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Critical thinking should be made a pre-requisite for hiring of new customer service staff. Customer service today is no longer just about being able to smile and assist customers as and when requested but also reaching to them in the most creative, meaningful and impactful way possible. Of course, such flexible actions provided your staff are able to apply critical thinking in their daily work. Creative thinking that results in better customer experience should be encouraged so long as they adhered to the established operating framework and authority set by the Organization.
Gone are all those days where Organizations merely see their Customer Service as merely fulfilling customers’ transactions and nothing more. They are not trained to be personal and creative in their approach. In the past, Customer Service personnel merely need to learn how to smile, perform transaction and know how to escalate an unpredictable situation to the next level to handle. As a result, Customer Service positions are often filled by lowly qualified personnel with adequate speaking skills.
Customers today no longer just act purely objectively and rationally as they become more discerning. To influence these customers to stay with you or to buy more from you, you need to train your staff on critical thinking. You need to train them to put themselves in the customer shoes. Customers no longer just look for bargain but also an inner satisfaction from buying from you.
So what really is critical thinking? Critical thinking includes a complex combination of skills and they can include the following:-
(1) Rationale Thinking
Ability to rely on reason rather than emotion, require evidence, ignore no known evidence, and follow evidence where it leads, and are concerned more with finding the best explanation than being right analyzing apparent confusion and asking questions. Only the right level of critical thinking can help your staff better understanding and anticipate needs.
(2) Self-awareness
Ability to weigh the influences of motives and bias, and recognize our own assumptions, prejudices, biases, or point of view. Again, creative thinking is key in developing such self-awareness to better handle customers demands.
(3) Sincerity and Honesty
Ability to recognize emotional impulses, selfish motives, nefarious purposes, or other modes of self-deception. there will always be insincere and dishonest people around. Creative thinking can help your staff to better apply their judgment when dealing with such customers and not just merely following procedures set by the Company.
(4) Open-mindedness
Ability to evaluate all reasonable inferences consider a variety of possible viewpoints or perspectives, remain open to alternative interpretations accept a new explanation, model, or paradigm because it explains the evidence better, is simpler, or has fewer inconsistencies or covers more data accept new priorities in response to a reevaluation of the evidence or reassessment of our real interests, and do not reject unpopular views out of hand.
(5) Discipline
Ability to be precise, meticulous, comprehensive, and exhaustive resist manipulation and irrational appeals, and avoid snap judgments.
(6) Non Judgmental
Ability to recognize the relevance and/or merit of alternative assumptions and perspectives and weight of evidence.
Subject your customer service staff to critical thinking assessment test to enhance the critical thinking aspects of their jobs. Regular assessments will go a long way in enhancing the reasoning skills of your staff when face with different situations at work. There are plenty of samples you can attempt for free to evaluate the sort of critical thinking assessment test will be most appropriate to your Organization.
In conclusion, critical thinkers are by nature skeptical and do not accept things as they are. They approach texts, pictures or video with the same skepticism and suspicion as they approach spoken remarks. Critical thinkers are active, not passive and constantly looking for the variables that will make a difference to their objectives. They ask questions and analyze constantly. They consciously apply tactics and strategies to uncover meaning or assure their understanding. Critical thinkers do not take an egotistical view of the world but instead leave to dance with their objects. They are open to new ideas and perspectives. They are willing to challenge their beliefs so long as there are competing evidence. Critical thinking enables us to recognize a wide range of subjective analysis of otherwise objective data, and to evaluate how well each analysis might meet our needs. Facts may be facts, but how we interpret them may vary.
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Source by Philip Koh
