Now that you have made your decision, you have the job and you are ready to begin working in “Customer Service”, have you reviewed your am I job ready checklist? Are you mentally and emotionally prepared to handle the unique personalities, characters and task you may come in contact with ‘daily’?
The situations you may be confronted with are astounding. You have to remember, you will be responding to issues that 99% of the time are due to money concerns. Be prepared to take some undeserved mistreatment from internal and external sources. The possible confrontations of verbal, emotional and sometimes even physical assaults may cause stress you have not imagined.
The good thing; however is there are ways to handle each situation without causing yourself mental, emotional or physical anguish. Being prepared is the catalyst that will get you through a day, each day; one day at a time. Prepare and then you are assured you will be able to control situations when they occur. Even if by some chance the situation still escalates, it does not defeat you.
Most likely, the majority of the time, when you experience an emotional customer, the customer is not angry with you, the employee. The customer is angry due to an organizational issue they feel is not being handled as they might.
So, you might ask how you prepare yourself. There are ways to help carry you through each day no matter what you may encounter without the incident causing stress. The following recommendations will armor you; preparing you to handle any situation occurring during a day in Customer Service:
Encourage Yourself – Talking to yourself, providing your inner psyche with encouragement can provide the spiritual and emotional fortitude to move strongly through a day of intense emotional stress.
Encourage Others – The ability to speak encouragement to others seems to signal a response within yourself. Through encouraging others, we become encouraged.
Greet everyone you meet with a smile – A smile over the phone or in person can be contagious. Giving a smile the majority of the time results in a reciprocal smile. If not, don’t feel disheartened, sometimes the receiver simply did not even see you smile. If they did and did not respond, it does not cause you problems. By smiling, however, you can offset the anger a customer or individual may feel. They sometimes will calm down and the situation is diffused causing the anger to disappear.
Define those skills/talents within yourself conducive to working with people – When you made the decision to work in customer service, you obviously thought you had skills that qualified you for the position. What talent or talents did you consider were the talents necessary to excel in the position? Define those skills or talents and begin to sharpen them. Those ‘People’ skills will demonstrate to management that you are the one to be observed and even considered for higher level, higher paying positions.
Most of us have no idea what we need to get us through each day. Over the span of time, we have allowed each day to just work out on its own. We wait for events to happen and decide to handle them as they occur. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. However, preparing yourself emotionally will ease the tension and stress when situations are present. You will find yourself more in control when you set the standards before the work day begins.
