This section reviews some of the soft skills that are used in this course, get an introduction to them here

Active listening is the process of attending carefully to what a speaker is saying, and includes things like paraphrasing the other persons message to ensure understanding. This skill is incredibly useful in clarifying messages and demonstrating you are paying attention.

While the customer is important, there is one other important person you need to account for - yourself. Self-care includes anything you do to maintain and strengthen your mental, physical, emotional or spiritual well being. This helps keep you balanced and ready to address challenges.

Empathy is a skill that allows you to understand the feelings of others. This is helpful working on a help desk as many times customers have underlying emotions that need to be addressed.

There will be times you don't have an answer to someone's issue - and that is OK. Being comfortable saying "I don't know" - and then following up - is an important one.

Working on a help desk means being part of a team. You'll work with other agents, supervisors, managers, contractors, vendors and even customers to solve challenges.

Many issues are resolved by a help desk AFTER they happen - which is one of it's main purposes. That said, actively looking for, and resolving, issues before they are reported is a great skill.

Working on a help desk demands patience - with your customers and with yourself.

Mimicking someone's body language, tone, word choice and other communication choices helps build a connection.

You'll need to use a wide range of technical terms, concepts and ideas when working on a help desk. Your customers, however, will not share your background, and may find these terms confusing or intimidating.  This lecture covers how you can translate terminology you use so customers more easily understand you.

Taking even just a few minutes to plan out what you'll say or the message you'll send will make your communication much more impactful - see how in this quick win.

Wrap up your soft skills toolkit with this quick review.

A large part of working on a help desk is communicating - get a high-level overview of different methods before jumping in.

In person connections and videos calls can be daunting - but they offer an excellent opportunity to understand your customers issue and help them resolve it.

While it may not be as popular as it used to be, email is still a major communication method.  It does, however, offer it's challenges!

You may not use a phone, or other audio-only methods much, but they are a great way to offer support. You do, however, have to apply soft skills for success.

Voice mail is a great way to leave a quick, impactful message for your customers. They should, however, be concise and to the point.  See how here.

Leaving a voicemail can be tricky... this lecture covers a quick, 5 step process that I've found makes it easier.

A prime way to communicate with customers is via tickets and comments. This is the source of truth for that issue, so understanding how soft skills apply is important.

A LOT of support occurs over instant messages. These require all the skills of other written mediums, while also being much shorter - and quicker.

Review various communication methods - and how soft skills impact them - here.

Customer escalations are one of the hardest things to deal with on a help desk. Get an overview of what they are, and how you can apply soft skills to de-escalate them, here.

Understanding how a customer can become escalate can help you calm them down. Learn how here.

Review some phrases that can help you out during an escalation, as well as how soft skills appear in them.

Dig into some ways to de-escalate a customer using your soft skills toolkit

Review what we've learned about de-escalations in this quick wrapup.

This lecture introduces us to expectations, what they are, how they form, and how we can help manage them.

A customer's expectations can come from many places - understanding where can help you meet them, or reset them if necessary

Working with customers will require you to set expectations on when things will happen - learn how here

Sometimes you won't have anything to share with a customer about their issue - so send the "No Update Update" to let them know!

Help set clear expectations with this quick tip!

Sometimes a customer has unreasonable expectations, or the situation changes.... both instances require you to reset their expectations to match the new reality.

Review what we've learned about expectations, and how soft skills apply to them, here

We've come a long way learning how to augment our technical skills with soft skills!

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