We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better” – Jeff Bezos, CEO.
Successful brands are built partly because they have a good product but majorly because they understood the importance of creating a great experience for their customers during the customer journey.
Often times, most businesses measure the customer experience from only when a client signs up for their services or product. But in reality, the customer journey starts from the moment when clients begin to research about the business either online through the business website or any of the brand’s social media platforms. This experience continues after signing-up for your service and even after they have stopped using your services or product (a situation you really do not want).
In a recent 2014 survey, 65% of 1,000 consumers surveyed said they have cut ties with a brand over a single poor customer service experience.
A good customer experience is therefore vital to the success of an organization; therefore a customer care representative must possess certain characteristics that will help them not only carried out their own task but also contribution to the acquisition and retention of customers for the business. After all the lower the rate at which you lose clients, the better for the business. And usually the contact center is the first point of call for most complaints and enquires.
5 Essential Characteristics Good Customer Care Representatives:
#Listening Skills:
Listening is more of a skill than an art. And every customer care representative must possess the ability to listen. When you work in a call center, you often get to hear the same question being asked frequently. As a result, whenever you get a call, you might be tempted to give predefined answers but it does not work that way. Each customer complaint should be treated as unique and therefore you must be ready to listen.
#Asking Skills:
Not everyone can express themselves the way they want to and most times, customers really do not understand the issues they want to resolve. It is therefore the job of a good customer care representative to have great asking skills. By being able to ask the right question, you can quickly pinpoint what a customer’s issues are and offer appropriate guideline to resolving the issues.
#Responsibility:
Responsibility is the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something. A good customer representative is to responsible first to the business and then the customer. To the business because you are the businesses brand ambassador. Your responsibility to the customer includes helping the customer to finally be satisfied. While most clients can be sometimes unpredictable, it is your duty as a customer care representative to make the client leave your desk fully satisfied that his/her enquires has been attended to
#Responsiveness:
To work in a contact center, you have to be responsive. This means you must fully understand your customer’s enquiry and leave no enquiry unattended to. The ability to be fully prepared and know your customer will also go a long way in helping you resolve the incident raised.
#Handling Problems:
Incident resolution is an important role in contact center. A good customer care representative must understand the limit of his responsibility and must be able to guide the customer to a successful resolution of a problem.
#Assisting in Sales:
This is perhaps the most crucial part of a contact center skill. A good representative must possess good marketing skill. This means you must have good understanding of the complaint or problem a customer is trying to solve and then help them make the right decision. Every action you take should make the customer journey experience better and should further drive the customer down the marketing funnel.
Conclusion
The role of a customer care representative is crucial to the success of the business. A contact care representative might be the first point of call pre-sale and post-sale and must therefore be ready to assist the company in building a brand reputation within and outside the organization.