Develop your own customer service skills
Overview
This standard is part of the customer service competence area related to Customer Service Foundations. It covers developing your own, and colleagues' customer service skills. It includes the language and concepts of customer service as well as the organisational context and the external environment in which you work. Remember that customers include everyone to whom you provide products and services. They may be external to your organisation or they may be internal customers.
You take responsibility for continuously developing your own customer service skills. You take responsibility for developing customer service knowledge and skills using different sources of information and you seek feedback from your supervisor or senior manager.
This standard is about developing your own customer service skills by working alongside your colleague and providing constructive feedback.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- identify the specific customer service knowledge and skills you need in your customer service role
- agree actions to improve your customer service knowledge and skills with your manager or mentor
- create a personal development plan based on agreed actions
- carry out your personal development activities and review your progress on a regular basis
- obtain feedback from your manager or mentor about your performance and update your personal development plan
- identify different sources of information and support that will help you to develop your customer service knowledge and skills
- access information to support your development and store self-study materials for future use
- review the self-study materials you have collected and update your personal development plan
- access organisational update information to increase your knowledge of services or products and how your role contributes to customer service
- monitor publications to identify ideas or new developments in customer service which you could apply in your work
- change the way you deal with customers because of what you have learned
- share your personal development plan with your line manager, your mentor or customer service colleagues to seek their ideas for further activities
- record what you have learned about customer service and identify the actions that have the most positive impact
- follow the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role and the activities being carried out
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
- how to source and access information about your organisation's services or products
- the sources of information about customer service knowledge and skills that will help you to develop
- the organisational systems and procedures for developing your own and others' personal performance in customer service
- how your behaviour impacts on others and their development
- how to review your personal strengths and development needs
- how to create a personal development plan for yourself and colleagues that will build on strengths and overcome weaknesses in customer service performance
- how to obtain useful and constructive personal feedback from others
- how to respond positively to personal feedback and take action to learn from it
- how to put together a coaching plan that will build on colleagues strengths and overcome their weaknesses related to customer service and their job roles
- how to give constructive personal feedback to others
- how to help colleagues to respond positively to personal feedback
- how to store information that you use to develop your customer service skills
- the importance of focus when self-studying to improve your customer service knowledge and skills
- the ways you can convert information or ideas you have found through self-study into practical customer service actions at work
- the value of discussing your learning with your line manager, mentor or colleagues doing a similar job
- the methods for recording actions to improve your customer service skills
- the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role and the activities being carried out