With more businesses going online and more millennial looking at a career in customer service, we’ve penned down a few essentials in the field.

Here is the industry’s core skill requirement;  

 Patience – If you don’t see this at the top of any customer service manual, stop reading it. Not only is patience important to customers, who often reach out to support when they are confused and frustrated, but it’s also important to the business at large: we’ve shown you before that great service beats fast service every single time.

Attentiveness –The ability to really listen to customers is so crucial for providing great service for a number of reasons. For instance, customers may not be saying it outright, but perhaps there is a pervasive feeling that your software’s dashboard isn’t laid out correctly. Customers aren’t likely to say, “Please improve your UX!”, but they may say things like, “I can never find the search feature,” or, “Where is the _____ function at again?”

Ability to use positive language – your ability to make minor changes in your conversational patterns can truly go a long way in creating happy customers.

Language is a very important part of persuasion, and people (especially customers) create perceptions about you and your company based off on the language that you use.

Here’s an example: Let’s say a customer contacts you with an interest in a particular product, but that product happens to be back ordered until next month. Small changes that utilize “positive language” can greatly affect how the customer hears your response…

Without positive language: “I can’t get you that product until next month; it is back-ordered and unavailable at this time.”

With positive language: “That product will be available next month. I can place the order for you right now and make sure that it is sent to you as soon as it reaches our warehouse.”

The first example isn’t negative by any means, but the tone that it conveys feels abrupt and impersonal, and can be taken the wrong way by customers. Conversely, the second example is stating the same thing (the item is unavailable), but instead focuses on when/how the customer will get to their resolution rather than focusing on the negative.

Time Management Skills – Don’t waste time trying to go above and beyond for a customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time!

Ability to handle surprises – Sometimes the customer support world is going to throw you a curve ball. Maybe the problem you encounter isn’t specifically covered in the company’s guidelines, or maybe the customer isn’t reacting how you thought they would. Whatever the case, it’s best to be able to think on your feet… but it’s even better to create guidelines for yourself in these sorts of situations.

Open to learning – If you clicked on this article and read all the way to the bottom, you likely already have this skill (nice job!). This is probably the most general skill on the list, but it’s still necessary.

Finally…Remembering that your customers are people too, and knowing that putting in the extra effort will come back to you ten-fold should be your driving motivation to never “cheat” your customers with lazy service.

Register for March 2017 Certification in Customer Service Skills, Click here for details