What Essential Skills are Required for a Remote Call Center Job?

If you look through websites that list remote jobs, you’ll notice lots of them are for customer service representatives. Some of these agents work from home on their own computers and take calls for various consumer brands and service providers, including doctors’ and lawyers’ offices, utility companies, and online retailers. If this is something you’re interested in doing, we’ve compiled a list of the basic skills that you’ll need to be a successful remote customer service representative.

1. Organizational Skills

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Organizational skills are important for call center jobs because you’re doing several tasks at once. You’ll have to help customers and answer their questions while taking notes and working on your computer all at the same time. This is a fast-paced job, especially during certain times of the day, and you’ll need to stay organized to keep track of all your customer interactions.

Being organized is also helpful when having to keep track of calls and the results of that call. This is important, because the next representative needs to have this information, should the customer call again during another agent’s shift.

2. Communicating Clearly with Others

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Customers needing support will be calling you with numerous inquiries, and each one is different. To better serve them, it is essential that all of your communications are effective. Knowing which questions to ask the customers is important; you also must know how to answer their questions successfully to get their issues resolved quickly.

3. Proficiency with Various Products and Services

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As a customer care professional, you might be taking orders from a catalog or via a website, which means you must be familiar with the client’s products and/or services. As a representative of your client’s brand, customers will always expect you to have an in-depth knowledge of all the products and/or services available to them. In addition to being able to answer customer questions, you should have the knowledge to help them decide which product and/or service is best for them, and settle any complaints they may have.

4. Technical Experience

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While you don’t have to be an IT specialist to work as a remote customer service representative, you must be tech-savvy and an avid computer user. Your day-to-day activities will require you to switch back and forth between various screens and computer software. Some customer experience companies provide training and preparation, but representatives are expected to have basic technology and computer knowledge.

5. Patience and Empathy Skills

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Patience and empathy are the cornerstone of successful customer care. When customers call for help, they are looking for good old-fashioned friendliness. Mastering these two skills will make you a highly competitive customer care representative. Some things you can try are keeping a polite, positive tone when interacting with customers, and avoiding using jargon that’s specific to the industry or business. If you’re a problem-solver, and have a lot of patience with people, it helps you become a much better call center representative.

6. The Ability to Listen

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Listening skills are important in every job, but even more so when you’re a customer care pro. After all, you can’t identify or solve problems for the customers if you don’t listen carefully to what they say. You want to make sure you don’t miss anything important that can affect your ability to resolve their issues. Being an active listener means you’ll understand the customer’s problem wholeheartedly so that together, you can work on a solution. If you consider yourself a great listener, a remote call center gig might be a good fit for you.

Is It the Right Fit for Me?

Remote customer care representatives usually stay very busy, which is why certain skills are needed to do a good job. If you excel at all the skills listed above, this could be the perfect job for you! Since most customer experience companies will provide training and preparation on specific aspects of the job, mastering the skills listed means you have most of your work cut out for you.

Interested in joining Working Solutions’ network of remote customer care pros – aka the WooHoo Crew? Apply today! Working Solutions works with different brands to humanize their customer experience. When you join the WooHoo Crew, you will have access to apply to several contracts exclusive to Working Solutions contractors.