20 Key customer service skills and how to develop them for success in 2025

Exceptional customer service skills are vital in virtually every industry. Whether it’s helping a customer troubleshoot an issue, answering a billing question, or simply creating a positive interaction, these abilities directly influence customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and long-term business success.

Customer care skills go beyond friendliness or quick responses. They involve empathy, active listening, problem-solving, and clear communication. Together, these traits build trust and turn everyday interactions into opportunities to strengthen relationships.

At Dialpad, our global customer support team provides 24/7 assistance over voice and live chat to businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises. That experience has helped us identify the most essential customer service skills that every high-performing support team should develop.

So, which customer service skills are the most important? Which ones should you look for when assembling a team of agents for your business?

What are customer service skills?

Customer service skills are the abilities that enable agents and support representatives to effectively assist customers, resolve issues, and create positive experiences. These skills include a mix of both hard and soft skills that work together to ensure every interaction is handled with empathy, accuracy, and professionalism.

Hard skills refer to the technical knowledge or product expertise that allows agents to troubleshoot problems and provide clear, reliable solutions. Soft skills, on the other hand, focus on how agents communicate, listen, and connect with customers. When combined, these skills empower customer service teams to build trust, reduce frustration, and strengthen long-term relationships.

Why are customer service skills important?

Strong customer service skills are the foundation of long-term business success. They help companies build trust and loyalty, reduce customer churn, and lower the cost of acquiring new clients. When teams have the right client service skills, they can turn challenges into positive experiences that strengthen relationships and drive repeat business.

Customer care skills also play a major role in shaping how customers perceive your brand. Whether it’s solving a technical issue, answering a billing question, or providing product guidance, every interaction is an opportunity to demonstrate reliability and empathy. The more consistent and helpful your customer service team is, the more confident customers feel in continuing to do business with you.

Today, customer service extends far beyond phone calls or in-person visits. With digital channels like social media, live chat, and messaging apps becoming standard, businesses need tools that make omnichannel support simple and seamless. Platforms like Dialpad Support enable agents to manage multiple channels at once, maintaining the same high level of service across every customer touchpoint.

Increased customer retention (and lifetime value)

A good customer service team that can solve issues respectfully and effectively make customers feel confident that even if they do have a problem, you can solve it promptly, which makes it more likely that they’ll stay with you over the long term.

Gain new customers

Exceptional customer service doesn’t just retain existing clients; it attracts new ones. When customers have positive experiences, they’re more likely to share those experiences with others, driving referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations that organically grow your business.

Zappos built an entire business model on this idea. Even though they sold the same shoes as many competitors, their customer service team and focus on customer experience set them apart. By hiring for strong customer care skills and empowering agents to go above and beyond, Zappos turned service excellence into a billion-dollar competitive advantage.

Employee satisfaction and engagement

Investing in your customer service team’s growth directly benefits both your employees and your customers. When agents receive consistent training, feedback, and opportunities to develop new customer service skills, they feel more confident and supported in their roles. This leads to higher engagement, stronger performance, and better overall service quality.

Developing your team’s customer care skills also boosts retention. When employees feel valued and equipped to handle customer needs effectively, they’re more likely to stay with your company long-term. This not only improves customer experiences but also reduces the costs and disruption associated with frequent rehiring and retraining.

Reduces cost and increases revenue

Strong customer service skills have a direct impact on a company’s bottom line. When agents are equipped with effective customer handling skills, they resolve issues quickly, retain more customers, and minimize the need for costly acquisition campaigns. Well-trained teams also experience less turnover, which reduces hiring and onboarding expenses.

In addition to lowering costs, skilled customer service teams help increase revenue by strengthening relationships with existing customers. When agents understand customer needs and communicate with confidence, they can identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, ultimately driving long-term growth and higher customer lifetime value.

What are the principles of good customer service?

When it comes to good customer service, your team of agents will all bring different skills to the table. But there are a few key pillars that they should align to in order to provide the best experience possible. Good customer service should be:

• Personalized: Today, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. It’s not just a nice-to-have anymore. And businesses have the tools to provide these personalized conversations, with CRMs and contact center solutions that can pull all of this information into a convenient overview for agents.

• Proactive: In the same vein, customer service should also be proactive. For example, if there are industry updates or regulatory changes that impact your customers, don’t just wait for them to come to you. Proactively send out communications and prepare your agents to handle an influx of questions.

• Convenient: In a word, omnichannel. Customers don’t just call anymore—they want to be able to reach you through different channels. Make it easy for them to do that.

• Confident: This might be the most overlooked pillar, but confidence is crucial to providing customer service. If agents are stumbling as they explain how to troubleshoot a problem or unsure about your latest feature updates, customers will pick up on that, and it’ll affect their experience—even if your agent ends up solving the problem for them.

What key skills are needed for customer service?

Delivering excellent customer service requires a mix of both technical expertise and human connection. The best agents combine practical knowledge with empathy, communication, and problem-solving abilities that create trust and satisfaction. Broadly, the key skills for customer service fall into four main categories: soft skills, interpersonal skills, communication and problem-solving, and hard skills. Together, they help agents handle a wide range of customer situations effectively and consistently.

