Customer experience is one of the most important differentiators between brands - and a positive customer experience helps brands stand out in a crowded marketplace. A study conducted by Forrester in 2021 showed that companies that provide simple and emotionally oriented service to their customers score significantly higher on the customer service index.
Building a customer service team that provides an exceptional customer experience is critical for contact centers and support departments. Investing in the best people, the best technology, and the best training techniques will help you build a customer service organizational structure that will improve customer retention.
But how should you structure your contact center team to be successful? Discover how to build a standout customer service team by.
1. Define your service team roles
The ideal first step in evaluating and building the perfect customer support team structure is to gain insight into the roles of each customer service team.
Understanding which service team roles are essential and why can help you put the right people in the right places. Explore critical positions, their primary responsibilities, and areas of influence.
Contact Center Agent/Consultant
Contact Center Agents (also known as Contact Center Consultants) are your front-line professionals. They will spend most of their time dealing with customers through one or more channels, including email, chat, SMS, and phone. They lead engaging interactions, diagnose problems, find solutions, and keep customers happy, so they stay loyal to your brand.
They should have various skills, including strong communication skills, good listening acumen, and an unwavering ability to empathize and sympathize with callers. They must understand the importance of quality service and why their position is an essential conduit between the customer and the company.
Team Leaders
Team Leaders are responsible for overseeing specific groups of agents within the contact center, ensuring that they meet goals and achieve particular standards, and keeping them motivated. They may be required to speak to customers occasionally, especially in challenging situations. Often, their role involves managing tasks and bringing their own experience as an agent to help improve the customer support team structure.
Mentor
The role of a supervisor is similar to that of a team leader, but they may have a closer connection to management than other customer service team roles.
If a supervisor is resolving a complaint or needs an apology from higher leadership, they may need to interact with the customer. Accountability is key to this role, and supervisors are an essential part of the customer service organizational structure.
Coaching/Coaching
A contact center or business may hire someone to act as a coach or trainer for the customer service team, although these responsibilities may also fall under the HR team. Coaching and training are critical to helping agents improve performance and develop new skills to provide better service.
They can work with QA analysts to design procedures for resolving issues or knowledge gaps that can be detected during the ongoing quality assurance process. Software that provides closed-loop guidance and progress tracking can also be an essential part of your team structure.
2. Create sub-teams with different specialties
Implementing subteams with different areas of expertise can provide more structure to your customer service team. For example, you may have agents who act as the first point of contact between your customers and your company. They will answer the phone and start a live chat to get details about the individual and understand their problem.
They either have the knowledge and resources to solve the problem themselves, or they may need to refer the customer to a colleague who has received specialized training. This is particularly useful for companies in the technology industry, where interactions can involve highly complex areas.
However, there should be enough expert agents to handle the volume of incoming queries. Having only two or three people handle hundreds of potential issues can lead to backlogs. Workforce management can help ensure that you always have suitable agents in the right place, thus reducing any overload.
Determine the primary types of inquiries you tend to receive first. It may be more practical to equip all agents with the same level of product or service knowledge to avoid long queues. This process must be precise if the caller is to be handed off to another agent. Jumping from one agent to the next will only alienate and frustrate customers.
3. Establish a clear hierarchy
When building the organizational structure of your customer service team, you must establish a clear hierarchy. Strong leaders are needed to create and maintain the vision, make decisions, and ensure that agents do their best.
That's why appointing multiple team leaders and managers is such an adequate model, although the size of your customer service team will determine how many people you need. For a group of about eight people, one team leader and manager may be enough.
For 10 or more people, running two customer service teams led by each will help each person stay organized. For larger teams, ensure a more complex chain of command when planning customer service team roles.
4. Bring in QA analysts to drive growth
No matter how skilled your support staff is, mistakes and oversights are inevitable. After all, we're all only human.
However, repeating these mistakes will only lead to customer dissatisfaction and churn. That's why quality assurance is so important to continually improve the quality of your services.
Hiring a quality management analyst to work with your customer service team means you will always have the right system to keep driving growth. Call monitoring allows analysts to identify deficiencies in service and provide effective training to fix them. Coaching sessions will keep employees motivated and inspired to perform at their best.
Good QA software puts all the core data analysts need at their fingertips, so they can easily pull historical data and track progress.
5. Use an omnichannel structure for customer interaction
Your customer service agents should have access to and be trained in using multiple communication channels. Customers want real-time support through their preferred channels, including live chat, email, SMS, and phone.
An omnichannel strategy facilitates customers and ensures they can seek help through the platform that works best for them. When structuring your customer service team organization, you may want to segment your staff across different channels (some via live chat, some via phone, some via social media, etc.) or train everyone to be proficient across all channels.
However, you must incorporate data into this decision: assign more agents to the most active channels and fewer to the minor active channels.
Building a customer service team structure takes time, effort, and planning. You can't expect them to hit the ground running. Use quality management to evaluate performance and continuously improve over months and years.
