1. Answering questions about a company’s products or services
Answering both general/specific customer questions about the company’s products/services is a key responsibility of many service agents. In fact, knowledgeable employees are one of the most important aspects of a good customer service experience. Knowing the ins and outs of a company’s offerings is critical for frontline service reps. It allows them to provide quick, accurate, and comprehensive responses to customers and prospects.
2. Processing orders and transactions
Some of the basic customer service job duties may involve receiving and processing incoming orders. Moreover, transactions as well as handling order cancellations, product returns, or exchanges. It means ensuring that customer orders and transactions are processed in an efficient and timely manner. Order processing is often associated with entry-level customer service jobs. And it is seen as a prime opportunity for those looking to launch their career in customer service.
3. Resolving issues and troubleshooting technical problems
Resolving product/service issues, troubleshooting problems, and providing ongoing technical assistance to customers are the typical duties of help desk support teams in SaaS and tech companies. That includes providing help and support with installation, customization, maintenance, and upgrading of the product. It requires agents to have deep product/ service knowledge, as well as certain hard skills. Tech support reps very often work closely with product development teams to ensure product optimization and improvement of end-user experience.
4. Delivering information about a company’s offerings
Apart from answering questions and resolving issues, the duties of a help desk support specialist may include providing information about a company’s special offerings and upselling related products/services, if appropriate, when engaging with customers. Service reps may be partially involved in sales, in some capacity. However, their primary responsibility is assisting customers with product/service inquiries, ensuring a positive service experience and customer satisfaction.
5. Providing proactive customer outreach
According to numerous studies, today’s consumers expect customer service to be more proactive and personalized. Thus, customer service representatives are not just required to reactively respond to requests. Proactive customer outreach is also becoming a common duty of service employees. It may include offering support before customers even ask for help.
For example;
- through proactive chat
- informing customers about real or potential product/service issues
- monitoring brand mentions
- engaging in customer conversations on social media
- proactively asking customers for feedback
6. Handling customer complaints
Dealing with unhappy customers and handling complaints is an almost inescapable duty of many customer service employees. This applies especially to frontline reps, who are usually the first point of contact for customers. Agents need to be trained for a wide range of customer service soft skills. Such as good listening, clear communication, empathy, ability to use positive language, etc. Therefore, being able to diffuse frustrated customers and ensure effective and successful complaint resolution. For example; let’s just say an agent is facing a conflict that is beyond the scope of what he/she can handle. In this situation, the agent is responsible for escalating the customer to the appropriate internal teams.
7. Collecting and analyzing customer feedback
The customer service representative duties do not end at just responding to customers and resolving their issues. Collecting and analyzing customer feedback can also be a part of their customer service job tasks. There are numerous ways to automate feedback collection. Agents may also personally follow up with customers to find out how the solution worked for them. In addition, take notes of their suggestions on what can be potentially improved. Service teams usually collaborate closely with marketing teams on feedback collection and analysis.