How to Know if You Should Work in Customer Service

Thinking about General Personality Traits

Determine if you have patience. Perhaps one of the most important personality traits for customer service representatives is patience. Patience, which is defined as the ability to deal with delay and complications without problem, is critical for customer service representatives. Patience is important for a number of reasons. Consider if you could handle: Staying on the phone for long periods of time. Talking to people who may not understand what you’re saying for a variety of reasons including language barriers, learning problems, cultural differences, and more. Sorting through complicated problems and resolving company or organizational rules with consumer expectations. You will be dealing with frustrated people on a regular basis, so you need to be able to keep your cool, whether it's the first call in the morning or the last one of a very long, exhausting day.

Consider if you are attentive. Attentiveness is extremely important for customer service representatives. Customer service representatives need to pay attention and be ready to see to the needs of a wide range of customer issues. An important part of this is paying attention to details and using detailed information in order to solve problems. You’ll need to listen carefully to customers. You’ll need to read between the lines of what customers are saying. Sometimes customers will not communicate exactly what they mean. They’ll say something figuring you know what they’re talking about when you really don’t. Are you happy to please others and jump at the opportunity to help people?

Figure out if you have a positive outlook. Customer service representatives often get beat down on a daily basis by frustrated customers. In order to avoid or at least temper this, good customer service representatives should have a positive outlook on life. Having a positive outlook will make it easier to sail through rough patches and will also make your interaction with customers much more pleasant. As a result, customers will be nicer to you and you’ll receive better feedback. Understand that your work is important because you are helping people. See every interaction as an opportunity to make someone’s day better. Use positive phrases and be optimistic with yourself and with consumers about the ability to solve problems. Talk to consumers about things you “can” do. Avoid saying “can’t.” Avoid telling them about things that won’t work or that you are unable to do. Focus on ways that you can help them. When a customer asks you for something you can’t do, instead of telling them that, offer them a solution that you can accomplish.

Figure out if you are goal-oriented and focused. Customer service representatives need to be goal-oriented and focused on their goals and jobs. This is because on a daily basis, you will be presented with a number of wide-ranging goals and things to do. If you are not focused on your goals, you’ll fail your employer and your customers. Consider: Every customer you deal with will create a problem for you to solve. These problems might range from answering a question to navigating them through the complexities of your organizational rules. If you find yourself constantly jumping from task-to-task in your daily life, maybe you should reconsider work in customer service. This is because in customer service, you’ll generally have to resolve tasks and goals before moving on to new ones. If you’re not focused, you’ll lose sight of what you need to do to resolve any issues your customer might have. This will result in poor feedback for you and might hurt your chances of further employment.

Figure out if you are proactive. Successful customer service representatives go above and beyond what is expected of them. They also look ahead and anticipate future concerns and find ways to avoid them. Clients appreciate this type of preemptive concern for their well-being because it makes them feel as if you have their best interests at heart. Anticipate problems and try to head them off before they happen. Don’t wait for a customer to ask for something. If you think the conversation is going in a certain direction, try to solve it before the customer brings it up. Consider if you are a strategic thinker. Do you think several steps ahead? If you enjoy chess or strategy games, you might be a strategic thinker. Do you like to put in effort to get something done ahead of time? Proactive people are energized and try to finish tasks and achieve goals before deadlines.

Reflecting on Your Experience, Qualifications, and Abilities

Talk to your friends and family. One way to figure out if you’ll be good in customer service is to talk to people who know you best. Most of the time, the people in your lives will have a much better idea of whether you’ll excel in service then you will. This is because they’ve had the opportunity to interact with you under a wide variety of circumstances. Ask your friends and family directly if they think you’d be good in customer service. Ask your friends and family what they think your strengths are in terms of customer service. Ask your friends and family what they think are your weaknesses in terms of customer service.

List your prior experience. When considering if a career in customer service is right for you, you should make a quick and informal list of your professional experience and any other experience that you think has prepared you for a role in customer service. Making this list will give you a good idea if you have experience that will help you adjust to a customer service job. Consider: Any work at all related to customer service. This could include a clerk at a gas station, a flight attendant job, a waiting job, or anything in which you work with and interact with the public. Any non-professional but extracurricular work through your high school, college, or a non-profit organization. Such experience could include working in Student Government, debate team in high school, volunteering at a local animal shelter, or acting as a docent at a museum or local historical site. Any leadership experience. Leadership experience in general will demonstrate that you can manage others, deal with potentially stressful situations, and are capable of problem solving on the fly.

Create a resume. Once you’ve listed and thought about your experiences that can contribute to your ability to be a customer service representative, then you need to create a formal resume. Your resume will list your experience and accomplishments and allow potential employers to see your qualifications. Resumes often include: Education. Formal work experience, with dates that you worked. Non-related work experience that might help qualify you for a position. A list of references.

Considering Your Interpersonal Skills

Evaluate your communication skills. Above and beyond, the most important personality trait and ability is the ability to communicate with other people. This is because communication is the foundation of the customer and customer service representative relationship. If you can’t communicate or don’t enjoy communicating, you should consider another career. Determine whether you are a good communicator, not just over the phone, but in person. Communication is not just speaking clearly to a customer, but also being clear about the information that you are giving the customer. Part of communication is not just talking, but listening, too. Communication is also expressed in your body language and your eye contact.

Know your ability to create and maintain relationships. An important trait of successful customer service representatives is that they show interest in other people's lives, without getting personal. As a result, you need to be the type of person who can work with, talk to, and genuinely engage people as individuals. Consider: Creating relationships means that you learn customer names and you make a note of each client's issues as they occur so that you can refer to these issues when you next speak to them. Customers understand that they are not the only clients you have, but they love it when they are made to feel as if they are. To gauge this ability, think about your personal relationships. Do you have a lot of friends and do you have long time friends. Do you get along with your friends and family? If yes, then you might be suited to a career in customer service.

Think about whether you are polite and amiable. Being a customer service representative profession requires you to be genuinely polite and amiable. You need to be able to smile even if you don't feel like it. For this reason, you also need to be able to put personal issues aside when you are at work. Ultimately, the hardest part of being polite to a customer is when you are rejecting their request. Consider: Listen to their request in full and make sure they know you are listening and caring. Ultimately, if they know you’re listening and are doing so attentively, chances are when you reject them they’ll take it a little easier. Offer alternatives to what they want. If you can’t give them what they want, kindly suggest an alternative. Rely on comments like “I understand.” Say things like “I’m truly sorry that I can’t accommodate your request, but I can do…” In addition, politely ask them to step into your shoes, and tell them you are bound by the rules of the organization you work for. In the end, always tell them that you sympathize with them and you care. In addition, consider if you're the type of person who can stay polite even in the face of someone being rude to you or continually disrespecting you.

Gauge your diplomatic ability. Diplomacy means that you are able to communicate with others in order to resolve and mediate conflict. While diplomacy depends a lot on your ability to communicate, it is different in that you’ll need to communicate in a certain way that calms people and helps them see new solutions and perspectives. Diplomacy is one of the most important customer service qualities because you may be in the position where you have to communicate things that the customer may not want to hear. Diplomacy means that you can be honest with the customer in a way that will not offend, even if you are stating that they are at fault because of an issue they are having. Diplomacy means that you can be honest about issues in a manner that does not upset a customer, even if you are giving a customer bad news.