9 Tips For Building And Managing An Excellent Customer Service Team
It’s easy to sing praises about your products and highlight their outstanding qualities. However, if your customer service is not up to the mark or inefficient, it will be a waste of effort. Unsatisfactory customer service leaves you open to complaints and vulnerable to customer loss. After all…
“It takes months to find a customer… seconds to lose one.” — Vince Lombardi
The good news: you can turn your customer service quality around with a bit of smart work.
While it may not happen overnight, the good results are likely to show up sooner than later. You’ll need to devote your time, resources, and attention to achieve productive results with your customer service team.
Let’s start with a brief overview of the role customer service plays in the business strategy.
The Power Of Top-Notch Customer Service
The above image illustrates what customers expect from your service team.
Do you think your business’s customer service is living up to the customers’ expectations?
A research shows how U.S. companies experience losses of more than $62 billion every year due to poor customer service. The data suggests that customers would rather deal with a company that offers great customer service over a company that does not. According to another study, 51% of customers will never do business with a company again after one negative experience.
That’s the compelling power of a service team — and recognizing it as an essential element of your customer experience is advantageous to your business.
How so?
By leaving the customer with a certain impression of your business. And as such, you want to make sure the customer views you in a positive light.
Remember: A customer service team can become a revenue generator if it consistently provides an outstanding customer experience.
The Key Components Of Great Customer Service
Effective customer service is what keeps your customers coming back. The following four principles will help you maximize its potential:
- Personalization
- Competence
- Convenience
- Proactiveness
Personalization
Even though the world is largely digitized these days, you can still convey a human touch in all your interactions. The little details make your customers feel appreciated, and they in turn help you boost your brand awareness.
For example, your team can send personalized messages to prospective and loyal customers during customer service week, offering coupons and discounts.
Remember: The downfall of your business could be how you perceive these personal touches. If you see it as an unnecessary expense, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to gain repeat business.
Competence
Both first-time and returning customers have certain expectations from a business.
Competence is first on the list.
In general, customers evaluate the competence of support staff based on the following factors:
- How effective is the business in responding to their complaints?
- How long does the customer service team take to respond?
- Are their communication channels effective?
A credible customer support team needs a strong understanding of your company’s products, policies, and services. Consumers count on customer service representatives to know everything about the product or at least to be able to refer them to personnel who do. A lack of crucial information will prevent your customer service team from effectively supporting your customers, which is detrimental to your business.
Adding information about the product to your website or knowledge base can help both your support agents and customers. Agents can review the information before engaging with customers. As they say, “knowledge is power.”
“Enhance intra-team collaboration of your customer support team for improved transparency and quick response to customers’ queries. Switch to ProofHub NOW!”
Convenience
Whether you run a brick-and-mortar retail shop or an online business, the goal of customer service is the same — provide convenient support to prospective and existing customers. However, it is the approach, methods, and tools used to achieve customer success that differs.
One way is to interact directly with a salesperson, as is common in standard shops. However, an online service team can assist customers through a variety of communication channels:
- Phone
- Live chat
- Social media
- Customer portal
At any time of day, you must make sure that all channels of communication are open. Your customers must be able to reach you in the way they find convenient.
Proactiveness
Customers don’t always want to be the ones reaching out to you. They appreciate your effort in informing them of changes to the business or sending confirmation emails regarding their order confirmation.
Make your communication regular. Be aware of any problems with your website or products that might affect your customers. If the situation is urgent, it is best to get in touch with clients right away. Your teams must choose their responses to each customer’s issues with care. It might even be an opportunity for your team to upsell, retain and acquire.
Keep in mind that this won’t guarantee their happiness. However, they’ll appreciate how diligent your team is at keeping them in the loop.
Technologies Used In Managing A Customer Service Team
The customer service industry is complex, and to stay ahead of the curve, the management of a customer service team must adapt to changes in technology. Not having the right technology for managing customer service teams is one of the biggest mistakes companies can make in today’s digital-driven world.
Customer service representatives require the best possible resources to perform well in their day-to-day duties. For instance, if your team receives a ton of email queries, customer service technologies like an email management software can help managers better delegate tasks, oversee their completion, monitor the workload, and create a customer-centric culture. Proactive managers can spot any weak points of their customer service team before they become a significant issue.
A successful customer service team is managed through communication and collaboration. Managers are also employing hybrid team management strategies to better their distributed customer service teams.
With cloud-based help desk software, you can communicate and interact across different platforms. Use the live chat feature to quickly exchange information or assist the agents by attaching notes in the tickets to provide them with more information. By creating an internal forum where you can listen to their feedback directly, you can also show appreciation for their work.
Remote customer service teams can collaborate through video conferencing software or brainstorm new ideas with online whiteboards. With online project management software, like ProofHub, you can monitor progress, collaborate, and manage tasks from one centralized location.
