Your call center employees are your organization’s calling card. They speak to your customers, whether inbound or outbound, and are therefore instrumental in creating an ideal customer journey. This requires a number of specific competencies. In this blog, we discuss nine of them.

1. Good listener

A good call center agent has strong listening skills. A customer needs to feel heard. By actively listening, you make the customer feel that you not only hear him or her, but actually understand him or her. And we don’t need to explain to anyone how important that is.

2. Empathetic

Good listening also includes the ability to empathize with another person’s thoughts and experiences. A good call center employee is therefore empathetic and understanding and can put himself in the other person’s situation.

3. Patient

Patience is a virtue, especially in the life of a call center agent. Not every customer will agree with you, or immediately understand what you mean. In fact, sometimes a customer will not want to listen to what you say at all. In that case, just see if you can keep your cool and remain friendly.

4. Easy speaker

Besides listening well, a call center employee must also be able to speak easily. You are dealing with different types of people in different types of situations, you must be able to adapt your manner and tone of speech to that.

5. Digivaardig

Really good interactive multichannel customer contact solutions are easy to understand and make the call center agent’s life easier. Still, some digital literacy is welcome.

6. Persuasive negotiator

A born call center agent knows how to negotiate well to convince a customer of the added value of his or her product or service. In doing so, the key is not to come across as a pit bull, but to make the customer feel that it is all about him or her.

7. Go-getter

Of course you will face resistance. A customer may find your service or product too expensive or see no reason to part with your competitor. Besides being a convincing negotiator and a good listener with a lot of patience and a sense of empathy, a true call center employee also has a lot of perseverance. Even if a customer is not so friendly, you don’t get discouraged and remain convinced of the added value of your product or service.

8. Stress-resistant

Customers who are not always friendly, callers on hold, WhatsApps piling up. As a call center agent, you won’t be thrown off guard by a little stress. In fact, it will energize you!

9. Planner

Time management is one of the most important skills a call center employee must have to achieve better results. An essential step to better time management is good planning. Next, that schedule should be your road map for the entire day.

Inspired?

Do you want a call center that is ready for the future? Then contact us without obligation. We will gladly work with you to find the ultimate solution for your organization. Want to get acquainted first? Stay informed by signing up for our newsletter.