Actionable Tips to Manage Projects And Offer Client Support

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Project management and providing client support are challenging jobs that carries a number of responsibilities along.

When done wrong, both the business falls apart, and team members are leaving, which loses money, clients, and potentially leads to a storm of lawsuits due to missed deadlines.

Being a project manager in the online world in 2017 can be incredibly rewarding, but requires a certain attitude, a ton of practical experience, outstanding soft skills and industry expertise. Being a manager can make or break a business, and it’s up to managers to keep up with business expectations and ensure that a project is delivered in the best way possible.

There are several easy guidelines that team leaders and project managers can follow for best results, and some of them will be discussed in this article. When the projects are properly managed and completed, providing client support is another challenge you might face.

The way your customers feel towards you is important. The more you show you care about them, the more they’ll likely want to continue working with you. With that in mind, providing good customer support to your clients should naturally be a major priority in your day-to-day schedule. This article lists tips and suggestions for ensuring that you’re treating your clients well.

What Is Project Management?
Understanding Project Management
Example of Project Management
Types of Project Management
20 Actionable Project Management Tips
10 Key Customer Support Skills
10 tips for outstanding customer service

What Is Project Management?

Project management involves the planning and organization of a company’s resources to move a specific task, event, or duty towards completion. It can involve a one-time project or an ongoing activity, and resources managed include personnel, finances, technology, and intellectual property.

Project management is often associated with fields in engineering and construction and, more lately, health care and information technology (IT), which typically have a complex set of components that have to be completed and assembled in a set fashion to create a functioning product.

No matter what the industry is, the project manager tends to have roughly the same job: to help define the goals and objectives of the project and determine when the various project components are to be completed and by whom. They also create quality control checks to ensure completed components meet a certain standard.

Understanding Project Management

Generally speaking, the project management process includes the following stages: planning, initiation, execution, monitoring, and closing.

From start to finish, every project needs a plan that outlines how things will get off the ground, how they will be built and how they will finish. For example, in architecture, the plan starts with an idea, progresses to drawings and moves on to blueprint drafting, with thousands of little pieces coming together between each step. The architect is just one person providing one piece of the puzzle. The project manager puts it all together.

Every project usually has a budget and a time frame. Project management keeps everything moving smoothly, on time, and on budget. That means when the planned time frame is coming to an end, the project manager may keep all the team members working on the project to finish on schedule.

Example of Project Management

Let’s say a project manager is tasked with leading a team to develop software products. They begin by identifying the scope of the project. They then assign tasks to the project team, which can include developers, engineers, technical writers, and quality assurance specialists. The project manager creates a schedule and sets deadlines.

Often, a project manager will use visual representations of workflow, such as Gantt charts or PERT charts, to determine which tasks are to be completed by which departments. They set a budget that includes sufficient funds to keep the project within budget even in the face of unexpected contingencies. The project manager also makes sure the team has the resources it needs to build, test, and deploy a software product.

When a large IT company, such as Cisco Systems Inc., acquires smaller companies, a key part of the project manager’s job is to integrate project team members from various backgrounds and instill a sense of group purpose about meeting the end goal. Project managers may have some technical know-how but also have the important task of taking high-level corporate visions and delivering tangible results on time and within budget.

Types of Project Management

Many types of project management have been developed to meet the specific needs of certain industries or types of projects. They include the following:

1. Waterfall Project Management

This is similar to traditional project management but includes the caveat that each task needs to be completed before the next one starts. Steps are linear and progress flows in one direction—like a waterfall. Because of this, attention to task sequences and timelines are very important in this type of project management. Often, the size of the team working on the project will grow as smaller tasks are completed and larger tasks begin.

2. Agile Project Management

The computer software industry was one of the first to use this methodology. With the basis originating in the 12 core principles of the Agile Manifesto, agile project management is an iterative process focused on the continuous monitoring and improvement of deliverables. At its core, high-quality deliverables are a result of providing customer value, team interactions and adapting to current business circumstances.

