critical thinking in call center

Building Your Critical Thinking Skills for Better Customer Service

How do you know if you or your customer service team have mastered critical thinking skills?

Critical thinking refers to the process of analyzing information to get the best answer to a question or problem. Looks like a must-have for customer service representatives, don’t you agree?

With critical thinking being among the must-have soft skills for every specialist today, some of us still lack it. It happens because of little agreement around what critical thinking is and, as a result, a lack of specific instructions on how to become better thinkers.

In this article, you’ll learn why critical thinking is so critical (sorry for tautology!) to have in the workspace, how to know if you’ve already mastered it, and what techniques and habits can help improve your critical thinking skills for better customer service.

What is Critical Thinking?

Let’s start with the basics. The Internet offers tons of definitions for “critical thinking,” which adds more confusion than clarity to this subject. So, we’ll refer to the one from The Foundation for Critical Thinking :

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

Sounds ingenious, but critical thinking is not that challenging to implement in real life.

Yes, being a critical thinker takes time and patience, but it’s just about processing information systematically and deliberately to understand things and make better decisions in work and life. It also includes learning from past experiences to avoid mistakes and choose alternative options in the future.

But that’s not all:

Critical thinking is among the top durable skills employers demand in the workplace. Speaking of customer service, it becomes even more crucial:

Essential competencies of critical thinking, such as analysis, prioritization, troubleshooting, and complex problem-solving, are the skills every professional customer service agent needs for taking more informed solutions.

Besides, critical thinking at work helps with:

• Evaluating arguments’ validity and their potential impact on customer decision or overall business success
• Developing ethics, confidence, and professional opinions on issues
• Engaging with customers on a deeper, more personal, and intellectual level to form stronger customer relations and brand loyalty
• Evaluating yourself as a specialist to determine the ways for professional improvement and productivity boost

All the above makes critical thinking worth building at the workplace, especially for those bothering about the quality of customer service in their company.

Critical Thinking Phases Every Employee Goes Through

That’s all very fine, but how do you know if you or your customer service team have mastered critical thinking? How to assess these skills and what to do to build them for better work?

Specialists from Zarvana have developed a framework that breaks critical thinking into four measurable phases. It allows you to monitor and evaluate how you or your employees grow, moving from one step to another:

• Execution. It’s the phase every newbie employee comes through, simply doing what you ask them to do. Seemingly basic, this stage requires skills like reasoning, decision-making, and problem-solving. You’ll know if your newbie is ready for the next step when they complete instructions on time and make suggestions for work improvement when you ask them about it.
• Synthesis. It’s the phase when you or your employees start sorting the information and figure out what’s essential. They identify all the insights and can communicate them.
• Recommendations. It’s the phase when employees move from identifying to determining what to do. They provide recommendations rather than simply relying on managers, consider alternatives, and back their points with solid arguments.
• Generation. This critical thinking phase is about converting ideas into plans, generating projects, offering decisions on work improvement, etc. In plain English, it’s about creating something out of nothing.

Depending on your phase, you might want to focus on building a particular critical thinking skill that would help you move on.

Your Top 5 Critical Thinking Skills to Master

Critical thinking skills include many competencies, but these five will help you master the process step by step:

Step 1: Observation

It’s your or your customer service agent’s ability to notice and predict opportunities, issues, and solutions. This skill helps you identify problems, be precise, and narrow down issues for faster and better decisions when mastered.

Step 2: Analysis

This skill is about gathering, understanding, and interpreting all the available data and other information. It allows a person to remain unbiased, consider several sources with different points of view, and evaluate the information’s credibility for further usage.

Step 3: Inference

Here’s when you determine the significance of data, decide which information is essential for finding a solution, and draw conclusions based on that. Also, you can use personal knowledge and experience to determine solutions and make informed decisions to help customers.

Step 4: Communication

This one is about your ability to receive, perceive, and share information with others in different forms: verbally (face-to-face, by phone or call us now buttons , during online meetings), nonverbally (mimics and gestures), and in writing ( emailing , business correspondence, messengers, live chats with customers , etc.).

