How to Cultivate a Killer Customer Service Team

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An excellent customer service team can make or break a business. There are plenty of reasons to grow and expand your team as your business and audience grow. The first reason is you want to make sure the customers who buy something from your website have a pleasant experience with your product or service. If someone has an issue, this could result in online complaints and negative word of mouth reviews.

Another reason business owners focus heavily on customer service is that it helps increase their profits. Research shows that if a business can retain five percent more of their current customers, they could increase their earnings by as much as 25 percent.

We all want to create a customer service team that is full of friendly and personable employees while still having the sharp thinking skills required to help consumers with their problems. Let’s take a look at several ways you can cultivate an excellent team of customer support agents.

Selective Hiring and Detailed Onboarding

The hiring and onboarding processes are vital to the success of your team. If you want a killer group of customer service representatives, you have to start by hiring the right people for the job. Marketers often talk about building customer personas when they want to target the right audience. Employee personas are very similar to customer personas as they break down the personality traits, skills, and aspirations of an individual, but instead of marketing to that person, you’re looking for these traits when interviewing potential candidates.

For example, if you were looking to hire someone for your marketing application customer service team, you would want to find someone with a background in technology, past customer service experience, and a passion for solving problems. When performing your interview, ask questions that will help you gauge whether or not the candidate is a good fit for your team.

A crisp and detailed onboarding can play a massive role in the success of your team. New team members need to understand your company mission, the importance of customer success, and how your products work before they ever interact with a customer.

Hold Weekly Meetings

You can’t have a successful customer service team if there are communication and information barriers between the customers and your team. You can help bridge this gap by holding weekly meetings. If your team is in an office, use a meeting room or the call floor to talk to your employees, remote companies can use video software like Zoom and Skype for meetings.

The goal during these sessions is to pass along any relevant information about your business, products, or services to your team. For instance, if you’re rolling out a new product, use this opportunity to educate your team on the product or service and give them an FAQ page so they can anticipate customer questions or concerns. You should also consider letting your team know if there are any deals, bug fixes, or errors currently affecting any aspect of the buying process. If your team is aware of these problems, they are better suited to help your customers.

Implement Soft Skill Training

Soft skills are necessary when you’re dealing with customers or prospects. Soft skills are personality traits that make it easier for someone to communicate harmoniously with other people. Employees with soft skills are considered valuable to employers, and it’s easy to see why.

Some of the more common soft skills include:

  • Communication
  • Teamwork
  • Problem-solving
  • Positive Work Ethic

You can’t teach someone these skills who are unwilling to learn; however, you can enhance the soft skills that your employees already have. Problem solving and communication exercises can have a significant positive impact on your employees and the way they talk to customers.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if you operate an eCommerce storefront, sell SaaS products or work in a brick-and-mortar store, your customer service team is there to help answer customers questions and resolve their issues. Depending on your niche and delivery method (live chat or phone), you’ll have to tweak your support team for specific challenges, but the goal is the same — increase conversions and create happy customers. These tips will help you get a handle on your customer service team and help you build a staff of understanding and passionate individuals who care about their customers.

Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.

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