Regardless of the way you provide customer service, in person or online, via live chat or over the phone, one thing remains unchanged – it's never easy.

There will always be overly satisfied people along with constantly complaining ones. And the trick here is not trying to make an utterly perfect product (we bet you already have one) but knowing how to deliver quality service to your customers. And for that, you need the right people in your customer support team.

Let's explore doable tips on creating a great customer service team that works to the best of its abilities and can deliver outstanding customer support.

1. Find the right fit

Not everyone can be a great fit for your customer service team – and that’s okay. To achieve your goals, you need to find people who are capable of dealing with the job and have a specific set of skills to help them along the way.

Key soft skills for customer service jobs

Everyone who wants to work in customer service, should be:

  • Great communicator. Communication is key when it comes to customer service. Being able to set the right tone, explain things in detail, and persuade consumers are something that every customer support representative should be capable of.
  • Adaptable. There will be tons of situations with customers, each different and unique. Therefore, the customer service team should be able to read them and easily adapt, switching from one case to another within no time and with little effort.
  • Patient. This is a crucial one. Regardless of how good the customer service team is, if they lack patience, things can get difficult. Consumers can get irritated, slow, ignorant, or chatty. Therefore, it is important to remain calm, patient, and kind. It all goes a long way to creating long-term relationships with clients.
  • Empathetic. Some customers indeed make a big deal out of nothing, but they want to be heard and understood. A customer service representative should know how to react in different situations, how to show empathy, what to say, and how to help customers if needed.
  • Thick-skinned. This is probably the most difficult one. As clients can sometimes be harsh and rude, the customer service team needs to stay polite, never take things personally, help people regardless, and always end their interaction on a good note. Things can get messy and the only right way to deal with them is to grow thick skin.

Working with customers is demanding and challenging, and the first step to creating a strong customer support team is hiring people who will be able to handle stress and not-so-easy consumer requests.

2. Learn about their previous experience

Apart from finding people with the right set of skills for the job, it is important to dig into the candidate’s previous experience. It will help you find out more about their background and ensure you are covering things that the person was not satisfied with before.

If the person is coming from a customer service environment, ask what made them change the place and why. If the candidate is new to the field, find out why customer support and not sales or marketing.

It is important to build a team of ambassadors who are passionate about what they do. Even if it is their starting point in their career, they should clearly understand what it can bring them and how they will benefit from taking it.

3. Conduct training

Customer service training

It doesn’t matter whether it is someone's first time or 10th time in customer support; you need to ensure people are getting regular training.

Organize mandatory training for newly joined, share the basics, showcase examples, and assign a buddy who will be with them during the first month. Even someone with great experience can feel intimidated in the new company, so you need to make them feel welcomed, cared about, and treat them well.

Apart from that, training people who have already worked with you for some time is no less important. To make your team perform efficiently and with the right customer focus, conduct regular seminars and masterclasses, invite outside trainees and encourage your customer support representatives to enroll in various educational programs.

4. Help them learn about the product

Your customer support should know the product inside-out. If they are about to communicate with people, they should be able to answer any possible questions about product usage, its pros and cons, and resolve evolving issues.

Provide them with the best audio and video communication tools such as Zoom and its competitors as per their needs. Besides, it is important to know the terms and conditions of each ongoing promotion, as well as the return and refund policy.

One of the best practices for the customer support team to get acquainted with the product is to use it, get to know how it was created, and constantly educate themselves on the latest product releases and updates. The more information your customer team has, the easier it is to communicate with consumers and deliver the right information.

5. Ensure they have a helping hand

The work in customer support can be extremely busy, with many calls at the same time and many complaints to handle. Your team may face multiple issues and, regardless of experience, will not always be able to resolve them on their own. The first thing they need at such moments is someone to ask for help or advice.

Make sure that your customer support team has a strong leader who can answer questions, help address complaints, and support others at the right moment. This will streamline all the processes and encourage the whole team to function efficiently.

6. Provide useful tools

Your customer support team may have hundreds of consumer interactions daily. Hence, it might be challenging for them to keep track of things unless they have a solid system to manage customer profiles.

Your customer support team may have hundreds of consumer interactions daily. Hence, it might be challenging for them to keep track of things unless they have a solid system to manage customer profiles.

  1. Make sure that all your agents have a 360-customer-view along with all the previous records about past interactions, purchase history, personal preferences, and filed complaints. It will be easier for them to address new requests more efficiently.
  2. Teach your team to organize all cases, categorize and track them. Each case should have a status, a tag, urgency level, and owner. If the issue needs a follow-up, there should be notes and relevant correspondence.
  3. Ensure your team has a how-to guide to address various issues and customer requests. It will be tremendously helpful for first comers who are just getting acquainted with the flow and also highly beneficial for those dealing with an extraordinary consumer request and would appreciate a small help.
  4. If you are working with multiple countries and several foreign languages, provide your customer support agents with relevant translation tools to streamline their processes and address consumer requests faster. Financing equipment and investing in new tools will be beneficial for the growth of the team.


7. Encourage to share and give feedback

People who get regular feedback about their work are more likely to improve and grow. When you provide your customer support team with frequent comments on their work, they will appreciate the effort and will be encouraged to perform even better.

Customer service feedback

On another note, ask for suggestions. When people are involved in building a pleasant work environment, they share their opinion more, therefore, you can provide them with better conditions.

Organize regular one-to-ones with every customer support representative, ask about things they like and those they don’t, tell them how they are doing and give advice on things they are still not confident about. A suitable employee engagement tool can help you elicit and manage feedback from employees and provide a pleasant work environment.

8. Recognize success and allow growth

There will be people in your customer support team showing fantastic results and wanting to grow. Make sure you recognize their success, acknowledge it, and reward their efforts.

Those who show interest in professional growth and development will benefit from getting training in other departments or eventually moving there if they fit. Never stop them from moving towards their dreams and if they seek advice, be there for them.

Even if people decide to leave the company, make sure to conduct an exit interview and get the required feedback on how you did and how they felt when working with you. It will be beneficial in the long run to cover the needs of your team, improve where needed and attract more talented professionals.

Conclusion

Outstanding customer service plays a leading role when it comes to building long-term relationships with consumers. But it is all about people here, their attitude, passion, and the willingness to deliver the best possible outcome.

The first difficult step is finding customer support agents who are patient and empathetic, calm and adaptable. People who are not afraid of taking risks and learning from their mistakes.

Once you have the right team on board, invest in their training and development, help them know the product better and what it means for every customer. Provide them with valuable tools, give them feedback and always be a helping hand when they need it. With the right environment, you will build an outstanding customer service team that goes the extra mile to ensure the best experience for your clients.



This is a guest post by Iryna Hvozdetska.

About author:
Iryna Hvozdetska is an active Content Writer. She has over 2 years of experience in creative copywriting and project management. Iryna is fond of reading and loves to create content, which people would enjoy. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.


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