Building a customer service team that provides an exceptional customer experience is critical for contact centers and support departments. Investing in the best people, the best technology, and the best training techniques will help you build a customer service organizational structure that will improve customer retention.
But how should you structure your contact center team to be successful? Discover how to build a standout customer service team by.
Use customer support software which contains an efficient knowledge base, ticketing system Minimal cost to enhance customer experience.| BClinked
Rapid deployment, simple enough but effective customer support system
1. Define your service team roles
The ideal first step in evaluating and building the perfect customer support team structure is to gain insight into the roles of each customer service team.
Understanding which service team roles are essential and why can help you put the right people in the right places. Explore critical positions, their primary responsibilities, and areas of influence.
Contact Center Agent/Consultant
Contact Center Agents (also known as Contact Center Consultants) are your front-line professionals. They will spend most of their time dealing with customers through one or more channels, including email, chat, SMS, and phone. They lead engaging interactions, diagnose problems, find solutions, and keep customers happy, so they stay loyal to your brand.
They should have various skills, including strong communication skills, good listening acumen, and an unwavering ability to empathize and sympathize with callers. They must understand the importance of quality service and why their position is an essential conduit between the customer and the company.
Team Leaders
Team Leaders are responsible for overseeing specific groups of agents within the contact center, ensuring that they meet goals and achieve particular standards, and keeping them motivated. They may be required to speak to customers occasionally, especially in challenging situations. Often, their role involves managing tasks and bringing their own experience as an agent to help improve the customer support team structure.
Mentor
The role of a supervisor is similar to that of a team leader, but they may have a closer connection to management than other customer service team roles.
If a supervisor is resolving a complaint or needs an apology from higher leadership, they may need to interact with the customer. Accountability is key to this role, and supervisors are an essential part of the customer service organizational structure.
Coaching/Coaching
A contact center or business may hire someone to act as a coach or trainer for the customer service team, although these responsibilities may also fall under the HR team. Coaching and training are critical to helping agents improve performance and develop new skills to provide better service.
They can work with QA analysts to design procedures for resolving issues or knowledge gaps that can be detected during the ongoing quality assurance process. Software that provides closed-loop guidance and progress tracking can also be an essential part of your team structure.
2. Create sub-teams with different specialties
Implementing subteams with different areas of expertise can provide more structure to your customer service team. For example, you may have agents who act as the first point of contact between your customers and your company. They will answer the phone and start a live chat to get details about the individual and understand their problem.
They either have the knowledge and resources to solve the problem themselves, or they may need to refer the customer to a colleague who has received specialized training. This is particularly useful for companies in the technology industry, where interactions can involve highly complex areas.
However, there should be enough expert agents to handle the volume of incoming queries. Having only two or three people handle hundreds of potential issues can lead to backlogs. Workforce management can help ensure that you always have suitable agents in the right place, thus reducing any overload.
Determine the primary types of inquiries you tend to receive first. It may be more practical to equip all agents with the same level of product or service knowledge to avoid long queues. This process must be precise if the caller is to be handed off to another agent. Jumping from one agent to the next will only alienate and frustrate customers.
3. Establish a clear hierarchy
When building the organizational structure of your customer service team, you must establish a clear hierarchy. Strong leaders are needed to create and maintain the vision, make decisions, and ensure that agents do their best.
That's why appointing multiple team leaders and managers is such an adequate model, although the size of your customer service team will determine how many people you need. For a group of about eight people, one team leader and manager may be enough.
For 10 or more people, running two customer service teams led by each will help each person stay organized. For larger teams, ensure a more complex chain of command when planning customer service team roles.
4. Bring in QA analysts to drive growth
No matter how skilled your support staff is, mistakes and oversights are inevitable. After all, we're all only human.
However, repeating these mistakes will only lead to customer dissatisfaction and churn. That's why quality assurance is so important to continually improve the quality of your services.
Hiring a quality management analyst to work with your customer service team means you will always have the right system to keep driving growth. Call monitoring allows analysts to identify deficiencies in service and provide effective training to fix them. Coaching sessions will keep employees motivated and inspired to perform at their best.
Good QA software puts all the core data analysts need at their fingertips, so they can easily pull historical data and track progress.
5. Use an omnichannel structure for customer interaction
Your customer service agents should have access to and be trained in using multiple communication channels. Customers want real-time support through their preferred channels, including live chat, email, SMS, and phone.
An omnichannel strategy facilitates customers and ensures they can seek help through the platform that works best for them. When structuring your customer service team organization, you may want to segment your staff across different channels (some via live chat, some via phone, some via social media, etc.) or train everyone to be proficient across all channels.
However, you must incorporate data into this decision: assign more agents to the most active channels and fewer to the minor active channels.
Building a customer service team structure takes time, effort, and planning. You can't expect them to hit the ground running. Use quality management to evaluate performance and continuously improve over months and years.
Use customer support software which contains an efficient knowledge base, ticketing system Minimal cost to enhance customer experience.| BClinked
Rapid deployment, simple enough but effective customer support system