Soft skills involve how agents interact with customers and manage emotions during conversations. These include patience, adaptability, empathy, and time management—traits that help maintain calm, friendly, and productive interactions even when challenges arise.

Interpersonal, communication, and problem-solving skills ensure that agents can listen carefully, identify issues quickly, and resolve them clearly. These abilities help customers feel understood and supported while keeping calls efficient and focused.

Hard skills are the more technical side of customer service. They include knowing your company’s products and systems inside and out, navigating software tools, and using data to deliver accurate answers. Agents with strong hard skills can confidently guide customers through complex troubleshooting steps and ensure they leave the conversation with a solution.

Customer service hard skills

Hard skills are often technical or practical skills—in other words, skills that can usually be objectively measured and/or are related to knowing how a specific product or feature works.

An agent with good hard skills is someone who knows all the ins and outs of how, for example, your software works and can clearly communicate that to a customer who may be having issues with it.

Customer service soft skills

On the other hand, soft skills are less by the book. They’re more related to how the agent makes a customer feel—for example, are they a good listener and communicator? But it’s not just about empathy or emotions either. Adaptability is a good soft skill, and so is time management. Is your agent a quick thinker? Do they get overwhelmed easily, or can they keep their cool even when a customer is getting frustrated? These are soft skills too.

Now, let's look at the 20 key customer service skills:

1. Empathy

An empathetic agent isn’t just solving a problem—they can also show support effectively and build rapport with someone who often is coming to you in a frustrated or confused state of mind.

Example: A customer calls to report a lost package. The agent responds, “I understand how frustrating this must be, especially if it was something important. Let’s get this sorted out together as quickly as possible.”

2. Problem solving

The ultimate goal of customer service is to solve customer problems, which means anticipating the issue, finding possible solutions, and executing them (or helping customers take the necessary steps).

Example: A customer reaches out with a payment issue. The agent identifies the source of the problem, provides immediate troubleshooting steps, and escalates to the billing team for a permanent resolution, keeping the customer informed throughout the process.

3. Communication

An agent with good communication skills can interact with customers in a clear and confident manner, and help them understand the issue and how to resolve it. Calling and messaging are both popular channels for customers, which means agents have to be good at communicating both verbally and in written form.

Example: In a live chat, an agent summarizes the customer’s concern: “Just to confirm, you’re looking for a refund for the wrong item delivered. Let me check the order details and process that for you now.”

4. Active listening

Most customers are frustrated already when they come to you and don’t want to repeat themselves. This is where active listening is crucial because it leads to asking the right questions—and responding with the correct answers.

Example: A customer explains a technical issue in detail. The agent listens carefully, paraphrases the issue to confirm understanding, and says, “Thanks for sharing that. Let me guide you through the steps to fix this.”

5. Collaboration

Collaboration can be your team’s biggest asset. There are times when agents have to communicate with multiple departments (like Sales, Finance, and Product) to solve a customer query.

Agents often also have to collaborate to share workloads, ask for help, and so on—which makes collaboration skills very important to productivity (and also team cohesion and morale).

Example: An agent involves the technical team to resolve a complex query while keeping the customer updated, ensuring a seamless handoff and resolution.

6. Technical or product knowledge

Your customer service team should possess, at the very least, basic knowledge about your industry and an in-depth understanding of your products or services.

This isn’t something that can be done in just one day—agents will need extensive ongoing training to become familiar with product specifications, usage guidelines, purchasing processes, troubleshooting methods, and more.

Example: An agent quickly identifies a software bug and guides the customer through a temporary workaround while escalating the issue to the product team for a permanent fix.

7. Attention to detail

Attention to detail is important because it ensures agents can catch key information, minimize errors, and follow processes consistently to provide reliable support. As a side benefit, it helps build trust with customers, too.

Example: While resolving a query, an agent notices an account discrepancy and addresses it proactively, preventing potential future issues for the customer.

8. Patience

Patience might often be seen as a personality trait, but it can be a skill, too. Agents should be able to keep calm and respond with understanding when customers get flustered or angry. It’s not always easy to recognize your own triggers and maintain composure, but customer service agents can’t afford to lose their patience in these situations. Help them build this skill with role-playing exercises and well-written scripts.

Example: A customer repeatedly asks the same question out of confusion. The agent stays calm and rephrases the explanation until the customer feels reassured.

9. Tenacity

Tenacity reflects an agent’s determination to see a problem through to resolution, no matter how complex or prolonged it is. Agents with this skill make sure that no customer is left without a solution.

Example: When an issue requires multiple escalations, the agent tracks its progress persistently and updates the customer daily until the problem is fully resolved.

10. Adaptability

Customers are full of surprises. This is why agents have to be able to adapt to different situations and mold their responses based on customers’ needs and moods.

Example: When a customer switches from frustration to gratitude mid-conversation, the agent adjusts their tone accordingly, celebrating the resolution together.

11. Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness is about finding creative solutions when no standard answer exists. Often, agents with this skill are good at using the tools and knowledge they have to deliver unexpected results.

