Ways to increase your skills as a customer service rep

A lot of us have taken on work from home opportunities to help increase our income during this crazy time. For me, I work in a call center customer service position and have been for the last two months and I love it. Blogging and consultant is something I do part-time for income, but my full-time job Monday-Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm for a bank in their refinance call center.

I have over 5 years of customer service call center positions and would consider myself a very great candidate for this role. Eventually, I will move into a management role, hopefully one having my team. At my current job, I have very entry-level duties and nothing else is going on. I am still within my 90 days so I am really kicking butt right now even though I am fresh out of training.

So how can you kick butt in your entry-level position and quickly move into other roles or be given more opportunities?

Easy to develop more skills!

The number one way you fail is to stop learning and expanding your knowledge.

You can start by expanding your knowledge of your current role policies and procedures.

For example, if you are in claims research the different types of claim scenarios and what the outcomes may be.

Once you have a vast understanding of the policies and procedures start breaking down those resources given to you. Whether it be a job aid or a walkthrough of steps to take to place a customer on a payment arrangement, all of these things are great resources that most jobs provide. & maybe your job doesn't have one so maybe you make one of your own and share it with your team?

For example: If you are in collections or in an outbound call center look up your job aids for rebuttals and practice them and start using them.

Using LinkedIn has helped me further develop customer service skills! I am not sure if this is common knowledge or what but did you know if you have a LinkedIn premium account, which is about $29.00 a month, has a whole online learning and training program that teaches you various different things from customer service to coding.

Learn more about social media marketing. customer service phone skills, Microsoft office, adobe products.

These are great tools that you can use to get better at the current skills you have and lets you learn more about the systems you may be using at your current job. This will allow you to volunteer more for projects at your job and have the confidence to complete them with little or no instructions!

How awesome would that be?

Do you work in a customer service call center like me?

Do you wear multiple hats and use multiple applications at one time?

Well, I have the perfect thing you can do. Think of your top tasks you typically perform while on the phone with a customer. First, think of the main objectives or reasons for the phone calls you get, usually, this is a few different types of the same calls that usually all end with the same result. For my job, I am either helping a customer get their loan as close to being funded as possible and/or seeing if the customers pre-qualify for a refinance loan.

So since I work for a bank there are a few tasks I need to get done on each call.

I have to read the call monitoring script, fully verify the application, thank them for confirming the account through an automated system (if they did), and then make sure I ask them what they are needing help with and repeat back for understanding

It seems like all of that would take a super long time but I can usually have that done in just a minute or so by simply creating myself a script.

Creating yourself a script is super easy, unless your job already has one in place most of the time they do, but if they don't it's not hard to sound super friendly and completely confirm an account. My script sounds something like this:

" Thank you for calling, BANK, my name is Taylor please be aware this call may be monitored and recorded, may I ask who I am speaking with?"

Customer Response.

"Thank you for that, I see you verified your social/account number through our automated system, so thank you for that. For the security of your account may I please have your DOB, last 4 of your social, and zip code?"

Customer Response.

"Thank you for that! How can I help you today?"

Customer Response.

"So just to be sure I understand... (repeat for understanding) I'll be happy to help you with that today, let me check out your account real quick, do you mind if I place you on a brief 2-3 minute hold?"

Customer Response.

"Thank You!" - Place caller on hold and get your game plan together.

While they are very briefly on hold I'll go over all the notes and see what needs to come together next and I go from there. When I take the caller off hold I of course thank them for waiting and go on about the call. With have this action plan thought of I can quickly move through the call process and document all the information I need.

The next few things I am going to briefly touch on are simple things you can do to speed up your calls and give the best experience to the customer.

Type faster! Practice typing! Like for real it's so simple and can help you out a lot. There are so many sites you can check out that do free typing tests so you can get a lot of practice that way.

Practice multitasking! Now starting today on your calls starts taking advantage of pulling up the information, verifying it, and quickly moving on to the next page while asking the next questions.

The best thing for multitasking is to get in the habit of asking the same questions every time and as you build up the repetitiveness your body will automatically develop muscle memory and you will remember the information and start doing it on every call.

This will really speed up your calls, your boss may be so impressed by your new AHT improvement you might get a raise, lol!

Do you work somewhere where they want you to take the caller through a full customer service experience every time?

If your job is less concerned about the numbers and more concerned about the customer's experience than you've come to the right person for advice!

In my experience with working with call centers, most of them provide you with a call flow to follow to hit all of their points. Well, what if you put this to practice and started following their call flow to the T each time?

Does it actually help with your overall calls, AHT, and customer satisfaction?

Absolutely. Companies pay big money for the proper research to be done to figure out how their customers interact with their customer service reps. From those interactions, they make these scripts based on the BEST customer service satisfaction results. So if you're looking to get promoted fast and really show these guys you know what you're doing its best practice to start following all suggested guidelines for your calls, yes even the silly ones.

You can take a call from meh to awesome just by asking someone How their day is going or make friendly conversation throughout the call. It can be about anything random whatever gets that customer talking to you, also it helps the flow of the call go much smoother.

This is probably an introverts worst nightmare, advice on talking on the phone with customers, actually talk. Most people can't imagine building a connection with a total stranger, but for me its something I do almost every day.

I will say it totally depends also where you work because I have worked in some call centers that really pushed numbers like AHT and ACW so you could barely get anything done on a call, let alone personalize or talk to the person.

I personally don't like feeling like a transaction so I wouldn't want someone else to feel that way either, and that's why I enjoy working in Customer Service. It helps me feel like I am helping people, whether it's saving money on car insurance or helping them with a loan application it feels good to know because they may need that extra help financially, you never know whats someone going through.

Finally, close the call off by doing a quick recap of everything that you went over and confirm understanding.

Some times we get so anxious and lost in the call that we forget important parts to the process, like a good recap and thanking them for being a customer.

So stop getting excited to get off that phone and do a good recap and let the customer know the next steps, and always ask if they have any further questions.

Again, I can only speak from the experience that I have but I have been working at home providing customer service and support through various companies since earlier this year. By listening to mine and my fellow employees' call I feel as if this is something that a lot of people forget and I just wanted to follow up with some of my own personal tips and tricks.

I hope this information finds you well.

Thank you!

#careerdevelopment #personaldevelopement #awareness #growth