Necessary Skills For a Career in Customer Succes
When I started out my career in customer success, while I knew how important the customers are to the growth and success of any business, I do not think I had a full grasp of my role as a customer success executive.
The first meeting I had with my team lead made me realise the huge responsibility that accompanied my role and I think I forgot to breathe for a second. People skip a heartbeat, but I skipped a breath.
I knew I had the basic skills to get the job done, that was what got me the job but if I hoped to be successful in my career as a customer success executive, “basic” wouldn’t cut it. Well, they say google is your friend and so I turned to my friend and the research began…
Every job and career have skill set requirements and having these skills is a step in the right direction. As a customer success executive, having the needed skills gives you an edge in the competitive job ecosystem.
For this article, we will be focusing on soft skills.
What are the skills needed in customer success?
First of all, soft skills are personal attributes and traits, needed in one's career. These are usually seen in our reaction and relationships with others. They are not taught in steps like hard skills, they might be much harder to learn and even harder to measure and evaluate.
Some soft skills are; attitude, communication, creative thinking, work ethic, time management, teamwork, networking , decision making, problem solving, ethical thinking amongst others.
While all these soft skills are transferable, the following are soft skills needed to work in customer success;
Effective communication: This is very essential to customer success as you need to know and understand what the customer is saying or not saying (as the case might be) and be able to communicate to the customer in a way and manner that they will understand. This skill applies to both verbal and written conversations. Ensure proper use of grammar, tenses, punctuations and spelling (for written communication).
Listening Skill: I personally believe listening is just as important if not more as communicating a response. This is because, hearing the wrong thing or having a wrong perception could be catastrophic and result in conflict. Although conflict resolution is a necessary skill, starting conflict isn’t.
Self-control:This right here is very important. I would normally consider myself as someone who had self control and was patient. This theory was put to test the moment I resumed my role as a customer success executive. You would need to be able to calmly handle all customers, even the ones who do not behave like they are Kings 🌚
.Empathy: It is very important that you understand what the customer is saying and how they feel. With empathy, you are able to recognise and understand the emotional state of mind of people around you.
These skills are not developed over night but through consistency and intentionality.
How intentional are you about being exceptional?
Cheers,
Seun