Do your employees have sufficient customer service skills?

In business, customer service skills are crucial if you are to maintain your customers and make any meaningful sales. If you have several employees working under you, it is important that they all understand the importance of good customer service skills or you will be doing all the positive customer service and they will be undoing all your good work. Below are some outstanding customer service skills that any employee should muster.  

Have a smile for all customers

This cannot be emphasized enough, human beings are social creatures and everyone reacts positively when smiled at, unless one has some very serious issues. Smiling is the best way to breakdown any emotional and mood barriers that customers may walk in with. When you smile at a customer, they will unconsciously see you as a friend and it will be much easier to sell to them. This works even for people on phone. It is however important that the smile is genuine and not forced since a forced smile will be easily spotted and it will have the opposite effect and make the customer withdraw emotionally.  

Patience

Waiting upon customers can be tedious and some customers can be frustrating. Despite this, the employee interacting with the customer has to exercise patience. It does not matter how many customers they have seen asking for the same information and it does not matter how inquisitive or undecided the customer is, the employee should be able to patiently listen to the customer and provide detailed information about the products under discussion. Patience will also help you to realize what exactly the customer wants. Rushing to conclusions may see you presenting the wrong solutions for the customer who will only grow more frustrated and in turn make you more frustrated too.  

Be well versed in their business

Customer service also includes having thorough knowledge of everything in the employee’s area of operation. There is nothing as frustrating to the customer as a point of sale representative who does not have adequate knowledge of what they are selling. It becomes embarrassing when the employee has to make calls to confirm things while taking up the customer’s valuable time. It would be especially bad if the employee gives wrong information about a product intentionally or unintentionally. This could put off the customer and the business could lose a valuable repeat customer.  

Good Communication Skills

Communication is the basis of the customer employee interaction. There can be no sale without some communication. A good employee should be able to handle any situation with the very best communication skills. This could be in explaining about the features of a product. As such the employee should be able to clearly explain about the product highlighting all the important features and giving reasons why the product is outstanding. The employee should be able to answer all the questions posed by the client and they should do it exhaustively without losing patience. Communication skills include knowing how to communicate with different kinds of people. A child cannon be spoken to like a grown person. VIP customers should also be approached differently to the one off casual window shopper. It is also important to have sharp communication skills to be able to handle different customers with different temperaments, moods, and attitudes.