12 Customer Service Skills Every Employee Should Master

As a food truck owner, there are customer service skills that every employee in your mobile food business must master if they deal with customers, and you must lead the way in insuring that these skills are reinforced on a consistent basis.

Without these customer service skills your food truck has no assurance that when you are not in the truck, you are not losing customers based upon poor employee customer interactions. These skills are universal and by practicing them you are guaranteed to improve your interactions with customers and create long term advocates for your food truck business.

Anyone can give great customer service, it is first and foremost about awareness and attitude and putting the customer first. Food truck owners need to look for the right set of customer service skills when hiring customer facing employees.

12 customer service skills every employee in your food truck should master:

Up Selling and Cross Selling

The first of our customer service skills is the ability for someone to be able to up sell and cross sell. There are many opportunities to up-sell and cross sell when you have a customer at the service window. This skill not only helps your customers, but it helps improve your food truck profits.

Great Work Ethic

A great work ethic and a willingness to do what needs to be done is a key skill when providing the kind of food truck service that people talk about.

Attentiveness

The ability to listen to customers is crucial for providing great service. Paying attention to customers means that they truly have your full attention.

Time Management

You need to be concerned with getting customers what they want in an efficient manner. Don’t waste time trying to go above and beyond for a customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time.

Expect the Unexpected

Sometimes there is no way to anticipate the problem you will encounter and you will not get the customer reaction that you thought you would. When the unexpected happens, it’s best to be able to think on your feet, but it’s even better to create guidelines for yourself in these sorts of situations.

Maintain a Happy Disposition

Events outside of our control will hit us when we least expect it. For those tough customers that seem to want nothing else but to pull you down everyone needs to develop the presence of mind necessary to maintain a happy persona in spite of dealing with people who may be grumpy.

Product Knowledge

Great customer service skills include people know how to solve problems. The thing is, they will only know how to solve problems if they have a good technical understanding of the products and services that your food truck provides.

Patience

Patience is not only important to customers, who reach out when they are confused and frustrated, but it’s also important to your entire food truck business. Just remember patience, however, should not be used as an excuse for slow service.

Communication

Your customer’s time is valuable, so respect it and make sure you’re getting to them quickly. Not every one of your customers don’t need your life story or to hear about how your day is going.

Positive Use of Language

Your customers don’t care about your issues, they want to do business with people that have a positive energy. The tone of your communication is so incredibly important. Your customer relationships are constantly being built and it is critical to maintain a positive tone.

Reading Customers

You don’t always deal with customers face-to-face, and in many instances via social media you won’t even hear their voice but you can still read the customer’s current emotional state. This skill is essential because you don’t want to misread a customer and end up losing them due to confusion and miscommunication.

Remaining Calm

The final of our customer service skills is an employee’s ability to remain calm. People who can keep their cool show the ability to stay calm when things get busy. None of your customers want to deal with someone who shows the pressure that they really are under.

Do you have any additional customer service skills you look for when hiring? We’d love to hear your suggestions. You can share them privately via email, or publicly through Facebook or Twitter.