Emphasize These 8 Skills to Enhance Customer Service

How to Build a Culture of Quality in Your Customer Service Department

Providing an exemplary customer experience is one of the most important aspects of an effective chargeback prevention strategy.

Emphasizing certain personnel skills and creating a culture of excellence will help ensure a satisfactory customer experience, increased sales, fewer reputational issues, and greater revenue retention.

Customer Service Skill #1: Patience

When cardholders contact the merchant’s customer service department, chances are they are not in the best mood to begin with. Therefore, the best response is always to approach customers with an apologetic, level-headed, and courteous tone.

It’s important to be fast-acting, but not to the point of rushing the customer or coming across as abrasive. Customer service representatives should be attentive and listen to the shopper’s concerns. When the business appears to relate and be empathetic, customers will return the favor.

Customer Service Skill #2: Listening

It’s important to note listening doesn’t simply mean hearing.

Listening to customers means reading between the lines, processing everything that they’re trying to say in order to get to the source of their complaint. In many cases, customers won’t know the technical terminology or the jargon used in-house to describe the problem.

Customer service representatives must be perceptive. They must get to the root of the problem, not just address the symptoms—which might be all the customer is able to express.

Customer Service Skill #3: Effective Communication

Interactions with customers should be clear and concise. Quickly identifying and resolving the problem is not only more efficient for in-house productivity, it also means customers don’t feel their time is being wasted.

Additionally, clear communication is needed to set accurate expectations, which will help avoid upset customers down the road. Allowing customers to hold unrealistic or inaccurate expectations of the business is, obviously, not advantageous.

Customer Service Skill #4: Ability to Convey Knowledge

Most individuals view customer service representatives as experts on all subjects pertaining to the business. When contacting a business, one of the most reassuring things a customer can find is a well-informed individual with the expertise necessary to address any concerns.

It is essential to maintain a well-informed, dynamic, enthused body of employees who are willing to adapt to emerging company policies and operations. However, it isn’t always realistic to expect every single individual to have an answer to every possible question that could arise. In these situations, a designated leader must be prepared to resolve conflicts in a way that is beneficial to everyone involved.

Customer Service Skill #5: Staying Calm

From time to time, customer service representatives will encounter an individual who is exceptionally agitated. In these situations, successful resolutions are often achieved with a top-down leadership example.

Leaders must be able to guide the team when things get hectic. If leaders fail to maintain a calm, cool demeanor, there isn’t a successful example to follow.

Leaders must influence others to remain calm when a situation gets stressful, and everyone will benefit as a result—the customer’s problem will be resolved quicker and easier, and the team will be much happier in the long run.

Customer Service Skill #6: Persuasiveness

Working in customer service isn’t as simple as solving basic problems. In fact, sometimes it’s sort of like being a hostage negotiator. In this situation, the ‘hostage’ is the business’s revenue being threatened by a potential chargeback from an angry customer.

Few customers are concerned with a chargeback’s impact on the business—they want their money back, and they will take whichever course of action is most likely to do that. The customer service department needs to be able to deescalate the situation, offering the customer a better outcome than a chargeback.

Customer Service Skill #7: Using Positive Language

Rather than tell customers what the business can’t do for them, try to tell them what the business can do. Positive language has a much better mental association. For example:

Negative	Positive
“I can’t get that product this month.”	“That product will be available next month.”
“_____ is not available at the moment.”	“_____ will be available tomorrow at this time.”
“We don’t offer that product.”	“We do offer a similar product.”

Even if the same idea is being conveyed, the use of positive language will be better received by customers, and also still leaves the door open for future sales.

Customer Service Skill #8: Perseverance

When interacting to solve a customer dispute, it’s important for customer service representatives to give it all they’ve got. In every situation, the team has to be willing to do what needs to be done in order to achieve the best outcome for the business, as well as for the customer.

Merchants should instruct their team to follow through to the end of each customer interaction, and close the conversation strongly by confirming with the customer that all issues have been resolved. Otherwise, matters may remain unresolved, meaning revenue and the brand’s reputation are still in jeopardy.

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Putting It Into Practice

Once you’ve created a company culture focused around providing exceptional customer service, contact Chargebacks911®. We’ll provide an objective, unbiased, third-party evaluation of your policies and operations to identify any remaining issues that might have been overlooked. We conduct a proprietary 106-point inspection to identify all potential chargeback triggers and provide a personalized case manager to help make the necessary changes.

Contact Chargebacks911® today to learn about the latest strategies and solutions to optimize your profitability.