Customer service is like flour.
Just like a cake, too much can lead to boring conversations. Too little, and the cake will have no base, leading to failure. Customer service has had a dramatic impact on the way consumers communicate, process information and make purchase decisions. People rely on customer service teams to help them now more than ever.
Think about it. Thanks to a dedicated customer service team, you can order immediately, take a ride immediately and find answers to your questions quickly.
The customer service team is focused on providing the best possible customer experience and continuing to nurture the customer relationship after the product is sold.
Customer service teams communicate with consumers as needed and use a variety of communication channels such as phone communication, social media customer service or chatbots. In this article, we'll cover 10 tips on how to build and manage an effective customer service team.
How to build an excellent customer service team
To build an exceptional customer service team, you first need to start with some basic customer service training. Get together with your team and brainstorm about what your company and department expect from its customer service employees. The following tips will help guide you as you hire and build your team.
1. Lay the groundwork
First, define what quality customer service means to your company. This is an important starting point for everyone to understand the expectations they need to meet that are aligned with your customer service philosophy. As you begin building your team, you need to define the quality of service the team will provide. Once you have defined it, you will have a competency benchmark that you can use to measure team performance.
Exceed customer expectations
To impress your customers, always aim to exceed their expectations. What is the typical response time encountered by other customer service teams? Who are your biggest competitors? How do you go above and beyond to dazzle your customers? Continuing to push your team to provide the best possible service will put your company, among others, known for superior customer service.
2. Empower your team
When you hire a customer service team, don't limit their capabilities. To empower them, give each member the responsibility and authority to make decisions when in contact with customers. Training your team to work in the best interest of your customers will make the difference between average customer service and a five-star rating.
Empowering your team doesn't stop at giving them the flexibility to take charge. It's critical to provide them with the right tools to do their jobs adequately. From help desk software to live chat software, check out the top customer service tools your team can use to engage customers.
3. Motivate with Recognition
Happy employees lead to happy customers. There are multiple ways to motivate your employees and ensure they come to work positively. Recognizing the accomplishments of your team members is just one way to encourage hard work.
Note: Every company and team is different and should adjust their efforts to recognize employees appropriately. Not everyone likes to be congratulated out loud. Sometimes a quiet word of affirmation will go further than a team-wide announcement.
Rewarding your team with recognition can improve team morale and overall job satisfaction. Another way to consistently motivate employees is to provide feedback on their performance. When someone receives notification that they are exceeding expectations, they are more motivated to work harder and maintain that level of performance.
As a manager, you should always be open to suggestions from team members who report directly to you. This should be a collaborative team effort to improve and enhance everyone's processes.
4. Be transparent with your team
Transparency can go a long way. Let your team know where you are, that you trust them and that they can come to you when needed. Clear internal communication will set the tone for how employees, management and executives should treat each other. The larger the company, the more critical (and challenging) transparency becomes. When you lead a customer service team, achieving and advocating for it should be your top priority.
5.Always listen to the voice of the customer.
Now that we've laid out the ground rules for how you should manage your team let's talk about how your team should interact with your customers.
While it may seem obvious to "listen to the customer," many companies fail to listen to and understand their needs. As an exercise, imagine the perfect customer/customer service person interaction. That's what your team should always strive for. The only real teacher is life experience, so think of all the bad customer service interactions you've encountered and train your team to do the exact opposite.
In short, take the time to get to know your customers. Put yourself in their shoes and work from there. When someone knows you are doing your best to solve their problems while respecting their time, they will be more likely to be loyal to your brand.
6. Identify the channels you will use
Be open with your customers and let them know what channels they can use to find you. If the majority of your audience uses Facebook and LinkedIn, link to these social accounts in as many places as possible. It's easy to say your customers can "find you on social media," but if they have a problem with your product or service, dedicating two or three channels for your sales reps to monitor at all times will ultimately let them know where they need to go. It's always better to provide quality support across several channels than to spread your team and provide inconsistent help.
7. Prioritize rapid response
According to Oracle, more than 80 per cent of Twitter and 50 per cent of Facebook users expect a response to customer service queries within a day or less. Other surveys report that some customers expect a response within an hour.
