Working in customer support can make you feel like you are an unknown hero because you don’t often get enough praise, and awareness of areas of responsibility and the amount of work the support team offers is inadequate.
The employee is expected to interact during a short conversation with each customer, solve their problems and help others quickly. It is as if they are expected to come up with immediate answers, but they may actually need to look into the problem or test the solutions themselves.
This is about technical knowledge, but there is much more than just giving friendly responses to the many problems awaiting in the support queue. You're not sitting here to find several constructive ways to apologize, but as an employee you must identify the problem, take control of the situation and lead the client towards a solution.
When companies talk about important customer service qualities or skills, empathy is the first quality that comes to mind. It is one of the main skills in customer service, but what defines it?
It's never easy, as it's part of a larger system of emotional intelligence.
Daniel Goleman, one of the best authors in this field, defined emotional intelligence as the ability to recognize our emotions and other people’s emotions to motivate ourselves and manage emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.
The Goleman model of the five components of emotional intelligence is hierarchical, which means that some traits and characteristics are founded on other traits.
The first three components are part of what Goleman calls "personal competence":
The other two components are part of our "social competence":
According to Goleman’s emotional intelligence model, a person's emotional intelligence begins with two types of awareness:
It’s as if we’re saying, "you can't really understand your client's pain, unless you have a good understanding of yourself."
Let's look at a scenario for a better understanding. Frozenbyte develops online games. That is, you can communicate with other players online - on the Steam platform. It allows you to start playing your games after entering an activation code, which is usually included in the game box.
When a package was delivered to an Amazon customer, he couldn't find the activation code to register a game called Trine on Steam. Apparently Amazon was selling different versions, and after a failed attempt to get help from Amazon, The customer called for help from Frozenbyte, and a customer service employee told him that the version sold on Amazon didn’t support Steam services. However, They sent him an activation code to register his game on that platform.
This is an ideal example of the support staff understanding the customer's problem and helping a customer achieve happiness and satisfaction. It was easy for the staff member to deny this request and say that he has to abide by the company’s policies, but he crossed the red line and gave the customer the activation code anyway, showing a clear understanding of the customer's problem.
The staff member knew that the customer had already tried to make the game work the way he had always played Frozenbyte, and his behavior had turned the customer into a frequent customer. Without the key, the customer was unlikely to buy another Frozenbyte game.
Everyone gained something at the end of the day - the customer gets to play the game the way he wants, and Frozenbyte gets appreciation from Reddit for its excellent customer service.
We know that you have experienced one of those days when a customer said something that put you in a bad mood and felt the urge to criticize him badly, but you contained yourself at the end.
This is the first expression of consciousness that allows you to self-regulate, direct your behavior, choose your responses to others, and not deal with emotionally unconscious reactions. The other type of awareness is oriented towards others, depends on more empathy and self-regulation, appears as improved social skills, and allows you to control your emotions and direct the client towards a solution.
The customer support staff expressing awareness creates an opportunity to form a surprisingly helpful response, and helps you learn how to customize your response and truly communicate the customer's problem and pain without using phrases like "I'm sorry for the inconvenience" because you know the customer isn't looking for a feeble excuse, but rather for your understanding of their point of view and your genuine apology.
Empathy depends on your ability to overcome your own point of view, appreciate someone else’s point of view, and put yourself in their shoes, Ed Yong said. This means the ability to make use of the situation, whether that is by deciding how to best respond to distinctive suggestions, or listen to angry customers and direct them to an effective solution. And once you and your team continue doing this, you'll be ready to provide great customer support.
Support teams are the unknown heroes of customer service. Customer support is a challenging task that not only requires technical knowledge, but also requires you to respond to your customers with kindness and empathy.
When you probe Daniel Goleman's model of emotional intelligence, you realize that support staff must be among the most intelligent people we know. No matter how angry or frustrated a customer is, the most self-disciplined employees will provide great support.
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