Agile project management does not follow a sequential stage-by-stage approach. Instead, phases of the project are completed in parallel to each other by various team members in an organization. This approach can find and rectify errors without having to restart the entire procedure.

3. Lean Project Management

This methodology is all about avoiding waste—both of time and of resources. The principles of this methodology were gleaned from Japanese manufacturing practices. The main idea behind them is to create more value for customers with fewer resources.

There are many more methodologies and types of project management than listed here, but these are some of the most common. The type used depends on the preference of the project manager or the company whose project is being managed.

20 Actionable Project Management Tips

1. Understand the Core Business Problem

First and foremost, project managers have to understand the main problem that the business struggles with.

If you are assigned to build a new platform based on a pre-existing company branding that heavily impacts the online presence of the company, your assignment will not solve the problem in hand. Additional brainstorming and planning should be performed in order to improve the entire brand creative to an eye-catching and memorable set of logo and banners, and a well-selected color scheme with suitable typography.

Given the solid foundation, the new website project has a real chance to make an impact for the business.

2. Clear Out Project Requirements Early

Dig deeper into the business problem and the proposed solution by your client. In addition to finding out more about their core business model and what are the challenges with taking it to the next level, it will also outline a better strategy for you and your team.

Outsourcing projects to a 3rd party service provider – or even a different department within the company – may often affect the context of the conversation and lead to defining misleaded initial requirements.

Make sure that the project is understand on three different levels:

“The Bigger Picture” – understanding the main goals of the assignment, and the expected results. This includes a validation plan once the project is completed, since that’s your main target at the end of the day.
High-end components overview – a review of all components included in the project, how they interact with each other, and what is the purpose of each of them. This may outline priority features and “filler” ones, and affect your management planning accordingly.
Specific Issues that will need attention – each component may interfere with the others, or comes with tradeoffs. These should be predicted while discussing the requirements, and the best approach outlined as early as possible.

3. Identify Project Risks and R&D Components

Each project comes with different variables that need additional context. Some are evaluated during the development or QA phases, but others can be identified earlier, and communicated between stakeholders.

Given the web industry as an example, a viable question is – where would the project be hosted?

Different services come with certain limitations that would impact the development planning, and the flexibility of the development team when selecting components. Additionally, selecting the wrong hosting plan may be overly expensive if the resources aren’t utilized properly, or lead to downtime if the projected traffic exceeds the hosting limitations.

Since every project is unique, it’s likely that there are certain features that your team hasn’t worked on yet, and need some research. This is crucial during the project development phase and has to be coordinated with both your team, and your customers.

More often than not you don’t need to worry too much about the majority of the features. However, some may be entirely impossible, or require dozens or hundreds of billable hours. Taking these as granted and working on a fixed budget will likely jeopardize the project launch and the profitability of your own company.

4. Define Communication Protocols and Reporting Policy

Outline the best communication method for your team and find the best compromise between what would be easiest for you, and what your customers are willing to settle for.

If your team manages all of your customers in the same project management system (or any other tool) and your client insist on a different solution, this will incur additional overhead for your team – looking at a separate tool, onboarding non-technical customers, and getting used to its workflow.

Same goes for other internal communication guidelines that you’ve established in-house. If you conduct weekly meetings on Monday and coordinate work through emails, your client may ask for reports three times a week over the phone, from different team members responsible for design, development, or marketing.

Make sure that all of those are clarified during the initial meetings with your customers. You don’t want to drag your team members every time the phone rings, and interrupt the standard workflow of your team. This will inevitably impact the focused working hours for your staff, and delay the project unless agreed on prior to starting the work relationship.

5. Your Project Management System is Your Friend

Simplify the work for your staff and keep all essential information in one place. Other than the project planning that you’ve established during the discovery phase, your project management system should include any communication that have happened in your office, during meetings, over the phone, and even while exchanging emails with your customer.