No one wants to waste time calling a customer service line only to call back because the representative didn't help them properly. Prioritizing fast customer service response times must be combined with the right problem resolution to provide quality service. Customers are more likely to stay with your brand if you can solve their problems quickly.
Always respect your customers' time. Include contact numbers and the best social platforms to reach you in your text messages, emails and (of course) social media.
8. Keep your word
If your customers feel they cannot trust you, you are in trouble. There is no finish line you can cross in building trust between you and them. The more honest you are and the more you can solve problems with their best interests in mind, the better.
By all means, commit only to what you know you can do. If you commit to your capabilities, customers will appreciate your honesty and will not be disappointed.
9. Create a team that cares
Get to know your customers. For businesses of any size, showing them that you care enough to remember them will do more to foster that relationship than giving something away for free.
People like to be remembered, and while it's impossible to remember everything a customer tells you, recording interactions and taking short notes as you talk to them can keep track of different customers.
Creating a team culture that promotes taking care of customers first will foster not only meaningful customer/rep relationships but also meaningful employee/manager relationships.
10. Build Community
A final tip for creating a great customer service team is to build a community for your customers. If your company specializes in something, create a community around that something and establish yourself as a source for information and help. Whether the community lives online or in a physical storefront, you can host events to help your customers. Consider webinars and customer-only events that include classes or demonstrations on how to use your product or service.
Building this community for your customers will improve the customer experience, help your reps get face-to-face customer interaction, and can be a significant additional source of revenue.
Thanks to technology, it's easier than ever to empower your team to deliver exceptional service. Technologies such as integrating automated customer service representatives into your strategy to monitor your inbox while your human representative sleep has revolutionized the industry.
On the other hand, when customers experience poor service, they can log on to review sites and leave some terrible words about the company. Small changes in your processes and continuous improvements in your customer service strategy can help you avoid this situation altogether.
Just like a cake, too much can lead to boring conversations. Too little, and the cake will have no base, leading to failure. Customer service has had a dramatic impact on the way consumers communicate, process information and make purchase decisions. People rely on customer service teams to help them now more than ever.
Think about it. Thanks to a dedicated customer service team, you can order immediately, take a ride immediately and find answers to your questions quickly.
Use customer support software which contains an efficient knowledge base, ticketing system and Live chat. Minimal cost to enhance customer experience.| BClinked
Rapid deployment, simple enough but effective customer support system
The customer service team is focused on providing the best possible customer experience and continuing to nurture the customer relationship after the product is sold.
Customer service teams communicate with consumers as needed and use a variety of communication channels such as phone communication, social media customer service or chatbots. In this article, we'll cover 10 tips on how to build and manage an effective customer service team.
How to build an excellent customer service team
To build an exceptional customer service team, you first need to start with some basic customer service training. Get together with your team and brainstorm about what your company and department expect from its customer service employees. The following tips will help guide you as you hire and build your team.
First, define what quality customer service means to your company. This is an important starting point for everyone to understand the expectations they need to meet that are aligned with your customer service philosophy. As you begin building your team, you need to define the quality of service the team will provide. Once you have defined it, you will have a competency benchmark that you can use to measure team performance.
Exceed customer expectations
To impress your customers, always aim to exceed their expectations. What is the typical response time encountered by other customer service teams? Who are your biggest competitors? How do you go above and beyond to dazzle your customers? Continuing to push your team to provide the best possible service will put your company, among others, known for superior customer service.
2. Empower your team
When you hire a customer service team, don't limit their capabilities. To empower them, give each member the responsibility and authority to make decisions when in contact with customers. Training your team to work in the best interest of your customers will make the difference between average customer service and a five-star rating.
Empowering your team doesn't stop at giving them the flexibility to take charge. It's critical to provide them with the right tools to do their jobs adequately. From help desk software to live chat software, check out the top customer service tools your team can use to engage customers.
3. Motivate with Recognition
Happy employees lead to happy customers. There are multiple ways to motivate your employees and ensure they come to work positively. Recognizing the accomplishments of your team members is just one way to encourage hard work.
