When we study about remote working, we often learn about how working remotely boosts your productivity like nothing else. To quote from Stanford University study, productivity increases among remote workers to the tune of an extra day per person, per week. While we all wish to attain this level of productivity in our team, it is important for us to lay the foundational strategies as well to achieve the same.
Higher productivity doesn’t come by default with remote working. It requires working in a manner that keeps your team engaged, motivated and efficient in the comforts of their home.
So how would you ensure that your team works in the right way? Well, the answer simply lies in your hands. Creating the right strategies, implementing the right rules, accommodating the right amount of autonomy, and boom! You have got a highly productive remote team for yourself.
Distinctive teams require different strategies to work as per the nature of their work and it’s not advisable to create a blanket remote working rule book for all. So, in this article, we’ll specifically focus on the customer service teams of business departments and how you can contribute to attaining the maximum productivity and engagement from them.
Remember: In the right remote working environment, team productivity and engagement should go hand in hand. Unless you aim to hire dis-engaged robots for your company 😉
Moving to the subject of this article, in today’s competitive era, providing top-notch customer service is no more an option but a requisite. In the world where customers can’t visit offices for official meetings and verification, it is your frontline professionals that convey the authenticity and reliability of your business.
Talking about these frontline professionals aka customer service teams, making them work in the remote location and expecting good productivity and conduct from them, can be a little difficult but not unachievable.
So, to help you with the same here’s unravelling 15 tips to assure a productive and coherent customer service remote team:
1. Choose your reports wisely
Screen working time, number of call attempts, number of calling hours, number of closures, there are hundreds of possible reports that can be created to analyze employee’s working. Your remote working tool will give you some, your team supervisors will create other reports and so on. Herein, it is important to choose the right reports to evaluate employee efficiency. This reporting data should take into account all external and internal factors and shouldn’t make your employees work monotonously.
2. Avoid monotony in assigned tasks
Creating the same report sheets every day, working on the same projects, all this could make your employee’s working monotonous and dull. It is important for managers to plan and assign tasks in a manner that adds to the team’s learning and holds their interest in working.
Remember, the way your team feels about working with you depends a lot about how you make them feel.
3. Have the right tools
We are here talking about customer service teams which will be majorly involved in handling customer complaints through calls, online chats, raised tickets, emails and other modes of communication. To keep a check on the team productivity, it is crucial that right monitoring tools are used to evaluate the work and also the ones which don’t restrict their work flexibility.
4. Record, monitor and improvise
With your customer service team involved in on-call communication with customers, it is extremely important to supervise their way of interacting with customers. You wouldn’t want to have employees who are rude to your customers or those who aren’t able to provide a satisfactory resolution to your customers’ issues.
Herein, hearing the recorded conversations of your team members is and should be the most tool for you to analyse your team working and assure that the right image is built in front of your customers.
5. Incorporate team rewards and awards
Being rewarded for the good work and recognised for the hard work done is the most crucial morale booster for any employee. Team heads should understand that in order to make your team efficient, they should be appreciated as well. With extra incentives or certificates in place, your team will respond positively to the appreciation given and will work in the best possible way to fulfil your expectations.
6. Motivate your team with right examples
In every customer service department, there are certain members who exemplify the right way of handling customer issues. There are specific instances where your employees have handled the issue in an outstanding way. Herein, share the recorded conversation of your customer calls with your rest of the team, train and motivate your team to perform and interact with customers in the right way.
7. Pre-define your expectations
Employees grasp a lot from context, and when they don’t work in the office, they have a lesser understanding of their manager’s expectations. So during remote working, managers need to be explicit and specific about what their expectations are from their remote worker. This helps in understanding the agenda behind ongoing work and with stated expectations by managers, completion of tasks becomes much easier and efficient.
8. Don’t skip the team learning
When managers and the employees work together, they usually indulge in discussions which may or may not be related to tasks, but are extremely informative. Such exchange of information is significantly hampered when employees are working remotely and the discussion is majorly around the assigned tasks. Hence, it is important that there should be verbal discussions as well within the team and not only on emails. Teams can schedule weekly learning sessions to talk on informative subjects or can exchange relevant articles.
9. Make time for individual interactions
Every employee wants to be felt and treated as an important contributor to the team. This can’t be done while addressing the team together and speaking about team goals ONLY. As all the five fingers aren’t the same, it is important that every individual should be communicated separately (besides team meetings) and hear out their challenges and feedback.
10. Gamify your team culture
While working in an office workspace, teams usually go out for team lunches or table tennis as their break or fun sessions. These fun team sessions come in organically amongst co-located workers but have to be given special attention when the team is working from different places. These fun game sessions become extremely important during remote working to assure a coherent and engaged culture.
11. Collect timely feedbacks
Well, feedback is the breakfast for the champions. Timely and proper feedback from the team makes them feel that their opinions matter and also helps the managers to plan future strategies accordingly. One really can’t get the true picture of their employees’ experience until their voices are heard.
12. Hire the right people
You want employees that are smart enough to work efficiently without asking too much of the manager’s involvements. You want employees that can show team coordination skills without actually working with them together in a workspace. With remote working in the picture, special skills should be added in your list of ‘ideal employee requisites’ so that team members are fully aware of their work style and are capable of delivering the results accordingly.
13. Go zoooooooom!
Well, face to face interactions is a must. You just can’t get friendly with someone basis discussions happening on email or chat groups. Make it a point that your teams have routine video calls with the cameras being on. It helps in engaging and connecting with people much easier and boosts the sense of team coordination and belongingness.
14. Trust first then confirm
While keeping a tab on your team’s performance as you allow them to work remotely, the most important thing to do is trust your employees. Team evaluation shouldn’t be done to keep a thorough check on all your employee activities but to verify the trust you have shown on them. And, in return for this confidence you show in the team, they will work in the most efficient way and abide by your expectations.
Key Takeaway:
Your customer service team is undoubtedly the image creator of your business. They are the frontline executives who, with their words and rendered service, portray the professionalism and authenticity of your business. It is hence important for you to assure their right conduct, best productivity. However, all this comes with your equivalent support and appreciation rendered to them whenever required.
Your right steps taken in this direction could play a substantial role in building a high-performing customer service team that keeps your customers happy and minimizes your churn rate.