This will avoid the communication overhead of looking at several places in order to collect the essential details, and ensure that directions are kept in a single platform. Often clients come up with fresh ideas that weren’t discussed before, or expect a different outcome of events that differs from the initial planning.

Keeping everything in the same platform (where your client has the ability to chime in and observe the progress) will ensure the streamlined communication between both parties.

6. Break Requirements into Actionable Items

Making sure that each team member can start working on an assignment without asking a dozen follow-up questions is crucial for the success of your project.

Avoid any ambiguous or incomplete tasks such as “Build a component for weather forecast” or “Integrate a shopping cart”. Both assignments may be clear to you after numerous meetings and calls with your client, but what about the other players in your team?

Each of those should be decomposed into small, actionable, inseparable tasks that give direction and require output without having to provide additional context. Nail down design requirements for each component, specify which pages should display the certain feature, what would be the workflow that your client expects when navigating through the admin area.

Identify the types of data to be stored and altered from the backend. Break them down into specific fields with type formats, and establish the design policy for all devices.

Those details should be discussed with your client upfront, and defined within your specification and design proposal. Additionally, you have to work closely with the team leaders in your project in order to create the actionable assignments. At the end of the day you want to have a long list with hundreds of small tasks that your team members can work in parallel, without any regressions, uncertainties, or incomplete features that don’t solve the business problem.

At DevriX, we do have a task template that includes several different things, such as:

A description of the business problem
A technical or creative definition of what is expected
A list of pages where the feature should show up
A list of relevant screenshots
Steps to reproduce
Expected outcome (in case of a bug request)

Among a few other project-specific details.

This allows us to define the business problem in details, narrow down the possibilities of errors, and ensure that team members can jump on and start working on a task without any hesitation.

7. Find a Common Language With Your Customers

Different people come with different background and communication style. Don’t expect to collaborate in the same way with different decision makers on the other side of the table.

As a project manager, you need to identify what is the most natural way for your clients to communicate with you, and adjust accordingly. Some folks are friendlier, others are strict and more corporate. They have a different way of talking during business hours, and at cocktails.

Pay attention to your initial contact and be proactive while discussing the business needs and project requirements. It’s important that all of you are on the same page, but communication may be affected if you expect a different style than what your clients are used to.

This is extremely important since you will coordinate the process with them on a regular basis. More conservative personas are harder to read, but you still need to find common topics and ice breakers in order to get to the point.

8. Risk Management

Part of running a management process is dealing with risk management and the potential bottlenecks that may be presented during the course of a project.

According to BusinessDictionary, risk management is:

The identification, analysis, assessment, control, and avoidance, minimization, or elimination of unacceptable risks. An organization may use risk assumption, risk avoidance, risk retention, risk transfer, or any other strategy (or combination of strategies) in proper management of future events.

The amount of brainstorming, planning and preliminary mitigation may vary for each project.

In a nutshell, risk management is to be performed for the likely scenarios that may cause an interruption of your service, delaying the project beyond the acceptable time frames, or any payment transfer surprises that violate the initial agreements.

Here’s a quick checklist for possible areas that you may review during an assessment process:

Delaying deliverables and assets on the client’s side crucial to the implementation process
Change of project managers midway through the project
Postponing payments for certain milestones
Requesting more revisions than anticipated and agreed on during the initial agreement
Server downtime or service interruptions for 3rd party products used by your team
Sick leaves or team members quitting
Possibilities of delays caused by your team as per the agreed time frames
Unexpected blockers during the implementation phase that would require more time and additional budget
Legal constraints for storing personal data required for your product to operate properly

This is not a definitive list for possible risks, but your team should be prepared for any unexpected surprises along the way. Most of the likely scenarios should be outlined during the initial meetings and in the initial proposal, and planned accordingly.

9. Honesty is the Best Policy

Regardless of your initial planning and the contingency plan, issues may occur every now and then.