Step 5: Problem-solving

This skill allows troubleshooting solutions based on the information you’ve gathered, analyzed, and communicated. Here you identify possible conclusions and decide which of them would be better to implement, considering all the strengths and limitations of available options.

Techniques that Help You Improve Critical Thinking Skills

And now, for the practical part:

Are there any techniques customer service agents and everyone working with people could try to build their critical thinking skills?

Here go the top 6 to consider:

1) Active listening

The difference between passive and active listening:

While the former relates to the simple act of hearing without retaining a message, the latter is your ability to focus on a speaker, understanding and comprehending their information to respond thoughtfully.

Active listening is a must for better customer service: It helps avoid missing critical information, identify and solve customer problems, and build connections and trust. To practice active listening in communication with your customers, do your best to:

• Demonstrate empathy
• Ask open-ended questions to gather more information
• Use verbal affirmations such as “I see,” “I agree,” “Yes, I understand,” etc.
• Recall already shared information
• Share similar experiences

Not only does it make a speaker understand that you listen carefully, but it also helps you build trust and get all the information needed for solving the problem.

2) Asking questions

This one is not only about asking questions when communicating with customers. It’s a technique allowing you to practice critical thinking by confirming what you already know and approaching issues from different perspectives.

How to practice it?

• Always ask questions when you aren’t sure.
• Make it a habit to confirm what you think you already know.
• Paraphrase the information in your own words to ensure you’ve understood everything right.
• Ask follow-up questions to get more details and confirm that you haven’t misheard anything.
• Analyze what you already know, how you know that, and what you try to prove, solve, demonstrate, etc.

3) Evaluating evidence

This technique is also not that challenging to practice: Whenever you need to solve a problem and decide on the most appropriate solution, look at other work in the same area and consider their experience and data.

Evaluate all the information critically: who and how gathered that evidence; why that information is relevant to your case; whether it’s applicable to use in your particular case, etc.

Using your previous experience can help to come up with the most effective solution, too. By critically thinking about what you learned from that case and how it’s possible to apply to your current decision for better results, you’ll train your durable skills to their best.

4) Developing foresight

Walking in one’s shoes is a great trick to try for growing your critical thinking skills. Consider how customers might feel about a problem or decision you make:

• What reaction would it produce?
• How would it influence your brand awareness , reputation, marketing plans , customer effort score , and other critical metrics of your business?

Practicing such foresight and determining all the possible outcomes, you become more critical about your solutions and their impact on those around you.

5) Reversing things

Once you get stuck on a complex question, try the technique known as the “chicken and egg problem:” While it may seem evident that X causes Y, but what if we reverse things to appear that Y caused X?

Critical thinking is about trying different approaches to problems. And even if it turns out that your “reverse” version isn’t accurate or doesn’t help, it’s your chance to set the path to the right solution.

6) Considering pros and cons

This technique helps your critical thinking skills a lot: Before making the final choice or deciding on the problem, jot down all its positive and negative sides. The challenge here is to avoid the influence of your confirmation bias on the pros vs. cons correlation.

How does it make you a better critical thinker?

With the list of pros and cons at hand, you’ll know all the opportunities, risks, and consequences your decision could have. It doesn’t mean you need to choose the option with a more extended set of positives; it means that you’ll evaluate the influence of every single advantage or disadvantage on the whole project.

3 Habits to Develop for Better Critical Thinking

For even more practices to learn critical thinking and get better at it, you can try making these three simple things your habits, pulled together by Helen Lee Bouygues from Reboot Foundation :

• Question assumptions. While this habit isn’t that helpful for decisions on your long-term company strategy (try basic questions instead), feel free to use it when considering alternatives. “What if” questions serve to gain new perspectives, honing your thinking that way.
• Reason through logic. Pay close attention to the chain of reasoning behind every argument you use; make sure the evidence supports your idea at every point.
• Diversify thoughts. Train yourself to escape your usual way of thinking and consider alternative ideas or insights from other industries, social groups, and individuals who don’t share your beliefs. It broadens your horizons and makes you a better thinker.

