What are Power Skills? The Newest Secret Weapon for Customer Retention

Nov 13, 2024 | Articles, Customer Experience, Trends

Customer retention is one of those evergreen B2B challenges; how do you keep customers engaged, happy and loyal to your brand?

Recently, however, the fight against churn has become much more intense. Customers are more educated than ever, and their expectations are high: a rising number expect fast, personalized service that’s consistent, no matter who they speak to in your organization. They’re not looking for a purely AI-driven customer experience, either: they want a human touch, and they’re willing to pay extra for a human connection.

Power skills are the secret weapon that can boost customer retention by building trust between your team and your customers.

What are power skills?

You might know power skills as “soft skills.”

While hard skills are the specific technical skills that help someone perform their role at work, soft skills are the skills that make someone a good employee.

People with strong soft skills are a pleasure to work with and for: they demonstrate empathy, listen well, and are good communicators. They may be good at problem solving, have excellent time management skills, or show grit in the face of a difficult situation. You might think of a person with these skills as a “people person” or you might just enjoy working with them.

Why are soft skills being rebranded as power skills?

Soft skills have been called many things over the years: transferable skills, because they transfer well from job to job, or people skills. So why are they being called power skills now?

It’s partially a rebrand: soft skills were once thought of as less important than hard skills. Now, however, with technical skills becoming obsolete every few years, strong personal skills are critical to building a lasting workforce — and calling these skills “soft” can trivialize their importance.

For Josh Bersin, who wrote about this in 2020, this name change is about more than that. Bersin says that this skill set is the one that gives a person real power at work; people skills are complex and take years to learn and refine.

Are power skills in demand?

Employers are absolutely looking for power skills in the workforce. Many of the most desirable skills this year are behavioral rather than technical: adaptability, communication, teamwork, and problem solving all earned a spot in LinkedIn’s list of 10 most-wanted skills. Almost all of Indeed’s most desirable skills are interpersonal, with communication, leadership, and teamwork topping the list.

“Power skills are the things that people need to move through their careers,” said executive coach Susie Tomenchok on the HR Hub podcast. However, despite the demand for power skills in the workplace, Tomenchok says she often hears from learners who don’t know how to build the power skills that potential employers are looking for. Technical skills are taught; but such critical soft skills training isn’t always woven into onboarding or continuous workplace learning.

Maybe they’re born with it. Maybe it’s a learned skill.

Can you teach people skills to adult learners? Should you?

Because power skills are personal skills, they can seem like skills that a person should be born with or raised to have— not skills that can be taught to adult learners. You might think a new hire with strong power skills is emotionally mature, or was raised well, or taught well as a child, or that they’re just naturally good with people.

The truth is that most people have learned their power skills in one way or another. Perhaps they learned it growing up, through formative experiences at work, or by overcoming challenges in life. Whether your new hires appear to have plenty of power skills, or lack some basics – these skills aren’t immutable and can be taught throughout a person’s life. Power skills can, and should, be trained.

How can power skills improve customer retention?

Customers want to be able to trust their favorite brands; trust is key to making a sale and retaining customers.

Your team starts building a relationship with your clients before they even buy from you. Once the sale is made, your service and CX teams have to keep developing and building that trust.

Your employees have to be able to listen to customer concerns, ask the right questions, and solve problems. They also have to be able to adapt to customers’ changing needs and preferences — something that customers have said they value. They must be compassionate, calm and polite when clients are frustrated. Power skills are key to providing the kind, quick, and personalized service your customers need.

When you train these skills, you’re giving your team the tools to build strong relationships with your customers. You’re also giving your customers the human connection they need.

Power skills make your customers want to stick around

Customers don’t like to talk about their reasons for churning, but they have no problem leaving if they don’t get a top-notch customer experience. Research shows that many customers who churn give no warning. More than half of customers give no warning and provide no feedback; they simply send a cancellation notice. This can be frustrating for businesses that want to know where they’re going wrong and how they can fix it.

However, if you’re able to provide the customer experience and human connection your customers crave, that’s likely to be rewarded. Many customers believe that a strong customer experience is as important as the product you’re selling, and 94% of customers say that good customer service makes them more likely to buy from you again. Power skills are crucial to  providing the customer experience they’re looking for.