Online Customer Service Training: What Does it Mean to Be a Friendly Professional?

CIOs, IT managers, and MSP owners want their technicians and engineers to be friendly professionals in addition to being competent IT pros. In Compassionate Geek online customer service training courses, we frequently talk about the need to be a friendly professional. That sounds great, but what does it mean?

Online customer service training includes these qualities to consider as you work with your team on being friendly professionals:

Approachable

Being approachable means others are comfortable asking you questions, asking you for assistance, and explaining their needs to you. You are seen as accessible. Your body language says you’re interested in the other person.

Technically competent

Being technically competent means you either understand how to work with the tools you support or you know how to ask the right questions to gain whatever knowledge you need to do your job.

Efficient

Friendly professionals respect their customers’ time and their own time. They focus on the task that needs to be done.

Good listener

Being a good listener means you seek to understand and remember what the other person is saying. You use active listening techniques to go deeper in your understanding by asking relevant questions.

Pleasant

Being pleasant means you smile, use good manners such as saying please and thank you, and avoid complaining, especially to people who can’t do anything about your complaints.

Even-tempered

Even-tempered people use emotional intelligence to monitor and manage their own emotions. They think before they speak or act.

Adaptable

The workplace is in a constant state of change. That’s nothing new. What was formerly considered appropriate business language, for example, is now often considered overly formal and stuffy. Conversely, language that was once considered far too casual is now common. Dress standards were changing even before the pandemic. After two years of a pandemic, workplace attire is dramatically different. The problem, however, is that the definitions of appropriate workplace attire, language, and behavior differ from one workplace to another. It can even vary from one department to another within the same organization. Being a friendly professional means you adapt to your environment and you avoid being judgmental. Note to GenXers and Boomers: This doesn’t mean you try to act like a Millennial or GenZer. It simply means that you roll with the changes in the workplace, even when you may not fully understand them.

Thoughtful

To be thoughtful means you ponder the effect of your actions. You use compassion and empathy to consider how your words and actions affect others. You reflect on past experiences and use them to shape your current and future interactions with others.

What a friendly professional is not:

Friendly professionals avoid over-disclosing of personal information. Your customers don’t need (or want) to know the personal details of your life such as relationships or health and medical status.

They also avoid being overly gregarious. Your end-users and other types of customers are trying to get their work done. They may need to focus on their work and may find small talk distracting. Teach your teams to be aware of body language and other subtle signs from the people they serve.

It’s All About Being Easy to Work With

Being a friendly professional means you’re competent and easy to work with. It’s really pretty simple. As customer service professionals remember to keep the focus on your customers! When your clients have bad experiences they won’t refer your company to their friends. If you work in an IT department, they’ll give you poor evaluations. Your customer satisfaction score will go down, and you’ll find yourself interacting with angry customers more frequently. 

We’ve all experienced bad customer service. We also know how it feels when we encounter an employee who goes the extra mile to ensure that as the customer, we received excellent service. The choice to be a friendly professional means you work to have as many satisfied customers as possible.

Online customer service training can help your team master the necessary skills to be friendly professionals as they work with customers and each other.

Next Level IT Customer Service Training

Enroll your team now in Compassionate Geek IT online customer service training so they can work together, get things done, and take care of customers.