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The Attributes of a Successful Customer Service Person

don’t need me to tell you that people are the key to success in your organisation. But are we recruiting and developing people with the right attributes?
Paul Cooper provides a checklist for finding and developing the right people.
The professionalism of customer service in most organisations is growing, and not before time.
At root, excellent customer service is all about “being easy to do business with”. From the customer’s perspective this involves the organisation delivering the promise, providing a personal touch, going the extra mile and resolving problems well.
Research shows that organisations that gain such a reputation can significantly out-perform others, and in the private sector improve profit per employee and reap the rewards of high net margins, thus driving up the return on total assets.
And such a reputation comes primarily from the performance of the people in the organisation.
Customer-facing jobs have been defined too often by organisational need and internally focused activities and processes.
Are these attributes on your job description?
Now this is changing. More and more organisations are recruiting, training and developing people who can:
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This involves coaching and mentoring their people as well as managing cultural and technology changes in the face of cost pressures and continually rising customer expectations. No one said it was going to be easy!
Reading it doesn’t make the changes happen
And in final conclusion, if you have found the above interesting and valuable, please do something about it!
Reading it doesn’t make the changes happen. As put so well by Bob Sutton, US customer service guru: “Too often people get ahead by saying smart things rather than doing smart things”.
- Use well-developed behavioural skills in a way that enables them to treat each customer as an individual and identify opportunities for enhancing the service provided
- Resolve customer problems, proactively and reactively, based on their ability to identify and interpret service issues properly
- Appreciate the “bigger picture” so they can make better decisions by understanding the implications of their actions for the organisation
- Identify opportunities for improving procedures and systems
- Work well with colleagues so that learning and experience is shared
- Understand and keep up to date with their organisation’s objectives and services.

Author: Jo Robinson
Published On: 6th Apr 2011 - Last modified: 18th Aug 2025
Read more about - Call Centre Management, Customer Service, Employee Engagement, Management Strategies, Staffing, Training and Coaching