The Best Customer Service Qualities

I was asked in an interview what was the best example of customer service I had ever encountered. I had numerous examples but it became clear that three distinct qualities make the best customer service exchanges. In order of importance these essential qualities are:

• Enthusiasm -- Enthusiasm is the number one invaluable quality to ideal customer service. Enthsiasm sells. Enthusiasm opens the door and creates the interface between you and the customer. It establishes the link and engages you with the customer and makes the product and or service interesting. It draws attention to the customer service exchangeand makes the customer service interaction pleasant and even entertaining.
• Knowledge Base - While enthusiasm gets you in the door, the knowledge base composes the subject-matter, the data, of the exchange. You have to know a lot about the product and/or service to answer questions and get across the type of information the customer needs in order to possibly make a purchase. Your knowledge base of the product or service entails the details of how it works, why it's a good thing to have, how it will benefit the customer, and details of its design.
• Adaptability -- Finally, you have to be able to adapt to what type of information the customer is interested in. Adaptability modifies the knowledge base component of customer service. If you get a customer who is a techie and you're selling computers, for example, you're going to want to share all of the technical nuances such as CPU speed, cache size, and hard drive space. However, if you are interacting with a customer who is a very novice user, you'll want to leave that technical jargon out to avoid the risk of confusing the customer and, instead, replace it with information on, for example, how easy it is to connect to the internet and use email.

A side note: you can substitute "customer service" for any people-based exchange such as long-term relationships, first impressions, and even interview or networking skills.