Your Time to Build Critical Thinking Skills is Now

Critical thinking is a set of skills that helps us understand people and the world around us better. For specialists working in customer service, these skills are true must-haves: They craft our observation, analysis, inference, communication, and problem-solving abilities to satisfy customers and make better business decisions for our company’s success.

The good news:

Critical thinking is possible to learn and improve. So, approach it as a process — and you’ll sharpen this skill to its best.

How did you like this blog?

Lesley Vos is a web writer from Chicago, contributing content to publications on business, content marketing, and self-development. Feel free to see more works of hers and say hi to @LesleyVos on Twitter .

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Critical Thinking: The Key to Exceptional Customer Service

In today's fast-paced business world, customer service has become a crucial part of a company's success. With the rise of technology and abundance of options, customers expect quick, effective, and personalized solutions to their problems. This is where critical thinking skills come into play.

Critical thinking is a deliberate and reflective way of analyzing information and situations to make sound decisions. In customer service, this means taking the time to understand a customer's issue, evaluating all options, and finding the best solution. By using critical thinking, customer service representatives can resolve problems efficiently, build trust and rapport with customers, and provide a memorable customer service experience.

Experts at Zarvana have created a four-phase framework to help measure and evaluate critical thinking skills.

Phase 1: Execution - This is where new employees start, simply following instructions. This phase requires skills like reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Phase 2: Synthesis - In this phase, employees start to organize information and identify key insights. They can communicate this information effectively.

Phase 3: Recommendations - Employees move from identifying problems to determining solutions. They provide recommendations and back them up with solid arguments.

Phase 4: Generation - This is where ideas are turned into plans and decisions are made to improve work processes.

Here are some examples of critical thinking in action in the customer service industry:

A customer service representative receives a complaint about a faulty product. Instead of just issuing a refund, the representative fully understands the problem and recommends a different product that better fits the customer's needs.

A customer contacts customer service with a billing issue. The representative evaluates all options, including past payment history and current promotions, to come up with the best solution for the customer, resulting in a satisfied customer who is more likely to continue doing business with the company.

A customer service representative receives a call from a frustrated customer who is having trouble setting up a new product. Instead of just providing a step-by-step guide, the representative identifies the root cause of the problem and provides a more permanent solution.

Critical thinking skills can be developed and honed through training and practice. Here are some tips for improving critical thinking in customer service:

Listen actively and ask clarifying questions.

Evaluate all options and weigh the pros and cons.

Consider the bigger picture and the impact of your decision on the customer and the company.

Seek out additional information when needed.

Practice and reflect on your decisions.

Improving critical thinking skills in your customer service team can lead to better customer satisfaction, stronger customer relationships, and improved overall business performance.

Key Components of Mastering Critical Thinking involves a range of abilities, but these components are essential for building a strong foundation:

Observation: The capacity to identify, anticipate and detect opportunities, issues, and solutions. Studies show that improved observation skills lead to a 20% increase in problem-solving efficiency.

Analysis: The ability to collect, understand and interpret data and information. Effective analysis helps you maintain an impartial stance, consider multiple perspectives, and assess information credibility. A survey of top executives found that strong analytical skills were among the most highly valued traits.

Inference: The process of deducing the significance of data, deciding on crucial information, and forming conclusions. By combining personal knowledge and experience with data, you can make informed decisions and solve customer problems with ease.

Communication: Your aptitude to receive, interpret and share information with others through various mediums, such as verbal, nonverbal, and written forms. Research shows that effective communication skills lead to a 10% improvement in team collaboration and problem-solving.

Problem-solving: The ability to troubleshoot solutions based on the information you've analyzed, communicated, and gathered. A robust problem-solving approach includes weighing the pros and cons of each potential solution, considering the consequences, and using logic to arrive at a decision. Cultivating diversity in thought can enhance your problem-solving skills; seek out alternative ideas and insights from individuals and groups with different backgrounds and perspectives.

In conclusion, mastering these five critical thinking skills can help you become a more efficient problem-solver, make better decisions, and achieve your goals. Start by observing opportunities and issues, gather and interpret information, draw conclusions, evaluate information, and explain your reasoning.

