When uncertainty is high, your customer service team is a valuable frontline resource to help maintain customer trust in your business. Your customers need to know they can rely on you, especially when other aspects of life get tumultuous.
Do customers feel like they can trust you? That all depends on how their interactions with your team ... [+]
When your customer service representatives are working remotely, it’s even more important to set them up for success and ensure your customers are having the best possible experience.
Here are four strategies to successfully manage your remote customer service team.
1. Use cloud-based software.
When you have employees working remotely, it’s crucial to have everyone working from the same reliable cloud-based system. This helps ensure your customer service representatives have access to the most up-to-date information to give your customers the best experience.
Using a cloud-based solution also helps your distributed team respond quickly to changes in your industry or in the overall business climate. This is especially important for keeping your customers’ trust during times of uncertainty. A valuable software partner will be able to roll out updates and innovations that will help you respond to specific customer issues.
In the case of COVID-19, cloud contact center software provider Five9 quickly identified the top problems its customers were facing and partnered with Google Cloud to deploy a solution to those customer service issues. This innovation allowed Five9 users to provide automated responses to common questions related to COVID-19, reducing call wait times while giving callers the option to speak to a representative. Best of all, this software will be beneficial beyond the pandemic.
2. Monitor the right KPIs.
Managing a customer service team remotely has its challenges, but in some ways, it’s the same as managing a team in a building. Your goals and business outcomes don’t change based on where your employees are located — just the way you achieve them does.
Instead of micromanaging your team, find a balance between productivity tracking, quality assurance, and trusting them to get the job done. Put more weight on high-level customer experience metrics such as customer loyalty, average issue resolution time, and first contact resolution. Maintain transparency with your team about the KPIs they’re accountable for, and celebrate wins together.
Of course, your managers will still be observing calls — but connecting the dots between customer service interactions and the company’s goals will give your representatives a better sense of purpose and show that you trust them to get the job done, even if their manager isn’t with them physically.
3. Recognize and reward a job well done.
Research by HubSpot revealed that 69 percent of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were recognized by their employer. When your customer service representatives support customers from home, it becomes even more important to find ways to recognize their work.
This is your chance to communicate and educate your team about those KPIs we discussed. Make sure every employee understands the success metrics you’re tracking and the impact their daily work makes. With remote employees, it’s a good idea to have a huddle with the whole team once a week. Take 15 minutes to get everyone together on a conference call and review the team’s performance for the past week.
Then, it’s time for some R&R — recognition and rewards. Try to strike a balance between recognizing individuals for stellar performance and rewarding the whole team for their combined effort when major milestones are achieved. Decreased your average time to resolution for the fourth week in a row? Send everyone a gift card or a book from Amazon. Sure, the logistics of rewards become tougher when your employees are remote, but they’re well worth the effort.
4. Engage your team from afar.
Working in a call center and dealing with customer issues, one after another, can be rewarding, but it can also make for long days. We’ve all taken that customer call that put us in a sour mood for the rest of the day (though, of course, the issue was resolved with a smile).
Many people work in customer service because they’re naturally social and outgoing. When your teammates work remotely, they lose opportunities throughout the day to socialize and trade customer horror stories that they would have had in person. If your employees become disengaged, the quality and quantity of their work will quickly decline.
It’s crucial to provide outlets for your employees to socialize with each other and decompress from what can be a tough job. Equip your leaders with strategies to keep remote employees engaged. Encourage them to be flexible, transparent, and reassuring with employees. Make time for virtual team-building, and empower your employees to take 10-minute breaks here and there to catch up with each other.
Employee Satisfaction Leads to Customer Satisfaction
Managing a remote customer service team can be challenging, but it’s an essential part of keeping your customers’ trust, loyalty, and business — especially in uncertain times. Using cloud-based software is the first step to getting your team on the same page. Then, choose meaningful KPIs, and reward your employees for their performance.
Finally, empower your managers to engage remote workers and ensure they have opportunities to decompress. These strategies — and some extra effort — will keep your remote customer service representatives happy, productive, and ready to put their best foot forward in every customer interaction.
