5 Must-Have Soft Skills For Customer Support Agents
Hard skills are easily demonstrable such as typing skills, mathematical reasoning, or fluency in a language. Soft skills are dynamic and more difficult to quantify, such as empathy, strong work ethic, and teamwork. Great customer support agents have a healthy blend of hard and soft skills.
Importance of soft skills
Soft skills are often brushed over in performance appraisals and reviews because of their inherent difficulty in categorization and quantification. However, as an agent grows in their career, their soft skills are often put in the spotlight. Skills such as communication, listening, negotiation, and creative problem solving are evaluated more than their hard skills.
However, make no mistake, the earlier a customer support agent starts to develop their soft skills, the better for their career it is. Although they may seem like fixed traits reserved for a chosen few, the truth is that soft skills can be learned with appropriate customer service training.
The top 5 soft skills for customer support agents
In this article, we look at the 5 soft skills that are essential in a customer support agent:
Communication – Communicating well is a skill that anyone could learn and benefit from. Customer support agents have to interact with customers through a variety of channels. Clear communication is especially important in e-mail and phone conversations. When a customer support agent interacts with a customer, they are presenting an image of the company to the customer. The way the interaction goes has a bearing on how the customer perceives the company. Typos, incomplete thoughts, and dropped sentences have no place in e-mail and phone conversation.
Good communication skills also means listening to the customer. The customer support agent must listen actively, wait for the other person to finish their sentences, and acknowledge the customer once they are finished. Clarifying questions demonstrate active listening. Customer service training activities should focus on developing communication skills, as this is the skill that other soft skills hinge on.
Creativity – Customer support activities are being streamlined so that more assistance can be automated or delivered through self-service materials. Customers can solve many routine problems on their own through FAQs or scripted bot assistance. Customer support agents are freed up to focus on more complex issues.
Although it relieves some of the strain on customer support agents, it calls for more creativity in problem solving. Sometimes, there is a requirement for the agent to go off-script. Recognizing the time and place for this is also part of great customer support. A think-on-your-feet attitude is called for. Through customer service training, new ways of approaching problems and developing critical thinking can be taught.
Conflict resolution – Very often, customer support agents encounter customers at their wits end who take out their frustration on the agents. Conflict resolution is an essential skill to diffuse tension and reassure customers. Besides patience and active listening, customer support agents also need to develop creative solutions on the spot.
A big part of conflict resolution for customer support agents is managing their stress. When a customer flies off the wall, it is normal for a customer support agent to get stressed. Keeping a calm tone, speaking slowly and coherently will convey confidence to customers.
With the right customer serve training and with time, customer support agents can learn techniques to manage their stress and diffuse conflicts.
Empathy – Feeling sorry for a customer’s issues amounts to sympathy. Although there are customers who will accept apologies for their issues, empathy is more valued in customer support. Empathy is the ability to understand the emotions of the customer and proceed to find a solution to their issue with their feelings in mind.
Even when a customer support agent is not completely certain of the solution, showing genuine concern and understanding goes a long way. When the customer support agent approaches with empathy, they can compassionately redirect the customer’s call to the right channel of assistance.
Optimism – Nobody wants to call customer support and be confronted with a dull and pessimistic outlook. Customer support agents need to work on their attitude daily. Since customer support is a position where agents are talking to the public all day, they are the face of the company or business to customers. If the customer thinks the agent does not care about the company, they will think the company does not care about them.
If an agent has had a bad morning, the agent still needs to have the skill to portray optimism in their work. Just as important is the ability to change an interaction from a potentially stressful one to one with an optimistic tone.
Although many soft skills can be spotted inherently present in hired agents, they can be trained. Role-playing activities, simulations, and other customer service training activities can be employed to teach and develop the above skills. On-the-job coaching and mentoring can be provided as tools to customer support agents. Appraisals and constructive feedback programs should also be implemented. Investing in soft skills training for customer support agents brings great rewards for your business, in terms of the bottom line as well as customer satisfaction.