#13 Productivity Tips For Customer Service Professionals

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Productivity Tips Customer Service
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A career in customer service is one that is both challenging and quite rewarding. In order for any individual to excel in their chosen career paths, they need to be productive in job roles they are assigned. From my experience, the most successful people are also the most productive, they have mastered how to make the most of what they have in terms of resources, time and opportunity.

This makes it important for professionals who desire to succeed in their customer service career to understand how they can make the most of their time.

To ensure that I share the best tips, I reached out to a number of experts in the industry whose advice would be invaluable in making the most of your customer service career.

Here’s what the experts recommend –

John Tschohl

“Be positive. Smile. Build your self-image and self-concept. Read at least one book a month on customer service, sales, management, leadership and personal development for the rest of your life and you will be extremely successful and rich.”

Steve Curtin

“Capture as much relevant information about the customer/customer preferences as possible during your interactions with them (in person, over the phone, email/chat) and archive it in real time! I learned a long time ago that memories fade, while ink (and an archived database) doesn’t!”

Jeff Toister

“You can only serve one customer at a time. Customer service employees are frequently distracted by many things. They divide their attention between bosses, co-workers, and other customers. What we should all do is give each customer our full attention.”

Shep Hyken

“I teach a simple concept called Starting Over. It’s based on the idea that you are only as good as your last customer interaction. Every time you connect with a customer is an opportunity to start over – and be even better than the last customer interaction. Come to work every day with the idea that your goal is to be even better than yesterday. Can you do it? Sometimes. But, it’s more about the effort than anything else. It’s about your mindset.” 

9 more productivity tips for customer service professionals –

1. Use the Right Work Tools

Most people have heard the sayings; “the right tool for the right job” or “you are only as good as your tools.” These sayings are true when it comes to the choice and use of basic work tools.

You cannot be as productive as you should be if you’re using a hammer for work that requires a mallet, in the same way, you cannot achieve much if you’re using the wrong app or software for any task. If you are using outdated software, faulty equipment or obsolete systems your productivity is limited (Eg. The amount of time spent repeating sentences to customers over a telephone headset with a faulty mouthpiece increases the handling time of a call center rep)

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Make a request for new systems, or for software updates if you believe improving these tools can significantly enhance the productivity of your team.

 2. Build Solid Internal Relationships

Forming good relationships with colleagues within your team, and in other departments is important in the career of any customer service professional. Often times, you might need the expertise of these other colleagues (both within & outside your team), to get your work done.

Building good relationships with colleagues will make you more efficient as they are more likely to put your requests on priority as a result of the bond you’ve built with them. Besides, healthy work relationships make for an efficient and productive team.

3. Get Enough Rest

This is time tested. No matter have hardworking you are, you need sleep if you intend to keep up the energy levels. Just as it is necessary to maintain equipment for it to stay durable, the brain needs sleep to function more efficiently.
Getting good sleep of at least 6 hours every day is important to be meaningfully productive the next day.

4. Use Mobile Productivity tools

Take advantage of the multitude of mobile productivity tools available on the internet for free today. Check out this slideshow of my top 5 mobile time management apps.

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Go ahead, search for any of them on Google store, Apple store or Blackberry world and give them a try.

5. Learn to Say No

One would think it’s common logic to say no to more tasks when you’re hands are full, but it isn’t so, professionals are sometimes too eager to please and end up getting in way over their heads.

It’s not a matter of being hardworking when you take on more work than you have time to accomplish, your productivity suffers and you risk getting burned out.
It’s okay to say no, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

6. Keep a Clear Desk

[caption id=”attachment_4979″ align=”alignnone” width=”618″] You can’t be productive with a desk like this[/caption]

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A cluttered desk can create anxiety and worsen confusion in times of pressure.  Even the items littered on the desk can become subtle forms of distraction.

Keep your desk clear of clutter, get rid of any items you are not immediately working on/with (papers, files, clips, cups, empty coffee cups etc.) When your desk is free of clutter, you’ll be able to find what you need more quickly and increase your work efficiency.

7. Learn Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can save you small amounts of time, which when aggregated become meaningful. Learning keyboard shortcuts enable you to do more with less effort. For example, if you work with Microsoft office suite for more than an hour every day, take out time to learn major shortcuts that can save you those 3 extra mouse clicks or keyboard presses. Soon they’ll become second nature and you’ll be able to get more done in less time.

8. Turn off Mobile Notifications

It’s hard to focus and get into that ‘flow‘ state if your mobile phone keeps buzzing and vibrating with Facebook, Twitter & Whatsapp notifications. Your productivity will improve significantly if you’re able to tune out such distractions from your smartphone.

It is important to silence these notifications when you’re at work if you want to be productive.

9. Stay Positive

Image: aspirehealthcorp.com

I cannot emphasize enough, on the importance of a positive attitude. If you want to have a healthy, productive & positive career, you must learn to count your blessings and see the good in any situation. A positive attitude is contagious – it produces cooperation and enhances teamwork, which makes a team efficient and more productive.

What’s your favorite tip? Do you have any other tips you’d like to share? Please comment below. Thanks in advance!

Kelechi Okeke
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