Which are personal qualities required for working in the service industry?

When you do a service to others, there is some amount of nobility attached to it, even if it is a customer service which has a business motive behind it. Working in a customer service industry will not be a cake walk for all. One requires the right mental makeup, interpersonal skills, technical knowledge, problem-solving skills and so on, to be successful in a customer service industry.

Even if one lacks such qualities while joining such an industry, a sincere and committed working over a period of time definitely helps one to learn, gain and hone the specific skills needed in customer service.

Here are some skills that you can learn from working in the customer service industry:

Patience. Patience and controlling of anger are great virtues even from a spiritual point of view. Angry customers who happen to get disappointed over the problems they faced in the product / service provided by your firm will at times be too harsh in their words and too hard to please. “Customer is always right” is the first statement in the rule books of customer service and patience is the prime requisite in handling such customers.

Diplomacy.  All said and done, you may not be practically in a position to meet your promised service deadlines or may not be 100% successful in resolving a problem. At times, the customer’s demands may be far beyond your legal and moral commitments. Many times you will not be permitted to state certain factual and obvious things black and white by your higher-ups in the interest of not antagonizing a customer. You will then naturally develop diplomatic skills (sugar coating the bitter realities, stating the obvious in the most round-about way etc!).

Diplomacy is one great skill that will keep you in good stead in any job or situation you are put into in the course of your life.

Problem analysis and solving skills. When a service problem is assigned to you for solution, it is your responsibility to solve it amicably.  The quicker you are in analyzing the problem, the better you are in solving it. If you are a customer care manager, through handling several similar and diverse problems, you will develop good experience in quickly analyzing and reaching to the root cause of a problem. “What is the quickest and easiest way to solve the problem?” is one constant thinking that will always remain at the back of your mind and this skill, when acquired, will be very helpful right through your life.

   Commitment to time. People generally have the tendency to procrastinate any work. Such a mentality cannot work in customer service. Any problem reported by customer will carry a time tag to solve it and if it is missed, you will be at the firing end, not only from the customer but also from your higher-ups.

Procrastination is one bad quality that you will be able to get rid of if you work in customer service industry.

Thus working in a customer service industry is definitely very advantageous for one to improve one’s personality, humane qualities as well as technical skills. Such a person will gain lots of confidence in handling people as well as problems and he/she will be a good managerial material that corporate houses would love to recruit.