, but, to be a successful customer service representative you’ll need to develop an in-depth understanding of the business you work for and the products and services it offers. Customers will expect you to be able to answer their questions accurately and speedily, so it’s not a good look if you’re constantly needing to go and ask your manager or consult documentation to answer every single question they have.

Okay, so you don’t need to be the next great technological mind in order to work in customer service, however, some familiarity with digital systems is going to be required. Most businesses of all sizes will have some sort of customer relationship management (CRM) system that you’ll use to record your interactions with clients. The functionality and complexity of these systems will vary considerably depending on the business type, size, customer base and needs. Again, in most cases, you won’t be expected to be familiar with individual software packages, as there are a wide variety of these. However, given that there’s often a degree of crossover between CRM systems, if you have used one before, it’s worth mentioning this on your CV.