As per the survey, the global call center market earned $31 billion in 2023, and customers prefer to spend 140% more on a positive experience rather than a negative one. Doesn’t the ratio indicate you a smooth and flexible customer service?

Yes, there’s one key area of your business that you need to tackle: positive and impressive customer service. For this, there is no alternative to adapt soft skills. Thinking why soft skills are important?

Go through the article and explore the importance of soft skills in technical support call centers for more details. 

What are soft skills in a call center?

Before heading to the main point soft skills call center, let’s acknowledge what soft skills are. Basically, soft skills indicate non-technical or interpersonal skills that enable individuals to interact with others effectively and handle any situation with empathy. 

In a call center, soft skills are providing excellent customer service and resolving issues with proper understanding. Examples of call center soft skills lists are:

• Negotiating
• Problem-solving
• Time management  
• Personal attributes
• Teamwork
• Empathy
• Adaptability
• Attention to detail, and many others. 

All these soft skills are crucial for call center agents to provide excellent customer service, increase customer lifetime value, and fulfill their organization’s success. 

However, after going through the call center soft skills details, let’s dig down to explore its importance.

9 Importance of Soft Skills in Technical Support Call Centers

Technical support call centers solve customers’ technical issues with products or services. Here, technical expertise and soft skills (supportive and friendly behavior and a willingness to help) both ensure positive customer experiences. 

For acknowledging in-depth call center customer service soft skills importance, let’s check out the following:

Influencing Customer Satisfaction

The survey shows that 61% of consumers don’t think twice about switching to a competitor after experiencing poor customer service. To erase this situation, you need to focus on maintaining a positive attitude towards your consumers. 

Also, effective time management is crucial to generate customer satisfaction, retention, and revenues. A good way to manage time is to narrow down call reasons, confirm customers’ status, quickly identify the problems, and solve them. 

Identifying and Solving the Problem

Problem-solving and critical thinking are some of the most effective technical skills for call centers. Agents receive several calls at a time. That’s why they need to think quickly to identify customers’ needs and problems and provide realistic solutions in time. 

By effective problem-solving skills, agents can improve average handle time and encourage customers to stick to the service. This skill also allows agents to deal with different facts when the computer system goes down. 

Build Customer Trust & Loyalty

Technology changes rapidly, and support companies need to adapt new tools and systems. Along with this, soft skills like credibility, reliability, and transparency all help to build trust among customers. By developing these skills agencies can provide a strong and positive appearance to their clients and customers. 

Mastering Essential Communication Skills

Clear pronunciation, speaking with an upbeat tone, and proper grammar are all essential to give customers a confident outlook. Effective communication between agents and customers helps to meet expectations and goals.  

It also works as a time saver and opens up ways to deal with several clients happily. However, communication soft skills for call centers avoid misunderstandings and enhance the efficiency of the customer service process.

Ability to Achieve Stretch Goals

You need to adopt negotiation skills with your supervisor and constantly meet or discuss topics to identify the best solution. By doing this, you can make a minimum number of calls per day. 

When it comes to achieving stretch goals, flexibility plays an important role, too. As a customer service representative, you face several challenges, all you need to do is effectively handle and resolve conflicts or disagreements in a positive way.  

Active Listening Skills 

Active or good listening skills involve engaging the mind in being conscious and helping to make relatable decisions instantly. With proper practice, one can enrich their listening soft skill. In customer service, proper listening proves professionalism and helps to fulfill customers’ expectations. 

Also, listening creates a positive vibe among customers, like their voice is heard and understood. As per a study, 84% of customers say that being treated this way makes them feel valued and respectable. 

Making Sales Strategies to Increase Conversion Rate

As you know, BPO companies or customer service deal with different types of issues claimed by customers, like company policies, product details, service errors, and others. Customers don’t give you much time to answer or solve their issues. 

In this situation, you need to keep their issues organized and communicate with others for more specific solutions if possible. Some agents might be better at higher organizational tasks, while others may focus on collaborative aspects of the organization. So, focus on yours first by polishing the skills of a call center agent.

Grabbing Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is all about understanding and managing your customer’s “happiness” and “satisfaction.” It also indicates the soft skill of call center empathy. Customers seek technical assistance or service-related info when they experience confusion, frustration, or solutions.

However, when customer service successfully creates a sense of empathy, they can build a strong emotional connection with customers. With this, companies increase their revenues more than twice.

Extensive Product and Service Knowledge

A company’s product and service expertise, as well as common complaints and their solutions, help the call center’s staff to give effective and smooth customer service. If something goes unresolved, you need to gather more information and circle back. 

As per the survey, feeling neglected or forgotten is the #1 reason companies lose the opportunity to impress customers to stick to their brand. It also destroys customer loyalty and trust.

FAQs About Soft Skills in Technical Support Call Centers

What is a technical call center?

A technical call center, also known as technical support or IT support call center, resolves assistance with different technical issues related to products or services. Its key goal is to help customers troubleshoot problems, fix technical issues, and provide guidance.

What are hard skills in a call center? 

In a call center, hard skills indicate technical and job-specific abilities such as call center software (CRM) or knowledge about how to deal with troubleshooting common customer issues. Other hard skills are:

• Communication skills (verbal and written)
• Phone etiquette 
• Customer service skills (understanding customer pain points and others)
• Product/service knowledge (features, benefits, and pricing)
• Problem-solving (analyze customer issues and find the best solution within a limited time frame)
• Sales skills (upselling, closing deals, etc.)
• Policies and procedures knowledge 
• Accurate and efficient data entry 

What is BPO for a call center?

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is hiring or outsourcing all or a part of business operations from a third-party vendor or service provider. On the contrary, a BPO call center indicates outsourced agents that handle incoming and outgoing customer calls for other businesses or industries. 

How do I improve customer experience with the call center?

You need to follow effective strategies to improve customer experience with the call center, including:

• Emphasize empathy and active listening
• Personalize interactions
• Provide best solutions
• Empower and train agents
• Monitor and measure performance, and many others.

Conclusion

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of soft skills in technical call centers, it is time to develop these essential skills to fulfill customer demands. 

Also, you need to stick to your company’s policies and new product or service updates to build impressive customer service.