Understanding Character Traits: Tips for Excellent Service Delivery

Character traits are the individual characteristics or aspects of someone’s behaviors that may be valued by the community or society. Everyone has traits, both good and bad. It is often labeled with descriptive adjectives such as patient, unfaithful, or jealous to mention but a few. Someone’s character and personality are often intertwined but the two are quite distinct. Likewise, traits are formed by a person’s behavior and attitude toward others. Some synonyms used for the word ‘trait’ are attribute, characteristics, personality, peculiarity, as well as quality.

Using personality traits as an example; in psychology, five factors determine different personality traits. The big five factors are:

Openness to experience 

These are individuals who are highly open to experience; they also tend to have distinctive and unconventional decorations in their home. They are also likely to have books on a wide variety of topics, a diverse music collection, and works of art on display. 

Conscientiousness 

These individuals have a preference for planned rather than spontaneous behaviors. 

Agreeableness

Agreeable individuals value getting along with others. They are generally considerate, friendly, generous, helpful, and willing to compromise their interests with those of others

Neuroticism

These are individuals who are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. Therefore, they may have trouble thinking, making decisions, and coping effectively with stress.

Extraversion/Introversion (Extrovert/Introvert)

These are individuals who enjoy being with people. Hence, in groups, they like to talk, assert themselves, and draw attention to themselves. Introverts are the opposite of extroverts. 

Here are tips on how to deliver excellent service

Portray Positive Attitude

Genuinely positive-minded people generally tend to look on the bright side of things. In terms of excellent service, it means that they are more likely to:

• Be friendly and more engaged with customers
• Put in extra effort to deliver the best service experiences
• Take on challenges that other businesses might try to avoid

On top of that, a positive attitude helps to beat job-related stress. In this digital age when almost any information can be easily found online, very few people would contact customer support to inquire about products or services. In most cases, support agents have to deal with angry customers and their frustration. This is an inescapable part of their day-to-day operations, and it would be nearly impossible to remain calm, professional, and effective without being able to maintain a positive attitude.

Show Passion for Helping People

When you go into a pet store, you naturally expect the people working there to love animals. Just in the same way, frontline agents dealing with customers should be passionate about customer service and helping people. Without passion, the experience is emotionless, for both employees and customers.

Be Emotionally Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence means the ability to recognize, understand and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. There are five key components critical to emotional intelligence:

1. Self-awareness – recognizing and understanding your moods and motivations and their effect on others.
2. Self-regulation – the ability to control disruptive impulses, suspend judgment, and think before acting.
3. Internal motivation – a passion to work for internal reasons that go beyond money and status -which are external rewards.
4. Empathy – the ability to understand another person’s emotional reaction.
5. Social skills – identifying social cues to establish common ground, manage relationships and build networks.

“How customers feel when they interact with an employee determines how they feel about the company itself.“

Daniel Goleman

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