Critical thinking must become a prerequisite for hiring new customer service staff. Customer service today is no longer just about being able to smile and help customers when they ask, but also about reaching them in the most creative, meaningful and impactful way possible. Of course, such flexible actions provided that your staff are capable of applying critical thinking in their daily work. Creative thinking that results in a better customer experience should be encouraged, as long as they adhere to the established operating framework and authority established by the Organization.

Gone are all those days when organizations simply see their customer service as simply fulfilling customer transactions and nothing more. They are not trained to be personal and creative in their approach. In the past, Customer Service staff simply needed to learn how to smile, transact, and know how to handle an unpredictable situation to the next level. As a result, customer service positions are often filled by underqualified staff with adequate speaking skills.

Today’s customers no longer just act purely objectively and rationally as they become more demanding. To influence these customers to stay with you or buy more from you, you need to train your staff in critical thinking. You need to train them to put themselves in the customer’s shoes. Customers are no longer just looking for bargains, but also internal satisfaction when buying from you.

So what really is critical thinking? Critical thinking includes a complex mix of skills and may include the following:

(1) Rational thought

Ability to trust reason rather than emotion, require evidence, ignore any known evidence and follow the evidence where it leads, and be more concerned with finding the best explanation than being right, analyzing apparent confusion, and asking questions. Just the right level of critical thinking can help your staff better understand and anticipate needs.

(2) Self-awareness

Ability to weigh the influences of motives and biases, and to recognize our own assumptions, prejudices, biases or points of view. Again, creative thinking is key in developing such self-awareness to better handle customer demands.

(3) Sincerity and Honesty

Ability to recognize emotional impulses, selfish motives, nefarious purposes, or other forms of self-deception. there will always be insincere and dishonest people around. Creative thinking can help your staff use better judgment when dealing with such customers and not simply follow established Company procedures.

(4) Open mind

Ability to evaluate all reasonable inferences Consider a variety of possible viewpoints or perspectives, remain open to alternative interpretations Accept a new explanation, model, or paradigm because it better explains the evidence, is simpler or has fewer inconsistencies, or covers more data Accept new ones priorities in response to a reassessment of the evidence or a reassessment of our real interests, and do not reject unpopular views out of hand.

(5) Discipline

Ability to be accurate, thorough, complete and comprehensive, resist manipulation and unreasonable appeals, and avoid snap judgments.

(6) Without prejudice

Ability to recognize the relevance and/or merit of alternative assumptions and perspectives and the weight of the evidence.

Give your customer service staff a critical thinking assessment test to improve the critical thinking aspects of their jobs. Regular assessments will go a long way in improving your staff’s reasoning skills when faced with different situations at work. There are many samples that you can try for free to assess the type of critical thinking assessment test that will be most suitable for your organization.

In conclusion, critical thinkers are skeptical by nature and do not accept things as they are. They approach texts, images or videos with the same skepticism and distrust with which they approach spoken comments. Critical thinkers are active, not passive, and are constantly looking for the variables that will make a difference to their goals. They constantly ask questions and analyze. They consciously apply tactics and strategies to discover meaning or ensure understanding. Critical thinkers do not have an egotistical view of the world, but instead let their objects dance. They are open to new ideas and perspectives. They are willing to challenge their beliefs whenever there is conflicting evidence. Critical thinking allows us to recognize a wide range of subjective analyzes of objective data, and to assess how well each analysis might meet our needs. Facts can be facts, but how we interpret them can vary.