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Qualities of customer service agents – What to look out for ?

Understanding the qualities of customer service agents can help us in our judgments before hiring a team.

We need to find, train and manage the right people to provide an excellent support experience.

To be a support agent, we need to stay calm and collected along with an interest in customer’s problems.

Here at Ibmi Media, as part of our Server Management Services, we regularly help our Customers with Support Agents.

In this context, we shall look into the qualities one must possess in order to be a perfect support agent.


Qualities of customer service agents

Here, let us discuss the Qualities of customer service agents.


1. Patience is a virtue

Generally, a customer will decide to contact us almost always when they are angry, frustrated, or confused.

Here, our responsibility is to slow down. Doing so, we learn and listen to their concerns. Which will eventually help us, deep-dive, into the actual happening.

Instead, if we pace up with their emotions, our judgments can go wrong. We don’t need that.

Patience highlights our team’s attention to detail. As a result, our customers will feel valued.

Here at Ibmi Media, we listen carefully to customer requirements, understand the problem and provide permanent solutions.


2. Stay calm, collected, and personable

The simplest way to make a client happy is to make them feel like they talk to a real-life human and not a scripted service.

Long-term relationships always depend on how happy we make our customers. This eventually connects directly to future revenue.

Being gentle can be the difference between a customer purchasing from us once or becoming a customer and advocate for life.

Our Tech Support Agents provide personalized responses to the customers rather than template responses.


3. Be proactive

It can be incredibly tricky to be proactive in reactive situations. However, hiring agents who can do so can be an incredibly powerful tool.

By being proactive, we show explicitly that we are client-focused and concentrates on delivering a knockout experience.

At Ibmi Media, we act proactively to customer's issues.


4. Show passion and act passionately

Out of all the traits ingrained in a support team, passion is most important. Only with passion can we engage and pay attention to the details within any job.

With passion, we can accomplish other areas of business success as well.


5. A positive attitude

Customer service agents represent our brand. So, how they interact with prospective clients and customers builds the brand image.

Having a naturally friendly disposition, an upbeat personality, and the ability to engage others in conversations is critical here.

Such enthusiasm will reflect in their work. For example, the willingness to go the extra mile to deliver an outstanding customer experience is always positive.

This will help facilitate collaboration with other employees as well. Which will result in good assistance/cooperation from them to find the right answer or best solutions to the customers.


6. Flexibility and adaptability

Not all customers have constant expectations. They change rapidly. Hence it is important for the customer service team to adapt quickly to meet them.

People look forward to instant answers and resolutions. So we need to deliver the best experience.

Popularity in technology requires the agents to handle multiple interactions simultaneously. They shouldn't lose their cool.

As omnichannel customer care becomes the norm, agents have to juggle interactions from different channels. They should be able to think on their feet and switch channels when necessary to offer the best service possible.

The use of new database platforms and management technologies requires agents to learn new workflows, processes, and systems quickly so they can stay productive.

We at Ibmi Media can provide ticket support, phone support, and live chat support efficiently.


7. Clear communication skills

The ability to communicate clearly and succinctly is an essential skill. It is important that the agents excel in both written and verbal communication forms so as to switch fluidly between channels.

Good communication skills include:

  • A good grasp of customer's psychology and how to "get through".
  • A knack for assessing a situation to deliver the right message at the right time.
  • The ability to walk the fine line between reassuring customers without promising uncertain results.
  • A friendly and positive tone in both written and verbal communications.
  • The ability to ask effective questions and listen actively.


7. Problem-solving skills

No matter how thorough our staff is trained, the variety of issues may surprise us. This requires our agents to come up with creative solutions on the spot.

The team should have the ability to get to the bottom of an issue and understand the customer's ultimate goal.

In addition, they have to navigate between the priorities. They need a feeling of empowerment to reach a solution that satisfies the needs of the customer while staying within the company's guidelines.


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Conclusion

This article covers the Qualities of customer service agents. Customer Service Agents and Representatives (CSR) interact with customers and provide information about products or services as well as handling and resolving customer complaints. They communicate in a variety of ways – by telephone; by e-mail, fax, regular mail; or in person. Multi-channel support is providing different methods of communication for your customers to reach you. This can include (but is not limited to) email, phone, chat, social media, knowledge base, etc.