8 Smart Ways to Improve Your Remote Customer Support Team Performance
As countries worldwide actively take measures to adjust to the unpredictable spread of COVID-19, numerous businesses are moving (or have moved) to remote working with the idea of protecting the health of their staff.
Although remote working hasn’t exactly enjoyed a popular reputation among employers in the past, the present time has shown that working from home can be a positive game-changer.
In fact, companies worldwide have recorded a boost in productivity, increased employee engagement and happiness, cost savings/decrease, and apparent hyper-efficiency.
Support workers like technical support agents, customer service agents, digital marketers, and other professionals in similar niches have, at large, turned their homes into offices, achieving great things for the business. Research shows, a majority of employers preferred working remotely to working out of an office any day irrespective of the pandemic situation.
Ideally, companies are expected to introduce more flexibility, giving employees the option to both work from home and/or come to the office as they please.
Wish to keep your in-office teams and remote employees on the same page. Give ProofHub a try.
But Was Switching to Remote Work All That Easy?
Yes and no — depends on who’s answering. Still, one thing is sure: for WFH setup to work successfully, it needs to be implemented effectively.
Relocating your workforce overnight to WFH and expecting everything to run smoothly is naïve; the key to making this adjustment as productive as possible lies in the way you engage your employees.
There’s really no secret formula here: Happy employees > better work engagement > better business results > happy customers > thriving business.
Today, we’re listing 8 ways you can use to inspire your WFH employees and turn what could’ve been a stressful experience into a joyful and productive one.
Let’s have a look:
#1 Adapt the Workflow to Suit Remote Working
One pioneering study conducted during COVID-19 found that working from home boosted output by 13% compared to on-site staff. But, reaching this point requires effective management.
If a remote team member is getting their support information wrong or isn’t provided sufficient information at all to get their job done, it could take a while before their manager becomes aware of this and sets them back on track.
Managers are advised to take an agile approach to remote work to avoid frustration and wasted time and energy on both ends. This means instituting regular check-ins on progress, breaking up tasks into small sections, and introducing task management tools for better oversight.
#2 Provide the Right Tools
Other than essentials like phones, laptops, and internet access, your employees will require tools that support time management, commutation, task completion, etc.
Take a look at the list of the tools below, for inspiration:
- Smooth communication. As one of the most critical aspects of remote working, effortless communication is something you should invest in.
Include a small business phone system to help your support employees in doing an effective job, rely on tools like Slack in your everyday workflow or any other advanced team chat app. Focus on fast and organized methods that allow grouping per topic, so everything is clear for each participant. Use help desk software to systematically manage support requests.
- Collaboration. Include productivity apps to help your task management. They should help you sort tasks depending on the key metrics and keep track of employee performance. You can also use custom QR Code apps to help you stay on top of your employees’ tasks in the field.
- Good management. Stay on top of your agents’ productivity with tools like Asana, Hubstaff and others to help them with task management and generally keep track of tasks and productivity.
- Use a call center software like Messagely. Good call center software can help increase productivity, quality of delivery and speed, and assist employees in organizing the work better. There are software solutions that monitor missed calls, too.
- Provide workflow-based customer support by actively routing incoming requests using an automated customer service tool such as Customerly.
Manage tasks, communicate in real time, track progress, and stay on top of your team’s productivity in one place. Sign up for ProofHub today.
#3 Focus on Employee Achievements
Although things are starting to change, the pervasive opinion that remote workers are somehow cheating is still surprisingly common.
For some reason, people often think that if someone is working from home, they are probably not working. Maybe they are watching Netflix and just moving the mouse? Or going outside when the weather is nice, leaving their tasks unattended? This attitude is unhealthy, false, and dangerous.
The moment you start viewing your employees as untrustworthy and micromanaging them, the working atmosphere becomes unhealthy, and productivity decreases.
Instead of focusing on your employees’ activity, focus on their achievements and celebrate them!
But, how to avoid getting toxic? Simple. Set realistic and high-level expectations for what you want them to achieve, provide the option of monitoring the process (if they need it) and follow up on the results with no micromanaging in between.
#4 Set Clear Goals
At the office, a lot is communicated on the go and between employees themselves. It’s not unusual for the information to go around daily until they reach everyone and can be turned into objectives and goals.
Unfortunately, such a dynamic is impossible while working from home as everyone is reduced to groups or individual chats and emails that not always have everyone included.
Therefore, it’s essential to assign straightforward tasks for your employees and communicate what’s expected in a particular timeframe.
Here are a few things to start doing immediately, if you don’t already:
- Communicate exactly what your employees’ goals are for the day and the week.
- Share what tasks specifically they are expected to complete.
- Make sure your employees all get the same information.
