Things to Expect When Taking on Customer Service Role

Working in customer service puts you on the front lines of dealing with members of the public. You become the face of the company you work for, and customers are going to treat you as that representative. This role can be rewarding when you turn a customer from being irate to happy and pleased, but you won’t win them all over.

You can prepare yourself for dealing with customers before you start a new customer service job. Explore the following tips that can help you with some of the more common scenarios you’re likely to encounter when taking on a customer service role.

How to Work Within a Script

Some customer service roles require you to follow a script. But following a script can make you sound artificial to customers and may make them more adversarial when they realize you’re reading from a script. Customers may feel that you won’t have much latitude to help them because the script defines what you can and can’t say. When you can’t get around a script, you can make yourself sound more natural.

Read your script before you interact with the public. Don’t try to memorize everything. Instead, practice inflections, how the words sound coming out of your mouth, and note passages where your voice sounds flat. The more natural you can make the script sound, the less likely you’ll put your customers on the defensive when you respond to their inquiries.

How to Handle Rude Customers

You are going to encounter rude customers in a customer service role. Customers may be upset at their experiences with a product, or they may be having a bad day and you happen to be the person they project their anger toward.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter why they’re angry or rude. Don’t escalate your emotional response to match their attitudes. Keep calm, try to resolve any issues they may have to their satisfaction, and call for help when customers refuse to respond to you.

How to Always Be Polite

You’ll experience days when the last thing you want to do is to be pleasant and cheery on the phone or face to face when you’re working with customers. Put your mood to the side and try to maintain a neutral attitude. You don’t want your bad mood to bleed into your customer interactions at any point. If you don’t make an attempt to make your mood less obvious, you run the risk of getting into an unnecessary argument with customers, and you could unintentionally insult them when you have no business doing so. If you can’t control your mood in a situation, ask a co-worker or supervisor to step in while you walk away to cool off.

The items above are some of the areas you can expect to encounter when taking on a customer service role. Do your best to treat people well even if they don’t always do the same for you. Be the best brand representative that you can be.

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