Hiding them or attempting to pull stunts from the inside will result in terrible surprises, especially when it’s too late to coordinate these with your client.

Whenever a problem happens, own it and report all parties involved. Business people are reasonable, and they know how business works. What they don’t want is hidden surprises lurking beneath the surface, breaking the bond between the client, and the service provider.

If your team needs more time for a feature due to incomplete planning, pick up the phone.

If you’ve missed an essential component in your specification, reach out and schedule a meeting with your client.

If your lead designer is no longer available and you need a time to recoup, contact your client and let them know.

Often times issues can be tackled early on, and handled gracefully with the understanding of all stakeholders. If you hide the problem for as long as possible and you won’t make it on time with the expected quality, your client may be running other activities in parallel related to the promotion of their upcoming project – such as sponsoring and speaking at an event, purchasing advertising space, or meeting a potential investor. Those may be optional and postponed when planned early enough, but keeping a secret for yourself may ruin their reputation in case you don’t address it when the problem occurs.

As an added note, different problems can be solved in different ways. If one of your team members is no longer available, the client may have someone in-house who can jump in and help out until you onboard another team member. Or suggest a great freelancer who can assist in the meantime.

Your clients are your partners – respect them and share responsibility. Launching successfully is the goal that you’re both aiming for, so make sure that you’re acting with professionalism and transparency.

10. Assign Responsibilities to Stakeholders

Larger organizations include several people involved with a project, responsible for different activities.

As a result, you may end up negotiating over various requirements and reprioritizing features that different stakeholders want earlier.

Great project managers can navigate through chaos and lead the process for the sake of completing a project. Discuss the problem with your client and appoint a lead decision maker who will coordinate on their end.

Since communication is required over the course of the project, find out who is responsible for what and request all details upfront. A number of projects are delayed due to the lack of coordination and additional side activities such as business trips or events. A required asset from a decision maker could put the work on hold, drag the project and your incoming payments, so planning those activities should be on the roadmap as well.

11. Identify the Right Team Members

When coordinating requirements and work duties for the project, identify the right team members.

Your staff may be proficient in certain business areas due to their previous experience in other companies, their hobbies, or personal interest in a certain activities. They may speak the language of a foreign partner that you will collaborate with, or have a unique view on the project that could assist your managerial duties.

12. Define Intermediate Milestones and Internal Review Cycles

Don’t rely on a large and tedious iteration before going live. Break the project down into milestones, and identify deliverables expected for each iteration.

Conduct an initial meeting with your team and set realistic expectations based on their feedback. Don’t forget to leave a buffer for revisions, changes, QA, and other activities that should be performed in-house.

13. Your Expertise Matters

As an experienced project manager, you know the industry, your team, and what is the best and most optimal scenario for a project to be delivered successfully.

Your clients may require a specific workflow that you disagree with, or specific features that won’t be profitable for them in the long run.

Think of Myspace – the social networking website that was popular over ten years ago. If your client requires a complex integration with Myspace that would take several weeks of full-time work, would you comply without consulting them first?

As a service provider, you want your client to be successful. That means both impeccable implementation, and a reliable business model that follows the latest standards.

For instance, many old-school corporate managers still neglect the existence of smartphones or tablets, and don’t care about responsive websites or mobile-first design. As an industry expert, you have to share some statistics and assist them with making the right decision for their digital business.

Don’t be afraid to share your expertise whenever it’s crucial to the success of the project. Being entirely blunt may be a liability, but remember that a customer isn’t always right – and you need to point this out for their own good.

14. Manage Scope Creep Like a Pro

A research by CHAOS group reported that 74% of the projects fail or are delivered much later and at a higher cost than initially quoted. That is about 3 out of every 4 project contracts out there. And it’s one of the major inner fears for many project managers working with high profile customers.

In fact, this is not always a problem – when planned the right way. A good number of those 74% are projects that haven’t been scoped properly, and don’t plan for ongoing changes and feature requests down the line.

