Growing a company from a concept to a revenue-generating business is not for the meek and mild. It takes more than a winning product and a masterful marketing plan to ensure long-term success. Building a great team around your product is an entrepreneurial skill you’ll rely upon throughout your career. One team essential to the success of your business is your customer service team. Here are five crucial components to building a great customer service team.
5 Ways to Build a Great Customer Service Team
1. Develop a multi-pronged approach to improving the return-on-investment of your customer support department. Not every customer is on social media regularly. From in-person to email to telephone support, understand which communication platforms are best for your customers.
2. Understand the need not just to solve problems and answer questions, but to exceed customer expectations. A trained robot can do the basics; you want your customer service team to leave a lasting positive impression in the minds of your customers. Think of your customer support team as a sales driver. What tools and resources can you offer your support team that will allow them to go above and beyond what a customer expects? Enable your support team members to turn one-time customers into loyal brand advocates.
3. Timing is essential if you want to build a well-honed customer support team. You might think a next business day response is satisfactory, but every moment counts to consumers. What can you do to ensure customers receive a timely response to their queries? From a 24/7 social media support team to an on-demand mobile application for customer support, design your team for success to ensure customer loyalty.
4. Build consumer feedback into your customer support team’s design. Offer anonymous surveys and feedback polls after every customer interaction to ensure your team is on the right track. Dig into feedback results hunting for opportunities your company can capitalize on. Are there recurring requests and responses? Can you develop upon those responses to build added features into your business’ offerings? The ability to discover growth opportunities from consumer feedback is one of the savviest moves you can make as a business owner.
5. Incorporate customer service into the core culture of your business. From your developers to your administration department, hire, and train, based upon an understanding that customer excellence is a top priority. Businesses built upon the customer “WOW” factor will outlast and outperform others within their sector. The ability to turn a customer into a brand ambassador is a highly underrated sales tool.
Developing superior customer service as a core competency in your company’s culture is a brand strategy sure to deliver long-lasting results. From decreased customer acquisition costs to employee turnover and increased sales, brand builders who focus on excelling at customer support are increasing the longevity of their businesses.