7 Essential Skills of a Customer Service Manager: The Key to Exceptional Customer Experiences

Every business should have a customer service manager, but not everyone is clear about what skills are necessary for this role. This guide will refresh your memory of what the customer service manager role is and how this team member works within the organization.

From there, we’ll go over the responsibilities and skills required for this role, from communication to leadership to problem-solving. Finally, we’ll remind you why your company needs customer service management.

What is a customer service manager?

A customer service manager is in charge of the customer service department. This role involves leading the department to success and accomplishing its goals. One of the most important responsibilities of customer service managers is to train managers and reps. This way, the customer service team gets the necessary guidance and tools that ensure a positive customer experience.

Customer Service Manager Responsibilities

To better understand what to expect from a customer service manager, let’s take a closer look at the specific responsibilities that come with a customer service management role.

1. Resolving customer complaints.

One of the first tasks you think of when asking, “What is a customer service manager” is handling complaints. Every company follows different policies, but many will have their frontline agents try to resolve a complaint and address customer needs if possible. If they can’t, they will escalate the complaint to the next level, which is likely the customer service manager. This is one of the most customer-centric aspects of the role.

2. Monitoring customer feedback.

While customer service management resolves complaints, it’s better if these complaints can be avoided in the first place. Monitoring customer feedback is a highly effective method of doing this. Customer service managers regularly look at feedback to see what aspects of the customer experience are going well and how customer service can be improved.

One of the most important sources of feedback is reviews. Reviews give you insight into how your customers feel about your business, but they also help you attract new potential customers. After all, most consumers put as much value on reviews as they would on a personal recommendation from someone they know. Savvy customer service managers use tools to help monitor and encourage reviews.

3. Analyzing metrics and reporting.

The best customer management platforms will provide data and metrics. Customer service managers analyze these metrics and the reporting. They use the data to see what is going well and what can be improved. They can also use the metrics to set benchmarks and goals, and then to track progress toward them.

4. Developing and implementing customer service policies.

The customer service manager is also responsible for creating your company’s customer service policies. They create these policies by staying up-to-date on industry developments and tools. They also use their experience in the role, the feedback they receive from customers, and metrics to design an efficient workflow. Policies can also include determining what qualifications, like certifications or even a bachelor’s degree, a customer service rep must have.

From there, implementation involves training other support team members in your organization or call center to follow the procedures and policies. It can also include giving employees gentle feedback or correction if they make mistakes or fail to follow a policy.

As part of implementing customer service policies, customer service managers are responsible for hiring and training new team members. This includes teaching them the department’s policies as well as how to use any software or tools used on the job.

7 Essential Customer Service Manager Skills

Now that you know the answer to, “What is a customer service manager?” it’s time to explore the necessary skills for the role. Knowing each of the following customer service manager skills will help you determine if you’re a good fit for the role.

1. Excellent Communication Skills

Any management role typically includes communication skills in its job description, as does any customer-facing role. As such, it should come as no surprise that customer service managers need to be excellent communicators.

You will need to regularly touch base with your team to ensure they are properly trained. You will have to carefully listen to customers to handle escalated customer inquiries. You will also need to effectively collaborate with other teams and decision-makers to ensure that your employees have the support and tools they need, such as a CRM, CSM, or other customer service software.

2. Strong Leadership Abilities

The customer service manager role involves leading a team of customer service representatives, so you need to have strong leadership abilities. This encompasses many of the other skills on this list, such as communication, empathy, and decision-making. But it also requires you to have the confidence to lead along with a willingness to listen to your team.

You don’t necessarily need work experience with a management job title or role, as long as you have the skills needed to act as a leader.

3. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Both managers and customer support roles require a significant amount of empathy. Managers must empathize with their employees while customer service employees must understand and share customers’ concerns. This greatly improves the customer service experience.

Emotional intelligence is related to empathy, but it is different. Emotional intelligence refers specifically to your ability to understand and respond to emotions. As with empathy, emotional intelligence is necessary for interactions with your customer service agents, customers, and other managers or executives.

For instance, you need to be understanding and willing to compromise as you work with managers and executives in recommending changes to business policies relevant to customer care and service.

4. Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills

Any customer service role involves regularly solving problems. As the customer success manager, you must be comfortable enough with your problem-solving abilities to teach similar skills to your team. You will also need advanced analytical skills to handle escalated customer issues.

Problem-solving goes hand-in-hand with decision-making skills. After all, you make small-scale decisions to solve problems. On a larger scale, customer service managers may notice that they keep having to solve similar issues within their team and decide to change processes to prevent recurring issues.

5. Analytical Skills

The customer service job description also typically includes analytical skills. You must be able to evaluate data and reports to see what customer service processes work well and what needs improvement. Your decision-making process will usually require a combination of your analytical skills and your emotional intelligence, as you will need to balance business growth with employee satisfaction.

6. Conflict Resolution

Service managers primarily put their conflict resolution skills to use when dealing with upset customers. In those situations, these skills will ensure your customer is happy. Even with small business customer service, you may also need to resolve internal issues among customer service team members.

Your conflict resolution skills can also come in handy when dealing with executives and stakeholders who may be resistant to accepting your initiatives to improve customer service operations.

7. Patience

Patience helps ensure that your team remains calm and properly communicates with all customers, even those who are irate. On the customer side, patience also lets you give each customer as much time as necessary to resolve their problem.

On the employee side, you must be patient when training new hires, providing feedback, and correcting errors.

Why Your Business Needs a Customer Service Manager

You may still wonder why a business needs someone with these customer service manager skills. There are multiple benefits to having someone in this role.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Having a customer service manager ensures that your customers are satisfied. After all, improving customer satisfaction is one of the primary goals of the role.

Improved Customer Retention

When your customers are more satisfied due to strong customer relationships, it is much easier to keep them loyal. They will not want to switch to another company, as they will be happy with your service or product.

Increased Customer Loyalty

Improved customer retention and increased customer loyalty go hand-in-hand. Customers that stay with your company are also more loyal. This increases the chances that they will recommend you to others as well as each customer’s lifetime value.

Enhanced Brand Reputation

Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your company to others and are also easier to turn into brand advocates. Whether they do so in face-to-face interactions or online reviews, this will improve your brand reputation. That improved reputation helps you attract new customers.

Keep Your Customers Happy with Podium

Customer service managers can harness tools to make their job easier and improve customer interactions. Podium is a customer interaction platform with numerous features designed to improve your customer service.

To start, Podium makes it easier to directly interact with customers via the method they prefer. You can talk to them via the Phones system or chat with them via Inbox or the Website Chat. Many customers prefer talking via text messages, so Podium’s Text Marketing comes in handy as well. The web chat feature also helps you gather more leads.

Throughout all of your interactions with customers, you will view their information in the Contacts system. This gives context to your conversations, allowing you to deliver more personalization and a better level of attention.

Meanwhile, the Reviews tool helps you gather reviews, improving the benefits of solid customer service management. Those reviews also provide a direct source of customer feedback, helping you find areas for improvement.