Note: Every company and team is different and should adjust their efforts to recognize employees appropriately. Not everyone likes to be congratulated out loud. Sometimes a quiet word of affirmation will go further than a team-wide announcement.
Rewarding your team with recognition can improve team morale and overall job satisfaction. Another way to consistently motivate employees is to provide feedback on their performance. When someone receives notification that they are exceeding expectations, they are more motivated to work harder and maintain that level of performance.
As a manager, you should always be open to suggestions from team members who report directly to you. This should be a collaborative team effort to improve and enhance everyone's processes.
4. Be transparent with your team
Transparency can go a long way. Let your team know where you are, that you trust them and that they can come to you when needed. Clear internal communication will set the tone for how employees, management and executives should treat each other. The larger the company, the more critical (and challenging) transparency becomes. When you lead a customer service team, achieving and advocating for it should be your top priority.
5.Always listen to the voice of the customer.
Now that we've laid out the ground rules for how you should manage your team let's talk about how your team should interact with your customers.
While it may seem obvious to "listen to the customer," many companies fail to listen to and understand their needs. As an exercise, imagine the perfect customer/customer service person interaction. That's what your team should always strive for. The only real teacher is life experience, so think of all the bad customer service interactions you've encountered and train your team to do the exact opposite.
In short, take the time to get to know your customers. Put yourself in their shoes and work from there. When someone knows you are doing your best to solve their problems while respecting their time, they will be more likely to be loyal to your brand.
6. Identify the channels you will use
Be open with your customers and let them know what channels they can use to find you. If the majority of your audience uses Facebook and LinkedIn, link to these social accounts in as many places as possible. It's easy to say your customers can "find you on social media," but if they have a problem with your product or service, dedicating two or three channels for your sales reps to monitor at all times will ultimately let them know where they need to go. It's always better to provide quality support across several channels than to spread your team and provide inconsistent help.
7. Prioritize rapid response
According to Oracle, more than 80 per cent of Twitter and 50 per cent of Facebook users expect a response to customer service queries within a day or less. Other surveys report that some customers expect a response within an hour.
No one wants to waste time calling a customer service line only to call back because the representative didn't help them properly. Prioritizing fast customer service response times must be combined with the right problem resolution to provide quality service. Customers are more likely to stay with your brand if you can solve their problems quickly.
Always respect your customers' time. Include contact numbers and the best social platforms to reach you in your text messages, emails and (of course) social media.
8. Keep your word
If your customers feel they cannot trust you, you are in trouble. There is no finish line you can cross in building trust between you and them. The more honest you are and the more you can solve problems with their best interests in mind, the better.
By all means, commit only to what you know you can do. If you commit to your capabilities, customers will appreciate your honesty and will not be disappointed.
9. Create a team that cares
Get to know your customers. For businesses of any size, showing them that you care enough to remember them will do more to foster that relationship than giving something away for free.
People like to be remembered, and while it's impossible to remember everything a customer tells you, recording interactions and taking short notes as you talk to them can keep track of different customers.
Creating a team culture that promotes taking care of customers first will foster not only meaningful customer/rep relationships but also meaningful employee/manager relationships.
10. Build Community
A final tip for creating a great customer service team is to build a community for your customers. If your company specializes in something, create a community around that something and establish yourself as a source for information and help. Whether the community lives online or in a physical storefront, you can host events to help your customers. Consider webinars and customer-only events that include classes or demonstrations on how to use your product or service.
Building this community for your customers will improve the customer experience, help your reps get face-to-face customer interaction, and can be a significant additional source of revenue.
Show you care
Thanks to technology, it's easier than ever to empower your team to deliver exceptional service. Technologies such as integrating automated customer service representatives into your strategy to monitor your inbox while your human representative sleep has revolutionized the industry.
On the other hand, when customers experience poor service, they can log on to review sites and leave some terrible words about the company. Small changes in your processes and continuous improvements in your customer service strategy can help you avoid this situation altogether.
Use customer support software which contains an efficient knowledge base, ticketing system and Live chat. Minimal cost to enhance customer experience.| BClinked