Mastering customer service requires you to first master customer conversations. Why? Conversation is the foundation of the customer experience. Each time you communicate with your customers you are paving the road that defines the future of your relationship with them. Your goal is to travel a long road with them, so you need to ask yourself if your conversations are building trust, moving you closer to more sales, effective with resolving questions/concerns, and more.

Some quick tips for how you can go further with your customer conversations:

• Know which words/phrases to say and not say. You need to build awareness around what you are saying because you never want to leave a bad impression or sound negative. In fact, stay away from negative language. Here are some great suggestions from Cutting for Business:

• Control Your Emotions. Have you heard this before: "Business is business, and personal is personal"? Over 15 years ago, one of my dearest friends whom had a successful career with HP said this to me, and it has stuck with me ever since. This is certainly a great guide as you navigate some of the more difficult customer conversations. Try to look at every situation logically and in the shoes of the customer. Take special care to always treat your customers with the utmost of professionalism and respect, even when you think that they don't necessarily deserve it. 
• Use Attentive Listening Skills. If you are too busy talking or thinking about what to say next, you won't truly listen to, and hear, the messages that your customers are saying. Zig Ziglar said something similar to, "You will hear more with your mouth closed than you will with it open," and this couldn't be more true. And remember- nonverbal messages are sometimes just as important, if not more important, than what is verbally said. You can see and feel the tone of the customers' communication, so then the words that they say might need to be interpreted differently.

As you work on incorporating these tips into your conversations, always challenge yourself on additional ways that you can show your customers that you are engaged, different than the ordinary, and that you are 100% invested in your relationship with them. When you do that, you will reap the rewards of their loyalty because no other companies will be doing what you do as good as you do. There's no traffic when you do go that extra mile!

As a bonus, here's an infographic from Provide Support, LLC that also has excellent ideas for keeping your customer language positive: