In this opportunity, Bukit Vista shared insights into the hospitality industry on the 18th series of BV E-Talk on February 25th, 2022. The event was co-hosted by AIESEC Semarang, HMPI Indonesia, and KOMAKO UGM. Bukit Vista invited 2 incredible speakers, Josephine Ambiya, a customer support specialist at Spenmo, and Laras Candra Laksi, support team leader at Influx as the webinar was themed “How Empathy Advance Your Work as a Customer Relations”.
When we hear about the hospitality industry, we usually think about hotels, entertainment, services, and comfort. However, customer service also plays a big role to ensure customers satisfaction and customer transformation through experience. In the first topic, on understanding customer relation’s scope, Josephine said that customer service enables product or service understanding on another level. This is because you get to see how it performs from the perspective of the customer and the owner. On the other hand, according to Laras, she thinks that customer service is an important part of a business because people purchase from people. When you put yourselves in customers’ shoes, you will understand their pain points better and solve them in a way that gives a fulfilling experience.
Of course, such a role requires a specific set of skills. In the second topic, both speakers describe what it takes to work as a customer service. Josephine mentioned that you need to be resourceful and have good negotiation skills, especially doing it softly. Not only that, customer service needs to have patience when handling a difficult customer. You can achieve this by separating yourself from your work because, people are mad at their frustrations, not you. Later on, Laras added that you have to relate with your customers through active listening, which is defined as being willing to listen and resolve the issue. When dealing with a difficult customer, you have to sum up everything at the end of the call to clarify the solutions that we offer and prevent repetitive calling. At the end of the day, empathy ties everything together as it is the basis of your actions as a customer service.
Finally, the last topic talks about career growth in customer relations. According to the speakers, their career growth is supported by knowledge and experience. While Laras was promoted as a team leader after joining a training that was offered by her company, Josephine gained her experience as customer support from teaching math to children. After that, she was moved and promoted to various positions in different companies. All while still in the customer relations territory. Her experience in Influx taught her to retain customers by assessing their problems when using Influx’s products. Currently, Josephine’s position in Spenmo taught her to take action based on data to ensure customer satisfaction.
The webinar was then ended with a huddle session to get the audiences more involved in the discussion in a free and relaxed manner. If this piques your interest, you can watch the full session here.
Bukit Vista is a property management startup company with 190+ properties in Bali, Yogyakarta, and Nusa Penida. We are currently opening internship opportunities and full-time job vacancies for customer relations and many more. Register directly on our job landing page and have a professional and enjoyable work experience! We hope this webinar can inspire you and see you at the next webinar!