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Running a company means you have to handle the responsibility of deciding who gets to work at your company and who doesn’t. Part of that means hiring the right customer service representative. Here is a list of traits that will make someone a perfect customer service representative. Using creative interview questions, try to find people with these traits and you will be good to go. A knowledge base software can help your customer service improve, but you need top notch agents to use the software otherwise there is no point having it installed.
A Positive Attitude
Customers can always tell when a customer service representative is not in a good mood. You can’t very well regulate how your CSRs feel at any given point in time, but you can do instead is ensure that you only hire people that have a positive attitude in the first place. This is what will allow you to have a team of people that would never let their feelings get across to customers. Positive attitudes also help give birth to the various other traits that you might be looking for in your customer service representatives which is something that will make your job a whole lot easier.
Tenacity
Customers can often be very difficult. Even with a knowledge base software full of resources, some customers want support from a representative. Hence it is pretty important for you to find CSRs that are tenacious and won’t take no for an answer. Sometimes customers might feel like their problems won’t be solved and their complaints won’t be addressed. In situations like these, tenacious CSRs can go after customers and make sure that they end up getting a better experience than the one they got previously.
Dedication
Handling customers day in and day out is hard, hard work. It is going to require an enormous amount of dedication to enjoy life while working. If the people you hire are not dedicated to the job that they are performing, it is highly unlikely that they will be interested in running after customers the way that they are going to have to. Also, people that are not dedicated to their job are going to end up bringing everybody else down as well. This because of the fact that they are going to drag down motivation and prove to be a weak link in your team.
A Desire To Succeed
Customer service is not the dead end that it used to be. We now have entire fields related just to customer satisfaction. Hence, there is no excuse for customer service representatives not being driven or having a desire to succeed in their field. There is a trajectory they can follow that would lead them to some incredibly high paying customer service jobs after all. A desire to succeed will help boost the other qualities they have, thus enabling them to be the best CSRs that they can be. You need people that want to succeed on your team to lift everyone else up.
Being A People Person
This seems like the most obvious thing to look for in a CSR, but a lot of companies tend to forget that CSRs by the very nature of their jobs deal with a lot of people every single day. Being a people person can help them do this. Dealing with people is a true skill because of the fact that there is a real finesse involved that helps you tread the fine line between being pushy and being persuasive. People persons are essential for your team and you will find that it will make your company a more fun place to work as well.
Problem Solving Skills
There are a lot of complex issues that your CSRs are going to face over the course of their career. It is essential that you hire people that can handle these problems. Using logic and intuition, your CSRs are going to be tasked with solving numerous problems. Hence, problem solving skills are some of the most important skills that your CSRs can have. It would do you good to find people that would be able to handle the stress of service based businesses. After all, not everyone has the skills necessary to be a problem solver.
Can Handle High Stress Environments
Customer service is one of the most stressful fields out there. An irate customer can be demanding and irrational, two things that definitely do not go very well together. A high stress environment can make some people lash out, which is something that absolutely cannot happen with a customer. Otherwise, it might end up compromising your company’s entire reputation. Try to hire people that can handle high levels of stress. Better yet would be people that thrive under pressure situations. It is these people that end up making the best CSRs.
