Customer Service: A Skill That Every Employee Needs

Wow, have I learned how important customer service is in so much of what I do, places I go, and places I shop.  In every job or internship I have had, it has always been an essential skill. Anyone who has a positive experience with a company will likely tell someone else about that company, which is great for that firm’s public image. It is also a good source of business. It helps to retain customers.

Making customer service a priority will pay great dividends and can differentiate your company from others. If you are selling the same or similar product as other companies, providing excellent customer service could be the one thing that stays in one’s memory and will help a company retain them as a customer.

Most of the jobs and internships I have had require some sort of customer service. For example, my internship last semester was with Blue Grass Community Foundation, a nonprofit in Lexington, Kentucky. I was the Community Philanthropy intern for them. One of their big social media events is called the Good Giving Challenge, which is an online giving campaign to benefit more than 100 nonprofits in Fayette and its surrounding counties. To prepare for the challenge, we provided social media training sessions for people in the community, to help them better understand how to raise money effectively through all social media outlets. To me, this was a great example of how customer service works. We had to prepare a PowerPoint that provided a step-by-step process of how to make social media accounts and how to use them. This required patience on my part to really be able to effectively interact with each of the participants of the challenge. Because of the patience and understanding we exhibited, they will most likely participate in the challenge in future years and remember how great their experience was in the past.

Customer service is also extremely important when I do things such as take my car to the shop and when I go shopping for clothes. I always remember when a salesperson takes extra time to help me. In addition, the same goes with restaurants. I’ve always remembered if the service is really good or bad at a restaurant and I return based on those experiences.

From my internship with Blue Grass Community Foundation and many other experiences that I have had, customer service is an essential skill to have. You use it in any career and I believe that mastering that skill will help me not only in the workplace, but also in my daily life.