A common managerial approach by the management community is adding a multiplier (usually between 1.5x to 3x) on top of the initial estimate provided by the team before sending a quote. That is usually the safety buffer for unexpected changes and surprises, communication overhead, and any misses coming from the initial requirements.

Despite of this common multiplier, 74% of the projects still fail to deliver on time and within budget.

Enter “Scope Creep” – the term used when customers ask for more than what they’ve paid for, or have assumed that certain features come out of the box.

Scope creep should be a mandatory section in your proposal and your contract, and outline that nothing stated explicitly in your document is to be assumed. This is an incredibly sensitive subject and writing down the feature list should be done extremely carefully. On top of that scope creep must be discussed openly from day one with your clients, and reminded regularly – because it will inevitably appear under one form or another.

Even if you are a nice guy or gal with an extremely professional team, doing features pro bono is not the way to go. It will add up to the initial set of requirements, affect the planned architecture, and require additional time, thus reducing the amount of QA performed and the guaranty for project quality.

Embrace scope creep by communicating it loud and clear upfront, and charge for any additional requirements on top of the initial scope. New features (when approved) will increase the profitability from your client, and extend the duration of your contract.

15. Communicate Often to Identify Changes ASAP

Regular communication with your team and your client is essential. In the context of scope creep, tens of thousands of companies and contractors have met a client who has reviewed a 6-month project at the end, and decomposed everything to the latest detail, asking for another 6 months of unpaid work.

Prepare your milestones carefully and identify a process for signing off on component completion. For instance, web design and development projects may go through design, layouts, front-end development and back-end development iterations, each done separately and started after a written confirmation by a client.

If your design has been fully approved, additional design changes are not to be introduced “by default” from a client. If the static HTML version is signed off, sudden bugs with ancient browsers on old operating systems are to be revised as a part of the ongoing maintenance plan post-launch.

Clients often don’t spend enough time during the implementation phase as they see the project as “work in progress”. It’s your responsibility to outline the high end components and work until their full completion, hence getting approval, saving time from multitasking, and jumping on to the following areas from your process.

16. Document the Process and Your Roadmap

Documentation is a natural part of the process, but its completeness and detailness may be questionable.

Maintaining a set of documents for your process and the project roadmap can save you a lot of time and headaches. Long projects go through different iterations, and at a given point business or technical decisions are lost in the archives.

Scope changes or layout iterations may be missing as well, and digging through piles of emails, tasks and phone call logs isn’t something that you want to do when the time comes.

Documentation is also extremely valuable for your clients and your direct managers. It keeps a clean track record of your work to date, allows for justifying blocks of hours based on the complexity of the project, and helps with onboarding new team members joining the project.

17. Open Door Policy

Be as accessible as possible. That comes with certain constraints needed for your work-life balance or the focused blocks of hours that you need for proposals and replies, but you don’t want to miss the opportunity to connect with your team, learn about potential problems, or simply ensure that everything is intact.

Remote teams may be unable to take advantage of the physical “open door” gesture, which is why you need to explicitly let the folks know that you’re approachable and available. Share the best channels for contact such as business or personal email and an IM account where they can reach. Connect with them yourself a few times in order to show them that you’re not a scary Cerberus that’s trying to jeopardize their success.

It may seem apparent, but often that’s not the case – especially with new team members or introverts that are not comfortable discussing problems openly in the presence of many colleagues.

18. Be Friendly, But Not a Friend

Keeping in touch with your peers is a fine skill, and requires calibration from day one.

There is a common leadership principle that states “Be Friendly, Not Friends”. You want to avoid a huge gap between you and your subordinates who don’t see you as an equal member of their team. A team spirit is important, and everyone should be aware that you are in together – and you have to work closely in order to ensure successful results.

However, crossing the friendliness line and becoming friends with your team may become a problem. Your role requires sticking to the plan, keeping everyone happy, making compromises and pushing some buttons when needed. Authority should exist along with your friendly attitude, and that fine balance would both give you the openness that you need, and following your orders whenever necessary.

