The document discusses key aspects of effective customer service, including activities like assisting customers, handling inquiries and complaints, and keeping detailed records. It emphasizes skills like communication, problem solving, and maintaining professionalism. Finally, it outlines best practices for call handling procedures such as identifying customer needs, actively listening, summarizing actions, and gaining agreement.

1. Customer Service
PC Repair and Troubleshooting

2. Customer Service
• Customer service is a series of activities
designed to enhance the level of customer
satisfaction
• Customer Satisfaction is the feeling that a
product or service has met the customer
expectation

3. Customer Support
• assisting customers in • Involves assistance in
making cost effective – Planning
and correct use of a – Installation
product – Training
– Troubleshooting
– Maintenance
– Upgrading
– Disposal of a product

4. Customer Support Scope
• deal directly with customers either by telephone,
electronically or face to face
• respond promptly to customer inquiries
• handle and resolve customer complaints
• obtain and evaluate all relevant information to
handle inquiries and complaints
• perform customer verifications
• process orders, forms, applications and requests
• direct requests and unresolved issues to the
designated resource

5. • manage customers' accounts
• keep records of customer interactions and
transactions
• record details of inquiries, comments and
complaints
• record details of actions taken
• manage administration
• communicate and coordinate with internal
departments
• follow up on customer interactions

6. Customer Support Key Competencies
• interpersonal skills
• communication skills - verbal and written
• listening skills
• problem analysis and problem-solving
• attention to detail and accuracy
• data collection and ordering
• customer service orientation
• adaptability
• initiative
• stress tolerance

7. Customer Service Skill List
• Product Knowledge
– You can only provide good customer service if you
know what you’re talking about. This means
understanding what your products are as well as
the services you provide.
– Providing extra details about your products,
enhanced features and support for how to use
products correctly all feeds into truly excellent
customer service skills.

8. • Communication (verbal, written and listening)
– You need good customer service skills with regard to
your diction, clarity of communications and how you
converse with customers in order to get to the root of
their problems.
– requires the ability to use positive language in all
communications and to actively listen in any verbal
interactions
– Using persuasion methods should not however alter
you, or your staff’s, sense of ethics in business

9. • Problem resolution
– being able to effectively analyse the information
you receive from the customer and provide quick
and accurate decisions about what can be done.
– to be able to understand how to use the resources
available to you (both IT systems and work
colleagues) to seek out new solutions.

10. • Task orientation and time management
– For many phone/online support or technical
support roles there are daily demands as regards
the amount of customers that should be dealt
with or time spent with each call.
– requires careful time management by the
representative to focus on providing a good
quality service in a timely manner.

11. • Persuasive abilities
– Being able to persuade customers who may be
aggravated or emotional to see things clearly can
prove to be most helpful in one-on-one
communications

12. • Flexibility
– each customer may have different requests,
queries and issues they wish to raise so each
individual has to have the flexibility and presence
of mind to be able to deal dynamically with
requests.
– requires a certain amount of confidence and a
keen understanding of your own product
knowledge in order to provide flexible solutions
that are apt to each request.

13. • Work ethic
– requires a lot of interaction with customers so
having a positive attitude towards your work and
towards the customers is essential
• Professionalism
– Better communication skills can in still a better
attitude and level of courtesy when dealing with
customers.
– To ensure that levels of professionalism are be
maintained in all dealings with customers.

14. • Confidence
– a confident individual is nearly always a result of
proper training and education on their products as
well as incremental levels of experience
– This level of confidence instils a sense of trust
within customers as regards your ability to
effectively deal with their issue in a professional
and prompt way

15. • Leadership
– once you build up excellent customer service skills
it is important to share this knowledge with others
– Leadership and mentoring of new representatives
is the long-term goal for aspiring representatives
as this ensures the company can expand its
existing workforce and improve the quality of
service they provide by all individuals

16. Call Handling Procedure
• General Points of Good Practice
– If possible, answer promptly
– Smile when you pick up the phone - the caller can hear it in you voice
– Speak at a reading pace, use punctuation and speak clearly
– Use courteous words and phrases: "may I ask you to write and
confirm?" sounds much better than "you’ll have to put that in writing"
– Be positive! Say what you can do, not what you can’t’
– Avoid using jargon
– Accept responsibility for dealing with the call and carry it through
– Use closed questions (questions which can be answered simply ‘yes’ or
‘no’) to slow a caller down or check your understanding of information
given
– Avoid irritants (e.g. calling people ‘love’)

17. • Opening the Call
– ‘You never get a second chance to make a first
impression’
– Pause before you pick up the receiver, to give
yourself time to adopt a positive attitude

18. • The Conversation
– Identify the caller’s needs using questioning skills - open questions to
speed up the flow and closed questions to slow it down
– Actively listening - giving ‘verbal nods’ (e.g. ‘I see’) and repeating
information back to the caller to test your understanding and gain
their agreement
– Avoid making assumptions
– Take responsibility for the call and any action - say ‘I can’ and ‘I will’
and do it!
– If you have to go and get some information, Let him/her know why
you are going away from the phone and for how long.
– Don't leave an "open" telephone lying on a desk where the
conversations of yourself or your colleagues may be overhead.
– Do your best to ignore colleagues who try to attract your attention or
to interrupt you while you are in conversation with a caller.

19. • Closing the Call
– ‘The last thing you hear is the first thing you
remember’
– Summarise the action to be taken
– Gain the customer’s agreement with a closed question
– Give your name and telephone details to the caller
– End of call signal and final offer of help e.g. ‘so is that
everything Mrs Bailey?’
– Then the ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’
– And finally let the caller replace the hand set first -
just in case they remember something at the last
minute

20. • Transferring calls and putting the caller on hold
– Explain why you need to do this
– Ask permission from the caller
– Give accurate time scales
– Let the caller know what to expect
– On returning to the call thank the caller for waiting
– If there is any chance that the call will be ‘lost’ make sure
you have the caller’s name and telephone number
– Only transfer a call when you are certain you know the
right person to deal with it.
– If you cannot answer an enquiry quickly, give the caller the
option of your calling back.