- Don’t leave anyone out. If they are away on vacation, send a follow-up email of what’s been discussed in their absence.
- Don’t play favourites with your team assignments — if a team of, say, four is supposed to participate in a project, invite all four for a call at the same time.
People are much less likely to forget a task or get distracted when they have a prepared task before them. Ticking tasks off the list also makes us feel accomplished and usually leads to higher levels of employee engagement.
#5 Effective Communication and Personal Connections
To a thriving remote support team — communication is essential. Your employees must be able to reach you, other team members, or others in the business with ease. For this to function, they need a culture of open communication and an effective communication platform.
Ensure your employees are 100% clear on how to contact you or who’s the next in line to contact if they can’t reach you.
Besides having a clear line of communication, it’s essential to create one-on-one relationships with your staff. Set up regular secure video conferencing software slots to check in with your employees and talk about things that aren’t necessarily linked to the business. Despite working from home and not seeing each other, we’re all still human and need interactions.
An office environment allows us to get to know each other through informal chats throughout the day, lunch breaks, hangouts, team buildings, and such. These moments, unfortunately, have no way of occurring with remote working, so it’s up to you, the employer, to find different ways to get to know your employees.
Here are some tips:
- Be free to use emojis and GIFs where appropriate.
- Ask them about their day or week before striking up a conversation about work. Show interest in how they are feeling, if they’ve done something fun the week before, what they like doing in their free time, etc.
- Ask them for help or advice; this can be as simple as “I’ve run out of shows to binge-watch, any recommendations?” or “What’s that cake on your Instagram, looks delicious! Want to share the recipe?” (Provided you follow each other on Instagram — otherwise, it’d just be spooky).
#6 Recognize and Reward Great Work
Working from home can get difficult at times, and there is nothing that will make an employee feel more connected and motivated to work than being praised for great work.
However, you must know how to do it.
- Monitoring employee activity and commenting on it for support is one thing; doing the same with the idea of artificially creating a supportive environment is toxic.
- Avoid extending comments and praise where they are uncalled for. For instance, commenting “good job!” on tasks for being completed will send the wrong message.
Instead, stay on top of your employee activity and spot those instances where they’ve genuinely shown how capable and committed they are.
Applaud their problem-solving abilities, customer-oriented attitude, praise from customers you’ve gathered from video testimonial examples, compliment how fast they’ve reached their targets, etc., and do it in front of the whole team. Not only will you be supporting that employee but also contributing to the overall team morale.
And, what should the rewards be? Anything from verbal acknowledgements to extra incentives or certificates.
Acknowledge and recognize your employees for their contributions using ProofHub announcements. Sign up now.
#7 Trust Your Team and Give Them Autonomy
You hired your support workers because you a) saw something in them that you liked b) believed they would add value to your business. Trust your employees to do an excellent job by trusting your judgment on this! So, why the doubt, then?
While it’s understandable you might be tempted to constantly Slack message your team on their progress, this is the last thing you want to do. Why is this bad? First, it’s dangerously close to micromanaging. Second, you are wasting their valuable time as they type up updates. Third, context-switching can impact their focus. And fourth, they may start doubting the quality of work they deliver as you have the need to check up on them all the time.
Instead, start evolving your management style by giving your employees greater autonomy and building stronger trust in them. In the long run, your goal should be to create an environment where your employees thrive.
Employees who feel autonomous and trusted are more inspired and ultimately more productive and successful with their tasks.
#8 Reduce Video Conferences
With the switch to WFH, Zoom meetings have become everyone’s daily routine. The time we’d spend talking to each other in meetings, we now spend on zoom, and switching from a meeting to a meeting can get mentally exhausting. This is where Zoom fatigue comes in.
With numerous video calls throughout the day, you’ll end up having exhausted workers and lose productivity.
So, try limiting the number of zoom meetings to essentials and email or Slack the rest. You’ll save your team valuable time, prevent Zoom exhaustion, and improve their productivity.
A Pathway to Employee Encouragement: Can We Do It Online?
While bringing an employee coffee and saying a sincere “thank you” for a job well done would’ve worked in an office environment, making them feel appreciated when you can’t walk up to their desk is a bit harder — but not impossible.
Just because an office environment is something we are used to, it doesn’t mean it’s the only good way to go about things. In the current climate and generally when working remotely, you can inspire employees by adapting your techniques.
Follow the tips above and see how it impacts your remote work dynamic. Good luck!
About Author
Sam Shepler is the founder and CEO of Testimonial Hero. 150+ B2B revenue teams at Google, UiPath, Medallia, InsightSquared, and many others use Testimonial Hero to easily create customer videos that engage prospects, reduce friction in the sales cycle, and drive more revenue faster.
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