19. Talk Less, Listen More

The best way to understand the problems of everyone around you is letting them talk.

Your expertise is important, and as a leader, you should step in whenever needed. But just as a coach of a sports team, you should be on hold, observing, analyzing, taking notes, and improving the process.

Get used to asking questions.

Ask your client what’s the expected outcome of the project. Then ask them how they see success in a year or two from now. Listen, take notes, and follow-up on their answers.

Same goes for your team. Especially in the event of a confrontation or a work problem, set some time aside and talk personally with the person who’s having a problem. Ask them how they feel, and what bothers them. Check if everything is clear with the project requirements. If appropriate, ask if there are any side problems (at home, with significant other or family) that may be affecting the work quality or attitude.

Talking less and asking more questions can help you find the answers of your own questions and leading through understanding, not tyranny.

20. Lead and Inspire

Great managers are great leaders, and they can navigate the project and bond the team on a regular basis.

There are moments when work is not streamlined, and problems happen. Internal confrontations may be happening due to stress, tight deadlines, or other external factors.

As a project manager, step up and inspire your team. Monitor their energy and satisfaction levels and ensure that your team is happy and there are no irreversible issues lurking in.

Remind them why you’re working together and what is at stake. Tell them how great of a team they are, and outline the expertise of each member separately. Reduce the tension of their shoulders by actively communicating with your client and earning extra time or understanding from them.

In a real world we don’t have infinite budgets, timelines, flexibly work hours and immensely fun projects all the time. When we face reality, we have to stick to certain limitations, and ensure that we can deliver successfully. Being ready for the tough times and keeping the inertia forward while calming your team and clients down is what differentiates the great manager from the regular one.

Project management is a fine art that relies on a multitude of soft skills and professional industry expertise. The future of a project and its successful delivery is dependent on the management workflow and prompt communication with all parties involved.

Plan carefully, talk openly with your customers, and manage the energy level of your team. As long as you’re on top of the management process, identify challenges early enough, and allocate resources in a smart and productive way, you’ll get closer to deliver outstanding results and landing additional work from your clients.

After your project has been successfully completed, providing excellent client support is very important for your business. Here is why.

No matter how awesome you think your product is, or how talented you think your team is, what your customers are most likely to remember is the direct contact they have with your company. There are a number of customer service tips that have been used time and time again to create great experiences. You need to know about them.

10 Key Customer Support Skills

What skills can customer service professionals develop to get better at their jobs, and what skills can leaders look for during interviews to make sure they’re hiring the right people? The result: a list of skills — not traits — that are both developable and observable.

Here are the 10 customer service skills that every professional should seek to develop and every leader should look for when hiring new team members.

1. Patience

Patience is crucial for customer service professionals. After all, customers who reach out to support are often confused and frustrated. Being listened to and handled with patience goes a long way in helping customers feel like you’re going to alleviate their current frustrations.

But patience among customer service teams is also important to the business at large because great service beats fast service every single time. It’s not enough to close out interactions with customers as quickly as possible. You have to be willing to take the time to listen and fully understand each customer’s problems and needs.

If you deal with customers on a daily basis, be sure to stay patient when they come to you stumped and frustrated, but also be sure to take the time to truly figure out what they truly need.

2. Attentiveness

The ability to truly listen to customers is crucial to providing great service for a number of reasons. Not only is it important to pay attention to individual customers’ experiences, but it’s also important to be mindful and attentive to the feedback that you receive at large.

For instance, customers may not be saying it outright, but perhaps there is a pervasive feeling that your software’s dashboard isn’t laid out correctly. Customers aren’t likely to say, “Please improve your UX,” but they may say things like, “I can never find the search feature” or “Where is (specific function), again?”

You have to be attentive to pick up on what your customers are telling you without directly saying it.

