Knowledge Every Customer Service Representative Needs

Vu Khoi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Many of us have surely asked questions about the customer service profession, such as: What should a customer service representative study? What does a customer service rep actually do? In the article below, SimERP would like to share some information and knowledge about the customer service role.

What does a customer service representative do?

Some people wonder: what does a customer service representative actually do?

The answer can be summed up in one phrase: looking after the customer's happiness. Customer service representatives are the individuals who interact directly with customers, build customer loyalty to the business, answer the questions customers raise, proactively send gifts to valued customers, conduct surveys, and promote products.

Beyond that, the job also includes running customer satisfaction surveys about the business, preparing reports, and proposing suitable solutions.

Skills of a customer service representative

Communication

Whether serving customers by phone or in person, a customer service representative must constantly refine their conduct and communication skills. Words must be clear, articulate, and precise, because customers may take away a negative meaning if your speech is not expressed appropriately.

Patience

For each of us, our ego always occupies a very high position. But if the ego is kept in check, you can become a truly professional customer service rep — and that is a very important customer care skill. You know what? A business's first purpose is profit, so no matter how difficult or negative-minded a customer may be, stay patient and persuade them well.

Listening

Listening is undoubtedly an indispensable skill. Human nature means everyone wants to be respected and heard — and customers are no different. They want to express their viewpoints and opinions, and even to ask customer service reps complicated questions. Once they feel your friendliness and your genuine desire to listen, a sense of comfort and ease will emerge in them. That positive feeling drives them to want to own the company's products even more.

Knowledge

Another answer to the question "what does a customer service representative need?" is knowledge. You must truly understand the product you are introducing to customers and have solid expertise in that field. Imagine that one day a customer asks you about some detail of the product and you cannot answer. How would you feel, and how would the customer react? You would be completely flustered, and of course the customer would think less of you and begin doubting everything you have said. So make an effort to broaden and sharpen your knowledge every single day.

Challenges faced by customer service representatives

No autonomy, no personal discretion

Many reps have to speak with customers like a stiff "robot." That is genuinely dispiriting: repeating the same actions and the same tasks day after day, hour after hour, means their creativity cannot stretch further, they cannot do the job in their own way, and their sense of personal agency gradually fades away.

Reaching customers

Nowadays, with so many channels for approaching customers, customer service reps find it hard to identify returning customers quickly in order to answer their questions fastest. For example, many customers place orders by email but then use their phone number to contact staff about product quality issues.

Poorly allocated workloads

Because a business typically employs many customer service reps who must handle a huge volume of inquiries from a large customer base, it is very difficult for a single rep to answer all of a customer's questions. The consequence is that the next rep has no record of the previous question and answer, which wastes the customer's time and achieves little.

Suboptimal use of customer information

The volume of customer data a business holds keeps growing — names, phone numbers, Facebook accounts, email addresses. Yet not every employee knows how to analyze and manage this information well. As a result, businesses spend time collecting information from customers but fail to use it effectively, sometimes ending up with missing data or data overload.

Language barriers

Some companies use English-language software to manage customers, which is difficult for many employees who have had no opportunity to learn or use the language. This leads to mistakes in some software processes and wasted time.

To help solve these problems, many customer service reps today have started adopting customer support and care software, which not only saves time but is also more efficient and accurate. Beyond familiar tools like Excel, many businesses have turned to CRM software to support staff in customer management, such as SimERP, CRMVIET, or genCRM.

What's more, today's CRM software also helps customer service reps manage many other functions — sales management, retail management, and more — on a single system, making information processing and information sharing between departments fast and consistent.

How much does a customer service representative earn?

Currently, salaries for customer care department staff vary by position, ranging from 5 million to 20 million VND.

Salary is typically calculated as: base salary + allowances + KPI, specifically as follows:

• Inexperienced staff: from 4 million/month to 5 million/month

• Experienced staff: 8 million/month to 10 million/month

• Management-level staff: 18 million/month to 20 million/month

What should a customer service representative study?

In English, a customer service representative is called a customer officer. Today there are two types of CSKH reps: those who studied a related field and those who came from a different one. Those from related fields typically graduated in economics, commerce, communications, or marketing. At university, they are taught knowledge related to customer care processes as well as the skills needed to do the job well.

On the other hand, plenty of graduates also switch paths and go into customer service despite having studied something else. For example, some graduates of English language programs, instead of becoming lecturers or interpreters, leverage their existing English proficiency together with the experience gained during their university years and become highly respected customer service reps.

Conclusion

Those are some facts and knowledge about customer service representatives that you should know. We hope that through this article, SimERP has answered all of your questions!

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