Not all customer service is about helping people turn their computer on. Many times, customer service can come in the forms of sales, and this form of customer service can often be the most difficult.
While being a customer service representative requires you to keep up on new technology, in the case of a technical support call line, you have to have serious interpersonal skills to function well in sales.
Sales requires a mix of charm, knowledge and extroversion. Put in the right combination, and you have a customer service representative who can sell anything, to anyone. In the wrong combination, and you have an overbearing, cocky individual who thinks they can sell anything to anyone, when in fact they cannot.
Sales is a very important part of a company. It is essentially how the company makes its money, and the description of the job itself entails customer service. By providing good service to the customer in terms of answering questions, displaying product and finding what is right for them, you are using customer service to accomplish a sale.
What makes a good salesperson though?
A good customer service representative who works in sales needs to understand the customer and what they want. They need to be able to ask probing questions to customers to find out their needs. Through doing this, a sales customer service representative will be able to find the right product for the right person. This skill is essential to being an excellent sales customer service representative and if someone is lacking in this skill, then they have no business working sales.
A good customer service representative who works in sales also needs to have the ability to sell a customer something they may not need. It is easy to sell something when the customer knows what they want, and with the right skill, it is easy to find what the customer is looking for when they don’t quite know the product. However, finding a product for a customer when they came in to buy something else is another matter completely. A sales customer service representative needs to be able to convince them, through appealing to their own interests and weaknesses, that what they are really looking for is another product. It may be, and usually is, more expensive, which makes the job of the sales customer service representative that much more difficult.
When someone is looking to become a customer service representative who specializes in sales, there are many different skills that are required to actually succeed at it. The customer service representative needs to be friendly, approachable and charming. The combination of these, and other, attributes will allow the customer service representative to sell a customer something they are looking for, something they need but can’t find, or something they don’t need, or really want, yet purchase nonetheless.
It is of little surprise that customer service representatives who work in sales make more money based on the commission they receive. It is a difficult job that takes a great deal of skill and knowledge. Certainly not for the faint of heart.