3. Ability to communicate clearly

It’s important to be mindful of how some of your communication habits translate to customers, and it’s best to err on the side of caution whenever you find yourself questioning a situation. More importantly, you need to be cautious about how some of your communication habits translate to customers.

When it comes to important points that you need to relay clearly to customers, keep it simple and leave nothing to doubt.

4. Knowledge of the product

The best customer service professionals have a deep knowledge of how their companies’ products work. After all, without knowing your product from front to back, you won’t know how to help customers when they run into problems.

Take the time to get to know your company’s product as well as a customer who uses it every day does.

Knowing the product that you support inside and out is mission critical for anyone in support,” says Help Scout’s Elyse Roach.

“Having that solid product foundation not only ensures you’ve got the best tricks up your sleeve to help customers navigate even the most complex situations, it also helps you build understanding about their experience so that you can become their strongest advocate.”

5. Ability to use positive language

Effective customer service means having the ability to make minor changes in your conversational patterns. This can truly go a long way in creating happy customers.

Language is a crucial part of persuasion, and people (especially customers) create perceptions about you and your company based on the language that you use.

For example, let’s say a customer contacts you with an interest in a particular product, but that product happens to be back-ordered until next month.

Responding to questions with positive language can greatly affect how the customer hears your response:

Without positive language: “I can’t get you that product until next month; it is back-ordered and unavailable at this time.”
With positive language: “That product will be available next month. I can place the order for you right now and make sure that it is sent to you as soon as it reaches our warehouse.”

The first example isn’t negative per se, but the tone it conveys feels abrupt and impersonal and could be taken the wrong way by customers — especially in email support when the perception of written language can skew negative.

Conversely, the second example is stating the same thing (the item is unavailable), but it focuses on when and how the issue will be resolved instead of focusing on the negative.

6. Acting skills

Sometimes you’re going to come across people who you’ll never be able to make happy.

Situations outside of your control (they had a terrible day, or they are just a natural-born complainer) will sometimes creep into your usual support routine, and you’ll be greeted with those “barnacle” customers that seem to want nothing else but to pull you down.

Every great customer service professional needs basic acting skills to maintain their usual cheery persona in spite of dealing with people who are just plain grumpy.

7. Time management skills

On the one hand, it’s good to be patient and spend a little extra time with customers to understand their problems and needs. On the other hand, there is a limit to the amount of time you can dedicate to each customer, so you need to be concerned with getting customers what they want in an efficient manner.

The trick here is applying your time management skills when realizing when you simply cannot help a customer. If you don’t know the solution to a problem, the best kind of support professional will get a customer over to someone who does.

Don’t waste time trying to go above and beyond for a customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time!

8. Ability to read customers

You won’t always be able to see customers face-to-face, and in many instances, you won’t even hear a customer’s voice. But that doesn’t exempt you from understanding some basic principles of behavioral psychology and being able to read the customer’s current emotional state.

You don’t want to misread a customer and end up losing them due to confusion and miscommunication.

9. Unflappability

There are a lot of metaphors for this type of personality: “keeps their cool,” “staying cool under pressure,” and so on, but it all represents the same thing: The ability some people have to stay calm and even influence others when things get a little hectic.

The best customer service reps know that they can’t let a heated customer force them to lose their cool. In fact, it is their job to try to be the “rock” for customers who think the world is falling apart as a result of their current problems.

10. Goal-oriented focus

This may seem like a strange thing to list as a good customer service skill, but I assure you it’s vitally important.

That’s because it leaves employees without goals, and business goals and customer happiness can work hand-in-hand without resulting in poor service.

Relying on frameworks like the Net Promoter Score can help businesses come up with guidelines for their employees that allow plenty of freedom to handle customers on a case-to-case basis, but also leave them priority solutions and “go-to” fixes for common problems.

Often, the root cause of what could be perceived as a lack of skill or unwillingness to learn is the result of a work environment (current or prior) that didn’t reward going above and beyond to provide excellent service.

