Why Soft Skills Matter for Customer Success
Wondering what soft skills are and why they’re important to have under your belt? Think of soft skills as an individual’s special attribute. You can have one or many superpowers that set you apart from the rest. These special characteristics are needed to succeed in the workplace. Regardless of what role you play, having soft skills will be beneficial to you in both your work and personal life.
Like everyone else, when it comes to making goals for learning new skills to improve ourselves in our current role, the first thing that comes to mind are usually hard skills. Soft skills are often undervalued and ignored because there’s so much focus on keeping up with the latest technology and having fresh technical skills that we can use to troubleshoot issues and contribute to projects. We should find a balance and shift our focus on achieving hard skills so that we can acquire or improve our soft skills first. Even if you’re talented and dedicated to learning, both type of skills can be hard to pick up.
Soft skills are harder to teach and is often referred to as “people skills” which you are born with. The following are examples of some soft skills that are essential for customer success.
- Ability to listen
- Accept feedback
- Attentive
- Communicate
- Empathy
- Friendliness
- Patience
- Problem solving
- Reliable
- Teamwork
Hard skills can be taught and acquired through learning and also something that can be measured and evaluated. The following are examples of some hard skills essential for customer success.
- Certifications
- Computer
- Data Analysis
- Data Migration
- Foreign Language
- Mathematics
- Programming
- Testing
- Typing speed
- Writing
Soft skills can be much more difficult to measure or evaluate and are often overlooked when it comes to your personal development goals and reviews with your manager. Your monthly or annual review might focus more on the applications or technology you’ve learned and ignore improvements in communication or patience. This imbalance makes it very challenging to understand what skills are required to be successful in customer success.
The majority of your time in helping customers is spent interacting with them. It’s great if you can type fast and troubleshoot advanced code, but if you can’t listen attentively or communicate clearly, you’ll struggle to be successful in your role. Although hard skills are valuable, customer success runs on soft skills.
