There is a massive opportunity in these figures.

Empathy and emotional intelligence

Exceptional customer service is built on an agent’s empathy and emotional intelligence. These are learned skills, but they’re not easy to teach – a task made even more challenging with generational differences among agents and the customers they serve.

It’s only natural for humans to want to feel understood and heard, especially with the chaos and anxiety permeating the atmosphere these days. In order to successfully validate a customer’s wants and needs, empathy is a must.

Empathy is crucial for establishing healthy relationships and fostering compassion. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, as opposed to just one’s own. It is a prosocial, or helping behaviour, skill that comes from within rather than being forced. From a customer service perspective, empathy is the ability to have a human interaction with a customer.

Responding to negative feedback

One bad experience with an agent can cause them to abandon you for a competitor. Worse, one bad experience can cause a lost customer to write a bad review or utilise word of mouth to criticise your business, but we all know that a negative customer review does not always have to do with your quality of customer service, and oftentimes, it is beyond your control. What you do have control over, however, is how your team responds to negative reviews. Resolving a complaint can be just as effective as preventing one in the first place. Responding to negative feedback in an empathetic manner can actually boost loyalty and overall brand image.

Exceptional customer service is at the heart of our Brighter Directions company culture.

The post Empathy in customer service appeared first on Brighter Directions.

Due to the last few years, certain principles have come to the forefront of what is necessary for employees to embrace and adapt to, and organisations to consider for future hires. The following are some of the relevant principles of the future employee:

Flexible working

Having the freedom of flexible working has become a high priority since the pandemic forced this way of work on us.  Employees have become used to the freedom of home working and aimed with the knowledge that the company needs can be met in this way, going back to full time office based jobs will not be an option for many.

Building your own career path

The traditional career path is no longer expected of the future employee. They will now be encouraged to look at their own way of progressing.  Building their own networks, sharing valuable ideas and utilising feedback will be encouraged and contributions will be recognised.  Showing leadership in this way can put employees on the path to becoming a future leader.

Information sharing

In the past employees have kept information to themselves in the hopes of getting ahead, now they freely share information with colleagues and collaborate on ideas together.  More organisations are moving to a structureless establishment to remove the hierarchy amongst peers, therefore encouraging employees to share ideas and information to work together for the benefit of each other and the business.

New ways to communicate and collaborate

Once relying only on emails and phone calls, future employees are embracing new technology and new ways to connect.  Zoom calls, Team meets and new apps for fast efficient communication are becoming the new normal.

Continuous learning

Future employees can no longer rely on just what they already know, to succeed employees will need to commit to lifelong learning.  Having the skills, ability and willingness to learn new things, how to access this information and how to apply it to their continuing work role is possibly one of the most valuable principles.  This links in to sharing information as companies don’t always have formal training programmes to adhere to.  Accessing online learning sessions, internal teaching and face to face interactions employees can share this information with others to teach and also learn from each other.

At Brighter Directions we pride ourselves on already having these principles as part of our company’s culture, if you would like to work as part of a supportive, friendly and empowered team then please contact us to discuss what vacancies we have available.

The post Principles of the future employee appeared first on Brighter Directions.