Top 11 Soft Skills In Customer Service That Every Agent Must Have

Call centers are liable to deal with much more matters than only one issue resolution. It is only possible when they are well-qualified and have excellent soft skills. Soft skills improve employee relations with customers and coworkers. In addition, soft skills in customer service also increase business efficiency and reduce customer support costs.

If a call center representative does not have soft skills, they will make a bad impression of your brand. This way, the perspective of your company can be damaged irreparably.

Thus, a call center agent should learn soft skills to satisfy callers fully. These skills will also help in winning the customer repeat! Despite this importance, a recent LinkedIn survey revealed that 59% of hiring managers believe that soft skills are hard to find in employees.

However, in this blog, we have rounded up the skills of a call center agent that s/he needs to cultivate to work more efficiently in any call center.

Read on to comprehend what soft skills in call centers are required and why they matter so much!

Top 11 Soft Skills In Call Center For Every Agent

Your product is only not what matters. There are many more things that matter too. If your customer service is substandard, people will complain about it. Eventually, you will lose your customers.

Well, things are not impossible to turn around. If your customer has developed the following tips, your agents and customers will get many benefits.

Well, transforming your customer service is not an overnight task. It needs your customer agents' commitment to meaningful change. Moreover, it demands a team of rockstar support professionals. Together your organization can grow high!

It is time to explore the characteristics of call center agents! For sure these skills will help you far away!

1. Ability To listen

Working in a call center requires you to master several soft skills. The ability to listen is one of the most significant! When customers call at call centers, they need to speak up a lot to say everything that is bothering them.

If a customer support agent does not listen to them, they will become furious. The chances are they will switch their business to another company.

So, if an agent wants to make the customers happy, listening to them is one of the best keys. When you carefully listen to your customers, half of their concerns resolve simultaneously. It also increases the chances of positive feedback.

2. Friendliness

A rude customer service agent is a problem for coworkers, managers, and customers. However, customer representatives do not need to crack jokes or give a burst of heavy laughter on everything. But they need to be smiley, good listeners, and best at providing suggestions.

Friendly call center agents can relax furious customers by using several strategies and tactics. Similarly, a friendly work environment increases productivity and reduces work stress.

3. Strong communication skills

Customer service agents are always on the front line, and they are the voice of your company. Therefore, they need to develop good communication skills!

Communication skills help them reduce customers' queries and complaints effectively. Professional customer service representatives know the cruciality of communication. They know that kind of miscommunication can create disappointment and frustration. So call center agents make things simple for their customers. They help in better call center management and leave no doubt to customers about any matter.

If you want to crack more about call center management, you can tap on What is the Best Call Center Management to develop a  detailed insight.

4. Flexibility

While discussing the soft skills for call centers, we cannot forget flexibility. Flexible call center agents can reduce a lot of the burden on the managers. They are okay with switching their shifts, working hours, locations, and any other things. They happily adapt to the changes, easy to learn new agent skills and software.

Flexible call agents are less complaining about their environment. This way, they are also beneficial for the customers as they can deal with every problem. Well, every call center agent should be flexible!

5. Problem-solving

Very often, customers are unable to self-diagnose their problems correctly. For this, they need the support rep to intuit what happens wrong with them. And they also want the customers' representative to find an ultimate solution for them. 

Simply Contact, an outsourcing company, believes that good customer service agents anticipate the customers' needs and go the extra mile to perform actions. Moreover, they also educate their customers on what they can do to resolve such issues in the future.

A problem-solving pro understands how to present preemptive advice when the customer doesn’t even know about that option.

6. Calmness

Calmness is another call center soft skill that customers should hold for their success and satisfaction. A customer loves to be heard, and it is only possible if a customer representative is calm. Impatient customer service representatives often take complaints personally and become reactive. Their call duration is also short because they are always in a rush.

Calmness enhances customer service in two significant ways:

• When an agent remains calm and shows patience, customers get a chance to explain their problems comfortably. If an agent is in a hurry and interrupts the customer mid-sentence, it creates unnecessary friction. 

• Patience helps the agent to assess all angles and possibilities of situations carefully. Calm customer service agents also have good decision-making skills.

7. Empathy

Empathy is the ability to share the customers’ feelings. A great customer representative can relate to customers' problems. Thus, they become remarkably calm with a frustrated customer.

This skill allows the representatives to tap into their customers’ desires and needs. When a customer finds that an agent understands their problem and looks for a quick solution, they become happy! Meanwhile, they also forget the rough part of their complaint.

8. Enthusiasm and attitude

Agents' enthusiasm is often taken for granted, but in reality, it is one of the crucial skills for a call center. After all, eagerness to learn and grow helps the agents to remain professional. They understand the products inside and out and communicate far better.

If customers do not have the urge to learn and grow, the chances are they will not serve the company enthusiastically.

If customer representatives do not seek to improve, they will be left behind by people willing to invest in their skills. They should be enthusiastic about learning, whether marketing businesses, building products, or helping customers.

Customer representatives' attitudes and enthusiasm can take your company ahead. And play a critical part in customer satisfaction, retention, and company reputation.

When an agent is calm, fully prepared, and has up-to-date knowledge, nobody can beat them.

9. Work ethic

Work ethics and a willingness to serve the customers with the best are essential to customer agents' success. A customer rep should not take shortcuts while serving their customers. Moreover, they should try to serve the customers with positivity.

Сustomer service agents must develop a valuable relationship with their customers. Keeping customer interaction records is also effective as it makes things transparent. If a single employee refuses to follow the standard process, it can affect the entire department. Thus, following the work ethic can ease the paths of both employees as well as customers.

10. Work under pressure

Serving in a call center means you have to face a lot of pressure. Often, you need to attend back-to-back and resolve the same query every time. But well-trained customer agents handle every customer peacefully and in detail. Above all, they never let their customers know how tired, bored, or sad they are at that moment.

Agents who consistently remain cool can derive the most excellent satisfaction from their work. Additionally, they can deliver a high-quality service.

This skill keeps the call center environment calm and easy. No matter how burdened customer agents are, they never get angry and bear every challenging circumstance smoothly.

The work pressure does not affect their interaction! Either it is about interaction with the team or customers!

11. Teamwork skills

For making the customers happy, the importance of teamwork is constant. A team that works together—shares their skills, and learns from each other can quickly grow.

Their collective knowledge and experience take the company many steps ahead. Moreover, team skills impact agents’ work quality, customer retention, and organizational success.

Our Summary

Customer service representatives have a one-on-one personal interaction with customers. Therefore, they need to be the best in their patience, self-control, calmness, and communication skills. These agent skills help them in their promotion. Moreover, it provides a lot of benefits to the company.

So, if you hire a call center agent, you need to ensure that they are good at these skills. You can also test your customer agents' call handling skills after hiring them. There are several tests that can support you in a customer skills evaluation.

This blog post has enlisted the eleven best soft skills for customer service agents. Do not compromise on them!

However, if you need any help training your customer representatives, you can contact us.