Providing excellent customer service is critical to business survival in today's competitive marketplaces. Mediocre customer service can quickly torpedo your company's reputation.

Research says 42 percent of people encounter poor customer service at least monthly and that can hurt a growing business's reputation. And in today's connected online world, great customer service, regardless of the industry, is essential. Good customer service skills are valuable for employees in all positions and industries, even those who don't work directly with customers.

Let's look at what are the most important emotional intelligence skills to look for in a customer service candidate:

• Communication skills: This one is easy to spot. The best salespeople have great communication skills. They use active emotional listening to try to understand the customers' personality and needs--to hear the intent behind what is being said. They share useful information with the customer and with their colleagues. They like to receive feedback and use it to feed forward when some mistake was made or a skill needs to be improved.
• Body language: As you conduct the interview, pay attention to the tone of voice the candidate is talking, if he is listening and thinking before making a statement, or asking more in-depth questions. Look for the non-verbal cues through his posture, hand gestures, and micro-facial expression.
• Problem-solving skills: Being nice and a good communicator is not enough to be a successful customer service expert. Your customers expect that your customer service representative also has the knowledge and ability to solve his problem when the customer is complaining. To assess if your candidate has this skill ask him to tell you about problems he has faced with customers and how he handled it. You are looking for evidence that he knows how to work through issues in a logical way.
• Conflict resolution skills: Conflict resolution skills require the ability to stay calm under pressure and not take personally the criticism towards the service/product or anger of the client. In an interview, we look for candidates who are comfortable answering questions because this usually translates into someone who can naturally converse with customers. To assess if the candidate has a good conflict resolution skill use one of the behavioral and situational questions learned in this chapter.
• Positive and friendly attitude: Managing customer relationships with a positive and friendly attitude is paramount to ensuring that customers do not churn due to poor support. In the interview, ask how candidates have dealt with difficult customers and listen for attitude. Extroverted people who tend to be friendly and engaging with strong communication skills and empathetic listening skills are generally well suited for this role. Look for answers that honor a customer's needs and offers information about how issues were resolved.