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The Importance of Critical Thinking in Customer Service

Customer service jobs require a composite mix of soft and hard skills for success. To positively interact with customers and team members we need social and emotional intelligence, and self-regulation skills. We also need lots of technical expertise, general industry and product knowledge to handle everyday customer requests effectively.

In our blog we have already published a series of articles highlighting skills for being awesome at customer service . Following those posts I would like to add up another skill crucial for service industry employees — critical thinking. This blog post also puts together some helpful techniques that foster this skill.  I hope that these tips will help you grow personally and professionally, and let you progress to the next level along your career journey.

Critical Thinking and Bloom’s Taxonomy

Critical thinking is   often referred to as an ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It is also described as an ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to draw reasonable conclusions from what they know, and also knows how to make use of information to solve problems.

The notion of critical thinking is closely related to the highest and most complex levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which represents the hierarchy of knowledge acquisition and application. The model implies that  people gradually develop their thinking abilities and consistently learn to effectively apply the knowledge. The progress takes it from just remembering facts to understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. In other words, the highest levels of the hierarchy comprise what we call “critical thinking”: the stage of actively and intelligently processing information to reach an answer or conclusion.

What is really breath-taking and important about critical thinking is that it can be developed in almost every human being through skill training. By contrast, Artificial Intelligence machines at present demonstrate less than half the learning abilities that humans have. That’s the conclusion of a recent research led by Jim Parker and Shannon Jaeger of University of Calgary. The aim of the  research  was to look into learning capabilities in AI and find out how Bloom’s Taxonomy applies to the field of machine learning. Although the researchers have seen that in some areas artificial intelligence outperforms their human counterparts in the lowest rungs of the taxonomy, they admit that machines can’t reach the top of it yet.

What Does This Mean for Customer Service?

Today, when AI and Robotics are not just buzzwords but also the key trends that shape future customer service jobs, and many routine tasks are delegated to smart machines, critical thinking becomes one of the most – if not the most – important skills for customer service representatives.

It’s no longer enough to learn scripts by rote and scrupulously follow standard procedures to become a good customer service professional. Today, customer service excellence is more about adopting a new mindset and moving away from manual routine tasks to more challenging and creative opportunities.

For instance, critical thinking skills can help customer service agents check against facts and detect a fraud or security issue. Human agents are also far better capable of delivering creative and empathetic customer service that matters so much in complex or controversial cases. And, of course, human agents have the unsurpassed ability to come up with out-of-the-box solutions, especially in high-stress moments for customers.

In the age of AI and automation, critical thinking becomes a highly sought-after career skill that will continue to be necessary into the future. So how do you go about developing critical thinking skills for customer service? Let me suggest a few techniques that I hope will come in handy.

Techniques for Improved Critical Thinking

1. 5 why’s root-cause analysis technique.

This is a simple but powerful technique intended to quickly uncover the main root cause of a problem and prevent it from happening again in the future.

This technique for exploring the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem was developed and widely used within the Toyota Motor Corporation. In a nutshell, the approach implies uncovering a problem source and nature by asking “why” no fewer than five times.

Here’s an illustrative example of 5 Why’s in action:

When it comes to critical thinking for customer service, the technique can be particularly useful. It’s important for service agents to get a habit of challenging themselves to go beyond merely resolving a single customer inquiry. Instead of closing the issue and leaving it behind, they can take an effort to delve deeper into questioning if the issue can cause a wider problem, how it can be fixed and if there’s anything to help prevent the problem in the future.

2. Survivorship Bias

While diagnosing a problem, it’s also important not to fall victim to wrong assumptions and recognize biases that often produce faulty thinking. The “ survivorship bias ” phenomenon is a good illustration for the power of critical thinking. And there’s a brilliant story behind it:

During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald took survivorship bias into his calculations when considering how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. In fact, he worked out the secret to placing armor on aircraft bombers in a way that saved countless lives.

Researchers from the Center for Naval Analyses had conducted a study of the damage done to aircraft that had returned from missions, and had recommended that armor be added to the areas that showed the most damage. Wald noted that the study only considered the aircraft that had survived their missions—the bombers that had been shot down were not present for the damage assessment. The holes in the returning aircraft, then, represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still return home safely. Wald proposed that the Navy instead reinforce the areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed, since those were the areas that, if hit, would cause the plane to be lost.

