What is a Customer Service Representative (CSR)?
A customer service representative (CSR) – also called an agent – is a person who works in a call or contact center and helps customers with their issues. They may do this using a variety of channels, including phone, chat, email and social media. Customer service representatives (CSRs) play an important role in influencing the customer experience and therefore, organizations should look for the following qualities when hiring them:
- Great listening comprehension skills - Effective customer service representatives (CSRs) don't just listen to customers, they actually understand what they're saying, which sometimes means reading between the lines or understanding context. Understanding is the first step to assisting.
- Solid problem-solving skills - Self-service tools are helping customers solve many simple problems on their own, which means the issues that involve customer service representatives (CSRs) have become more complex. Customer service representatives (CSRs) need to be up to the challenge of solving them.
- Strong interpersonal skills - Faced with sometimes frazzled customers, effective customer service representatives (CSRs) remain professional and polite regardless of the situation. And if they can take it a step further and build some rapport, even better.
- Reliability - Contact centers are tightly scheduled work environments and the performance of the center relies on everyone showing up and being on time. Chronic no-shows and employees that are late frequently can spell trouble for queue times. Candidates for customer service representative (CSR) positions should have a history of reliability.
Customer satisfaction often comes down to how well customer service representatives (CSRs) perform. Organizations that focus on screening, developing and supporting their CSRs are one step ahead in winning in the experience economy.
How NICE can help
NICE CXone is the market leading call center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world to help them consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. Our solutions include tools that help train, manage and motivate customer service representatives. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its call (or contact) center operations. CXone includes:
Omnichannel Routing – routing and interaction management that empowers customer service representatives to positively and productively interact with customers in digital and voice channels. These solutions include an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), interaction channel support and proactive outbound dialer.
Workforce Optimization – unlocks the potential of your team by inspiring employees' self-improvement, amplifying quality management efforts to enhance customer experience and reducing labor waste. These solutions include workforce management (WFM), quality management (QM), recording and performance management (PM).
Automation & Artificial Intelligence (AI) – leading-edge, intuitive technology that eliminates mundane tasks and speeds resolutions of customer issues for better business outcomes. It provides self-service, agent-assisted and fully automated alerts and actions.
CXone also includes pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic call center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.