Try providing your team with some clear guidelines for what you expect and some examples of what great customer service looks like at your company in a way that brings to bear all of these skills, and as you do it, make sure that you’re celebrating those small wins as you see people starting to use these skills.

Once your team starts to see that their efforts are being acknowledged and rewarded, you’ll have people start to get more engaged, and you’ll have a clearer picture of whether or not there are actually people on your team who have real skill gaps that you need to work on.

10 tips for outstanding customer service

1. Practice clear communication with customers

Excellence in anything increases your potential in everything. There are few positions for which this applies more than support—clarity in communication is paramount because it affects everything you do.

Styling affects communication. Tone affects communication. Common mistakes to be made are using passive-aggressive language (“Actually…”) or confusing customers with slang, colloquialisms, or technical jargon.

Here’s another: which one of the following statements do you think is more appropriate?

You are being transferred. Your call is very important to us.
Hey Jane, I’m going to introduce you to our customer success specialist who will be better able to answer your question!

Easy. One is a trite platitude that people are sick of hearing. The other explains to customers why the transfer is to their benefit. Wording makes all the difference.

2. Practice Empathy, Patience, and Consistency

Some of your customers will be full of questions, some just chatty, and others plain mad. You must be prepared to empathize customers and handle all of them and provide the same level of service every time.

3. Understand that Good Customer Service is a Continuous Learning Process

Every customer is unique and every support situation is different. In order to handle surprises, sense a customer’s mood, address new challenges accordingly, you have to be willing to keep learning. Strive to have a deep understanding of your customer’s challenges and continue to search for better ways to address them.

4. Ask Customers if They Understand.

Make sure your customers know exactly what you mean. You don’t want your customers to think they’re getting 25% off when they’re actually getting 25% more product. Ask customers if they understand what you’re saying. Use positive language, stay cheerful no matter what, and never end a conversation without confirming the customer understands and is satisfied.

5. Show Your Customers Your Work Ethic

Customers appreciate a rep who doesn’t pass the buck and sticks with them until their problem is solved. However, you can’t spend too much time handling one customer while others are waiting. You have to stay focused on your goals to achieve the right balance.

6. Don’t Be Afraid to Say “I Don’t Know”

Your customers rely on you to know your product inside out. It’s your job to stay informed enough to respond to questions or at least know where to turn if the questions become too technical for you to answer. If you don’t know the answer it is okay to say to your customers “I don’t know”, as long as you follow it up with “but I’ll find out”. Customers will appreciate your honesty and your efforts to find the right answer.

7. You Have to Have Thick Skin

You know the old saying “the customer’s always right”. There’s truth to that. The best customer service reps have the ability to swallow their pride and accept blame or negative feedback…or handle unreasonable customers in an empathic way. No matter what, your customer’s happiness is your primary goal. If a customer is completely unreasonable, just be human and level with them. Let them know you’re doing your best.

8. Pay Attention to Your Customer’s Experience

A negative customer experience at any point in the customer lifecycle can destroy your relationship. Pay critical attention to key touchpoints: customer trial periods, customer sign-ups, customer on-boarding etc. Make sure you have a full view of your customer experience, or you risk breakdowns in service that will hurt business. If you discover a lapse in service, make sure to bring it up with your management team so it can be fixed.

9. Show Your Customers You’re Human

Do your best to identify common ground and shared interests with the customers you help. By humanizing your relationship you’ll make resolving conflict easier, your customers will like you more (and as a result, your business).

10. Admit Your Mistakes

If you mess up, admit it, even if you discover your mistakes before your customers do. Admitting you messed up builds trust and restores your customer’s confidence in your service. It also allows you to control the situation, re-focus the customer’s attention, and fix the problem.

Conclusion

As you will have noticed from the information above, effective project management and offering excellent client support are critical to the progress of your business. With such great importance, focusing on improving in these areas are very important.