ProofHub offers a number of features and tools to improve workflow, including:
- Task management software
- Gantt charts software
- Project calendars
- Kanban boards
- Online proofing and file organizing
Depending on your customer service goals, you can choose the technologies according to your needs. View it as an opportunity to delight your team and strengthen your relationships in new ways.
9 Tips On Creating And Running An Exceptional Support Department
Here we present a list of tips, skills, and qualities that customer service managers and agents should possess or cultivate. Training and developing these skills is essential to provide a high level of customer service during all phases of the buyer’s journey.
Patience
Not every customer is easy to deal with on a daily basis. Patience is vital for a service team member to maintain good relations. After all, most times a customer calls your customer service team, they are frustrated and confused.
Knowing how to listen and handle a situation well will help the business run smoothly. The aim isn’t to end the interactions quickly but to ensure the customer feels understood.
Excellent communication skills
Miscommunications can easily result in disappointment and customer churn.
Imagine being told that a particular service would be “included” in your final bill — until you find out it’s not. This would affect your perception of that company. As a result, you might not want to interact with them at all anymore.
A customer service representative should be concise and pass on the correct information. As mentioned above, they can direct the customer to the Q&A page on their social media profiles to provide free access to information.
Or ensure they have revised all available information about the product to ensure no miscommunication occurs.
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Surprises are no problem
More often than not, customer questions will throw you curveballs. They could ask about services your business doesn’t offer or respond in a way no one could predict.
When these incidents occur, you need an experienced customer service team that will think on its feet.
Build a team that takes the initiative to create new guidelines and templates. After having difficult conversations with customers, these experiences can serve for future reference. It’s also a way to be proactive within the customer service teams.
Persuasion skills
Sometimes, customers contact your service team to buy your products. It’s not always about asking for support.
When this happens, it’s beneficial to have a team that understands the art of persuasion. They will be able to convince customers that your products are the right fit for them.
It’s not about making a sales pitch in every interaction. It’s simply taking advantage of the opportunity to pitch to potential customers!
Honesty
Trust is often in short supply, but when earned, it creates loyalty. To gain the trust of a customer, make sure you promise only what you can deliver.
Your service team should be very conscious about this. They should never over-promise or under-deliver. This could range from promising to get back to a customer about an issue to refund business processes.
A customer needs to know what they are getting from you all the time. When this is achieved, the customer will show their appreciation by becoming repeat customers.
Empathy
Whereas this is a character trait more than a skill, it goes a long way to building positive connections. It’s the ability to relate well with your customers using a dose of care and concern.
Empathy makes people feel appreciated and heard. A business with a team capable of crafting responses to boost a better outcome can make all the difference.
Training
Invest in a training program that recognizes everyone and encourages team mentality. Before introducing or launching a new product, your service team needs to undergo training before you even begin marketing it. That may include simulations of using the product, attending live webinars, and an overall review of available information.
Training your service team can bring about four significant changes:
- Increased customer satisfaction
- An increase in employee motivation and engagement
- Improved customer service skills
- A rise in profit
The training program is a start. What follows is to recognize everyone’s contribution to the success of the organization in the form of rewards or bonuses.
Such recognition will have a boomerang effect of boosting morale and empowering your employees to make more responsible decisions.
Measure customer satisfaction
When customers are unsatisfied, it costs your business money.
You can curb this by measuring their response to your products and services to gauge their feelings about your business.
It all comes down to gathering customer feedback through surveys and customer data. For example, in your email or chat, you can have an option for customers to rank the agent’s performance.
It’s worth investigating when your customer service department receives calls about services or products you don’t offer. The customer service representative can forward these inquiries to their superior. This might lead to the launch of a new product or a feature.
Pick a metric that works for you and evaluate it frequently so that you can see whether the processes you currently have are effective or not. It’s a way for your business to remain relevant and ahead of the game! Businesses already know that “the customer is always right”… take it to a new level by giving them what they actually want.
Working environment
Choosing the right customer support team is one thing, but you also have to care for them. It’s no lie that the positive effects on a team mindset have a higher chance of success. Your workplace needs to have conducive conditions for your employees to be effective.
How? Below are a few examples.
- Review the workload of your customer service team to avoid overworking them. This could lead to elevated stress and burnout
- Ensure your team has up-to-date equipment to work with, like laptops, headphones, microphones, and software
- Give your employees benefits or bonuses when they achieve specific goals
- If you’re running a remote team, organize virtual-team building activities
If these requirements are met, your team will perform and produce better results.
Conclusion
Making life easier for your customer service team is the key to their success. These tips will help you build the perfect dream team. Having a happy customer service team leads to improved performance, productivity, customer success scores, and positive customer experiences. For long-term success as well as employee retention, customer service teams need effective management. In the end, it benefits not only your customers but everyone who deals with your business.
At ProofHub, we care about making your customer service representatives a success. Reach out to us today to help you make the most of our tools for project management.
Author Bio
Oliver Stasinszky is a copywriter at LiveAgent, with a background in E-commerce and Customer Service. Passionate about writing, reading, and learning how to play any musical instrument he comes across.
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