Customer Service has become one of the foremost differentiator for competing brands all around the world.
Do you believe answering random queries and solving problems is the only real job of customer service? You can’t be farther from truth.
The real and often unobserved goal of customer service is to paint a positive image of your business to all your customers. Irrespective of the fact that a problem was solved or escalated, every one of your customers must leave the conversation with the same positive experience that defines your company.
How can this mystery of dissatisfied yet upbeat be solved? Hammer in the fact that Customer Service may not always dispense a solution, but will always stay empathetic to every customer. What is routine for a CS executive might be the cause of immense frustration to the customer, or some of them might be having a bad day. The executive must learn to respect emotions and empathize with the customer.
The catch phrase is LEARN to comprehend what a person wants intuitively and then giving them what they desire. That is the hallmark of a truly empathetic service- human touch rather than a generic, robotic response. Now this does seem challenging beyond the ordinary, but trust me, it’s not.
Empathy is a critical customer service skill. SKILL- Something that can be learned and improved. Interestingly, it also helps an executive in understanding herself and responding to her emotional outbursts in a more constructive manner.
Learning empathy requires time and a little patience to develop the attitude of a keen observant who can catch valuable verbal cues within the first few seconds of conversation. Thankfully though, it’s nothing complex like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, so you can get great results within a short span.
Now the big Q, how to learn empathy? I’ll love to reveal the 3 top tips we use at Open Mind Services for making a person more empathetic to others. Apart from helping our customer service executives, these tips can also help you in becoming a person-magnet! But that will make this post heavier than a typical reader can handle.
So I’ll have to request you to wait for next week’s post when I’ll present the top 3 tips to include empathy in all your interactions- business as well as personal. As a bonus to your patience, I will also include a set of empathy statements that work like gold in tricky situations.
Have a great weekend while you take a crack at transforming your business and your life.
Edit: The 2nd part of this post is now available! Follow the link