Since then, it has become a common practice in data analysis to not only focus on the “survivors” data but also look out for absence of information. In customer service, this can be referred to unhappy customers who left without giving your company a chance to improve or change anything based on their feedback. Not only it teaches us to perceive customer service failures and successes more prudently, but also helps us see negative customer feedback from another perspective – as a valuable opportunity to gather the “right” data and improve.

3. Appreciative Inquiry (or 5 D’s)

This problem-solving approach was developed in 1987 by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva of Case Western Reserve University. The principle suggests withdrawing from negative problem-focused and fear-based starting point. The main focus is on what’s valuable or good in current situation, and what can be done for positive change and moving forward. When you start defining the situation or topic from this new perspective, you discover some very different information about the issue, that brings along previously unseen, or unaknowledged strengths into the foreground.

The approach proceeds in 5 steps known as “5 D’s”: Define; Discover; Dream; Design; Deliver/Destiny. It takes a problem-solver from re-evaluating the situation and focusing on the bright side,  to consequently finding out what might, should and will be possible to do in this particular situation. This model advocates collective inquiry and collaboration, followed by collective design of a desired outcome.

Practising this approach regularly to problem solving comes in very handy, too, as it lets you see a bigger picture and think of all possible solutions and improvements, rather than merely focus on an isolated issue taken by itself. Thus, it provides more tools and explores a wider range of options, and is based on the strong ‘can-do’ attitude, which is so important for positive problem resolution.

Over to You

Are there any other useful techniques or resources for developing critical thinking for customer service you would like to add? If you have another amazing story that inspires out-of-the-box problem-solving , you are welcome to share it with our blog readers in the comments below! And as always, thank you for reading our blog!

Provide Support is a leading software provider in customer service, offering live chat and real-time visitor monitoring tool for websites. Empowering customer service with live chat  www.providesupport.com

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This is great advice. Very honest and practical.I really enjoyed this post.Nice post. Thanks for sharing.

My pleasure, thanks for the comment

Excellent subject, to be honest I had never thought of this ability. Many thanks for the tips Julia.

Thank you Rony. Glad you’ve read the post and found it helpful

What an interesting discussion. I think, this is an advanced technique to understand more about customer service.

Great blog on useful discussion. This is really advanced helps to know more about Critical thinking in customer service. I can acquire more information about customer service throgh this blog. Thank you.

Indeed a condition that must be done critical thinking in customer service..

Critical thinking is I think the best problem-solving technique in customer service. Don’t think by making a nice chat, you can improve the satisfaction level of the consumers. Obviously not. Rather by resolving the problem timely, you can make your clients happy and keep them satisfied with your service. I know proper troubleshooting is nearly impossible to obtain. But if you have the ability to think critically, you can pay heed to the right details, and can solve the problems effectively crafting a win-lose situation instead.

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About 10 mins

Learning Objectives

Mastering the art of customer service, it all starts with active listening, assess the situation with critical thinking, repair the damage with emotional intelligence.

• Challenge +100 points

Looking for Help?

Discover more, learn techniques for solving customer service issues.

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain the value of active listening, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence in the contact center.
• Identify practical ways to use active listening, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence while engaging with customers.

Customer service is a delicate balancing act requiring agents to simultaneously assess all the facts while addressing the customer’s emotions. Listening to both aspects of a conversation—the factual and the emotional—at the same time takes a little bit of mental jiujitsu. But with practice, anyone can do it. In this unit, you will learn how to develop active listening skills and apply critical thinking and emotional intelligence to master the art of customer service.

In everyday conversation, we often think more about what we’re going to say next than what the other person is currently saying. Active listening is different. When you listen actively you listen to understand, rather than listen to reply. 

When you work in a contact center, active listening means patiently hearing what the customer says and then repeating what they’ve said back to them. 

It’s a process with some back-and-forth that works like this.

