Delivering Exceptional Experiences: Empowering Your Service Staff for Success
Good customer service is the lifeblood of business, and with good reason. It boosts customer satisfaction and retention and increases corporate performance and profitability. Around 93% of customers will make a repeat purchase if a business provides top-notch customer service. Also, enhancing customer experiences boosts profitability by 1-2%.
However, you cannot perfect your customer service if you don’t invest in your service team, who are in the frontline interacting with customers and prospects. The support team needs more than a desk and computer to do their jobs and delight customers. It would help if you empowered them with a pleasant work environment and resources so they serve customers well and attain professional development.
Empowerment means giving the service team the freedom to handle issues independently rather than micromanaging them or requiring them to seek permission for every issue. It has positive outcomes for employees, customers, and the business. Read on to learn ways of empowering your customer service team for success.
1. Outsource Administrative Personnel Management
A good way to empower your service staff is to outsource administrative personnel management to a reputable and experienced third party. This way, you and your customer service team focus on your core business of delighting customers for greater efficiency and profitability.
The third-party handles employee administrative roles such as payroll, leave, and employment contracts professionally and cost-effectively. They have the technical skills and resources to cater to these tasks while complying with relevant labor legislation.
2. Provide the Right Tools
Customer service staff need a plethora of tools to work effectively and efficiently. The main ones include phones, computers, automation tools, internal chat platforms, help desk software, survey tools, and CRM systems. Automation tools, for instance, streamline tasks, saving time, effort, and money. Similarly, CRM tools store customer data, while survey tools let customers rate the level of service.
3. Build a Team Culture
When it comes to customer service, teamwork is fundamental. While the service team deals directly with customers, every employee, in one way or another, offers customer service. For instance, the production team makes products that customers purchase.
Similarly, the marketing team creates awareness about a brand and its offerings to customers and prospects. Therefore, every department and individual in a company should fulfill their role in ensuring great customer service.
4. Offer Adequate Training
Training keeps service staff proficient, engaged, productive, and satisfied. It eliminates skills gaps, improves technology and product proficiency, and boosts employee retention.
With adequate training, the service team stays updated on products, services, and policies. They solve client problems promptly and don’t have to ask for help whenever they encounter an issue.
5. Enact an Open Door Policy
Empower service staff by having an open-door policy whereby leaders and managers are accessible. Such a policy promotes communication, transparency, and mutual trust, and employees can approach leaders with questions, suggestions, and complaints.
An open-door policy allows customer service staff to approach supervisors and senior executives and discuss work-related concerns. It tackles challenges proactively before they escalate and harm the company. It is best practice for managers to have one-on-one meetings with service staff and let them know they can air their grievances anytime.
6. Reward Effort and Progress
Like other employees, the service team wants to feel appreciated, and their efforts towards good customer service recognized. Good ways to appreciate customer service representatives include sending thank you emails, writing a thank you note, offering extra time off, giving a gift voucher, and buying lunch for the team.
More companies are increasingly creating appreciation programs to acknowledge and recognize employees’ work.
7. Ask and Provide Feedback
The service support team is among the few employees who communicate with customers. As such, they understand customer issues, process flaws, and workflow challenges. An excellent way to empower the team is to seek their insights and feedback. Such information can help improve offerings, marketing, and employee training. Regular meetings stimulate creativity, and agents give ideas on ways to wow customers.
Besides seeking feedback, you should provide feedback to your agents. It goes a long way to inspire confidence, instill job satisfaction, and foster professional growth.
Constructive feedback provides guidance and support and improves performance. Whether an agent handles clients seamlessly or helps colleagues with questions, feedback shows appreciation for their work.
8. Be a Mentor
In workplaces, mentors offer guidance, motivation, role modeling, and emotional support. As a manager or supervisor, you can empower your team by being a good mentor. Giving your team the appropriate tools, responsibilities, and opportunities to succeed in their roles is an excellent place to start.
In addition, consider being a good role model by possessing the right attitude and behavior and holding high moral standards. Mentorship delivers high performance for the team looking after customers.
9. Set and Measure KPIs
While every manager strives to attain optimal customer service levels for their team, they should have measurable KPIs. Good KPIs include first response time, average resolution time, cost per resolution, number of tickets, net promoter score, and customer satisfaction score. Measuring these metrics is crucial in maintaining successful customer interactions.
Conclusion
In the current customer-centric world, offering excellent customer service is invaluable. Empowering customer service time is a good way to enhance customer service, increase employee morale and satisfaction, and boost the bottom line.
When customers have a good experience with the service team, they will make repeat purchases, share positive experiences with friends and family, and become brand ambassadors.
With adequate training, technology, and work environment, service staff become powerful agents for getting high customer satisfaction and higher business returns.
Happy customer service teams make happy customers!