Example: When a customer needs urgent service that requires another team to be involved, the agent identifies an alternative solution until that team becomes available.

12. Positive attitude

Customers need trust and support from your CX team. The best way to show this, no matter how difficult the problem, is to have a positive attitude towards the situation.

This could involve reassuring customers that their issue will be addressed—if not immediately, within the shortest possible time—or even just keeping customers updated about ticket resolution to reduce their stress.

Example: “I know this process feels lengthy, but I appreciate your patience. I’m here to make sure it gets resolved properly for you.”

13. Writing skills

Good writing is especially important today with so many customers preferring to use live chat and messaging channels. Scripts can be very helpful because they provide a shortcut, but agents should be regularly trained on written responses to ensure they’re clear, professional, and concise.

Example: “Hi Alex, I’ve processed the refund for your order and it should reflect in your account within 3-5 business days. Let me know if you have any other questions—I’m happy to help!”

14. Persuasion skills

Persuasion is about guiding customers to solutions, purchases, or actions in a way that aligns with their needs and preferences—and also benefits the business.

Example: “I recommend our premium plan—it includes all the features you said you’re looking for, plus it’s discounted if you upgrade this month!”

15. Time management skills

This is a crucial soft skill for any agent. Customers can easily abandon conversations when they feel like they’re being put in the back seat, even if it’s for a few seconds.

That’s why it’s so important that agents learn how to strategically keep certain customers on hold and balance wait times between simultaneous conversations. Not only will it help them manage multiple tasks more effectively, it can also improve the customer experience.

Example: An agent handles multiple chats by setting realistic response expectations and rotating between them efficiently.

16. Goal-oriented focus

A goal-oriented mindset ensures agents prioritize tasks that lead to customer satisfaction and overall team success. Setting clear goals for agents can help them hit the most important business-level metrics more consistently. For example, if your goal is to significantly improve your team’s CSAT score, and you can have slightly longer average call durations to do this, communicate that to your agents!

Example: An agent consistently meets their daily resolution targets while maintaining high customer satisfaction scores.

17. Willingness to learn

Agents may all start with different experience levels and skills, but coachability is a skill that will help them adapt more easily to new tools, processes, and customer expectations.

Example: An agent completes optional training sessions to improve their proficiency with your company’s CRM platform.

18. AI literacy

Understanding how to leverage AI tools for faster resolutions and personalized customer experiences is increasingly vital. For example, our own agents use Dialpad’s AI Live Coach feature to get instant answers to common questions and speed up resolution times:

Example: A SaaS company’s support agent uses their AI-powered knowledge base to instantly provide accurate answers to customer questions.

19. Omnichannel awareness

Omnichannel awareness ensures agents can provide seamless support across multiple communication platforms. For example, an agent with good omnichannel awareness knows how to adapt their tone or the details in their responses to provide the best experience for the customer.

Example: A customer transitions from chat to a phone call, and the agent seamlessly picks up where the conversation left off by quickly scanning the customer’s previous interactions with the support team.

20. Multilingual skills

This skill is pretty straightforward. Being multilingual allows agents to assist a wider audience effectively—if you have a customer service team in different regions and customer bases around the world, this gives you a lot of versatility when scheduling shifts.

Example: The agent switches to the customer’s native language mid-call when they notice the customer struggling with English.

How can your team enhance its customer service skills?

Helping your agents uplevel their skills and customer service techniques is a key part of call center workforce management. Here are a few ways to coach and guide them:

Give your team clear feedback

Your customer service team can leverage three types of feedback to improve their customer service representative skills: direct customer feedback, manager feedback, and customer feedback reports.

Giving them a mix of all three will help them reflect on their performance from an objective standpoint and determine their highs and lows. They’ll also understand the reason behind unsatisfactory experiences (if any) and take measures to work on specific skills.

Provide ongoing training

Although agents should practice core skills themselves, you could help them by continuing to provide customer service skills training—for example, by:

• Conducting customer service training games like role plays to give agents an opportunity to practice scenarios where they might lose patience or where empathizing with customers could be a challenge.

• Taking recorded calls that show how agents handled different situations well, and using them as examples that the rest of the team can follow.

• Offering in-depth product and service training so agents can strengthen their customer service abilities. When team members understand the details of your products, they can answer questions more confidently, troubleshoot issues faster, and deliver more accurate solutions.

Continuous development ensures that your customer service team stays adaptable, informed, and confident.

Set them up for success

Training and feedback are both great, but agents also need the right tools and technology to do their jobs, and these tools can help with everything from content organization to time management.

For example, an AI-powered contact center platform can automatically search and pull up documentation or important content that can help agents with different customer questions, which can save them a lot of time when helping a customer.

Master the most effective customer service skills with Dialpad

Having great customer service skills is important, but no matter how many skills you add to this list, your team needs to be equipped with the right tools to provide a great CX.

Dialpad Support empowers your customer support leaders to manage your workforce’s schedule, plan activities, coach agents more effectively, and more. See how companies like RE/MAX and Randstad are using the platform now!