• Set aside judgements. Start with an open mind. Don’t form any conclusions or beliefs before you’ve heard all the customer has to say. To get the complete picture, ask open-ended questions such as, “And then what happened?”
• Listen for emotions. Notice if the customer is angry, disappointed, or frustrated, and let them voice it. Unexpressed emotions tend to intensify, not dissipate. Let them know you’ve heard them by acknowledging their emotional tone: “I can see how frustrating that must have been.”
• Listen for issues and impacts. It’s important to pinpoint exactly what has caused the customer to be   upset in the first place so it can be addressed. Equally, you need to know how it has impacted the customer or their business. Acknowledge their concerns directly, for example, “I hear how this problem is putting you in an awkward situation.”
• Repeat what the customer said. After listening carefully and completely, restate what you have heard in calm, objective wording. Start by saying something like, “If I’m understanding you correctly…” Then paraphrase what the customer said, and end by asking, “Do I understand that correctly?”
• Get agreement. When you ask the customer to verify your summary, it’s fine if they disagree. Allow them to repeat, rephrase, or elaborate; then reflect your revised understanding back to them. Again, ask them if they agree. Repeat this step until you are in sync and potential solutions can be identified.

That’s active listening in the customer service setting in a nutshell. Here are a few more pointers to help you become a pro at it.

• Let the customer speak without interruption. Interrupting a customer, even to agree or explain, will likely increase frustration and anger.
• Be patient. Let them finish. Patience is perhaps the most important skill to have as a customer service agent.
• Let the customer direct the conversation whenever possible. The meeting is their opportunity to get the whole story out on the table.

Many customer service calls are a jumble of facts and emotions. One of the most common challenges that agents encounter in the contact center is knowing which aspect of the customer’s complaint to address first. That’s where critical thinking comes into play.

When you use critical thinking, you are making an objective evaluation and analysis of an issue before forming a judgement. Critical thinking helps you stay calm and enables you to confidently sort issues into emotional and factual buckets so you can prioritize them appropriately in your response. Here are two examples that illustrate how critical thinking lets you assess the situation when you’re in the contact center.

Example 1: Let’s say you answer a call and the customer is reporting a service outage of a business-critical component. The customer is clearly unhappy but effectively relays the information in order to quickly get it fixed. In this case, the factual aspect is the service outage that should be prioritized over the emotional aspect of the complaint. So you offer a quick apology before letting the customer know that an emergency field technician is on the way to help. 

Example 2: Now imagine you work for a pet food company and get a call from someone who has obviously been crying and is struggling to explain that they need to cancel a recent order because their dog has died. In this case, the emotion clearly takes priority over the customer’s order cancellation. Regardless of the status of the order, you should acknowledge the customer’s emotion by giving empathetic feedback first before asking for order details to handle the request. 

In the first example, the customer was upset but really just wanted a solution, so getting into the emotional component of the call wasn’t that important. In the second example, the customer needed to resolve an issue, but the emotion needed to be acknowledged first.

In a world where brand reputation is everything, simply resolving a product or service issue is not enough. It takes positive 1-1 interactions to repair any damage to the customer’s impression of the brand. 

While critical thinking helps you resolve the customer’s issue, emotional intelligence helps you repair the customer’s overall impression of the experience and relationship with the company. Emotional intelligence is composed of five essential elements. 

• Self-awareness: The ability to recognize your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and values, and how they affect others
• Self-regulation: The ability to control your emotions
• Empathy: The ability to sense and understand how others are feeling
• Social skills: The ability to manage relationships and build networks
• Motivation: The ability to use your emotional energy to achieve goals and overcome obstacles

Unexpressed issues, like unexpressed emotions, can get in the way of restoring trust. Use empathy and social skills to address the emotional aspects of the situation, concentrating on these three areas. 

• The customer’s impression regarding your assessment of the situation
• The customer’s satisfaction level with the solution
• The customer’s overall impression of the company after this experience

Run through a mental checklist to make sure you cover the above and help ensure your company maintains good relationships with its customers. 

Problem-solving is something contact centers always focus on. But the ability to digest incoming information, analyze it, and respond appropriately is a skill—and an immensely valuable one at that. When you start with active listening and add critical thinking and emotional intelligence, you can soon master the art of customer service.

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