Top 5 Customer Service Qualities of IT Professionals

The top 5 customer service qualities of IT pros are exactly the same as the 5 principles of IT customer service success. The most successful IT pros understand that their career success is based on mastering both technical competence, their ability to master the technologies they support, and charisma, their ability to understand, get along with, and influence people.

Customer Service Quality #1: Technical Competence

Customer service skills require that you have sufficient product knowledge to resolve your customer’s issue. This means that you must spend time familiarizing yourself with the products and services you support. You must keep your certifications current, attend presentations on new technology, and strive to be the best in the world at the products and services you support. You must also have sufficient technical competence to know when a particular issue is beyond your skill level so you can escalate it quickly without wasting your customer’s time and causing them frustration.

Customer Service Quality #2: Compassion

Your customers and coworkers want to believe you care about them from one person to another. Compassion is understanding and caring. It’s knowing that the other person may be under a deadline just when a system fails or something doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. It’s realizing that you don’t know the other person’s story. It’s understanding that the other person is simply trying to get through their day and depends on you to help remove technical roadblocks that are getting in their way. Compassionate IT customer service is realizing that some people just don’t understand technology, are intimidated by it, and count on you to make it work for them.

Customer Service Quality #3: Empathy

If compassion is understanding, empathy is feeling. Empathy is imagining how you would feel and what you would want if you were in the other person’s position. It’s remembering that time you went to the doctor for a checkup and were frustrated by the physician’s use of obscure medical jargon. It’s remembering the time you waited a little too long to change the oil in your car and your mechanic didn’t sigh and roll their eyes, they simply smiled and took care of you. Empathy is when you help someone who’s just starting their career because you remember how you felt when you were just getting started.

Customer Service Quality #4: Being a Good Listener

Being a good listener is one of the greatest gifts we can give our fellow humans. Remember the wisdom of Stephen Covey’s Habit #5: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Let the other person finish what they’re saying. Don’t interrupt them, nor talk over them. Think about how you feel when someone does that to you. Don’t do that to other people. Listen to understand and remember what the other person is saying. Listen in a way that dignifies and respects them. Resist the temptation to quickly jump in with your own thoughts and ideas. For more complex issues, paraphrase back what the other person says to ensure you really do understand them.

Customer Service Quality #5: Respect

The quality of respect is about how you choose to treat others, especially people who are different from you, who have different ideas from yours, or even people whom you don’t like. It’s not necessary to agree with someone to treat them with dignity and respect. You can choose to hold yourself to a higher standard of civilized behavior, even when (or especially when) people around you are acting disrespectfully. Mind your manners. Say please, thank you, and you’re welcome. Follow the rules for good business technology etiquette. Remember the words of Meryl Runion in her book Power Phrases: “Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Don’t be mean when you say it.”

Who Are the Customers in IT?

These five qualities provide a foundation for service to others. Sometimes, IT pros don’t think of themselves as having customers, but customers don’t always appear as end-users or other types of paying customers. If you’re a database administrator, your customer may be a web developer who’s dependent upon you to maintain and optimize an SQL database. If you’re a CISO, your customers are all the people in your company who depend on you to thwart attacks and maintain their ability to earn a living and support their families. IT customer service extends way beyond the help desk and front-line tech support staff!

Next Level IT Customer Service Training

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