It's no secret that customer service matters to today's customers.

Just exactly how much information technology matters actually can't be overstated.

Fact: 80% of buyers today concur that the experience a company offers is just as important equally their products or services.

And y'all better believe that customer service is at the center of providing an awesome experience.

As a effect, a good back up squad should be both proactive and productive when information technology comes to building relationships with customers—proactive, then that they can put fires out before customers get bellyaching, and productive, so that they can handle every customer question efficiently and make sure other customers aren't waiting too long.

To do this, though, your client service staff needs to know how to piece of work as a squad.

In this guide, we'll talk nigh:

  • The big-motion-picture show benefits of customer service teamwork
  • What "amend teamwork" means for your customers
  • seven ways to bring your customer service squad closer together
    • ane. Speed up and streamline advice betwixt reps
    • 2. Get aligned on your core beliefs and values
    • 3. Make your hiring and training procedure meaningful, memorable, and personal
    • 4. Review your client personas together
    • 5. Appoint a decision maker
    • 6. Brand customer information available to everyone
    • seven. Be open nearly your goals and objectives

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The big-picture benefits of customer service teamwork

Conventional wisdom tells u.s.a. that customer service is a one-on-ane kind of deal.

That is, a customer reaches out to you (or vice versa). Yous take a chat. Yous go to the root of their concerns. Rinse and repeat.

But customer service is more than of a team attempt than you might think—and information technology's ameliorate this way too. In fact, a customer service team not being in sync and making customers echo themselves over and over again is 1 of the most annoying things for someone calling your business:

When support reps are able to work together seamlessly, they ultimately make each other'southward jobs (and the jobs of everyone effectually them) so much easier. Here's a quick breakdown of the benefits of customer service teamwork.

You can resolve your customers' concerns faster

Not-so-fun fact: the boilerplate response time for a customer service query sits around 12 hours . (Non to be confused with its cousin, average handle time.)

Meanwhile, 75% of customers believe that it takes likewise long to accomplish a live customer service agent.

Both of these stats speak to the need for speedier, more than efficient customer service. (Non to mention it would really help your customer retention charge per unit.)

Reps who work together effectively volition have an easier time knowing exactly who they should hand customers off to based on their strengths. Teams tin likewise work together to resolve issues for customers rather than treat service as a solo human activity.

For example, a new rep should experience comfortable asking for assistance or handing off a problem that'southward beyond their scope of knowledge. Even experienced reps might get overwhelmed with their queues and need a hand—a team mentality ways that reps support each other to solve problems faster.

You provide a more than consistent customer service feel

Each one of your reps brings something different to the table in terms of their skillset and personality.

That said, the level of service provided past one rep shouldn't exist totally dissimilar from the adjacent—everyone on your team should exist able to provide a high level of customer service.

Permit's say you take a customer who'due south accustomed to working with a detail agent. That agent knows all about that customer's history with your concern, their preferences, their dislikes—maybe they've fifty-fifty chatted while on calls before and built upwards a friendly relationship. What happens when that agent is unavailable or leaves your company?

Customers today await a personal, caring client experience. Companies should strive to evangelize such an feel through all of their reps, not just a select few.

By setting processes and expectations equally a team, reps are encouraged to rise to the occasion and solve problems on behalf of every client.

You avoid stress and burnout within your team

Maybe the biggest do good of client service teamwork is making sure that no single rep is bogged down with tickets.

Because if y'all're working in customer service, you have a lot of responsibilities on your plate. A staggering 74% of call center agents say that they're going through or are on the verge of burnout.

Yikes. You don't want burnout turning into employees beingness disgruntled or leaving.

The more evenly and appropriately (more experienced reps get more hard questions) customer concerns are distributed, the more off-white it is for your team—and it keeps stress levels depression.

"Just what does amend teamwork mean for my customers?"

Good question!

Consider the nigh common complaints that come to mind when people aren't happy with the customer service they received.

Wearisome service. Impersonal experiences. Having to bounciness dorsum and forth betwixt reps.

Although we can't have happy customers 100% of the fourth dimension, effective teamwork helps accost all of the things higher up.

How?

Well, when work is evenly distributed, your squad is empowered to address a college book of service tickets. If a rep is overwhelmed with a particular customer or state of affairs, they should be able to request backup or have someone else pick upwards the slack to forbid a longer queue. This ways less waiting for your customers.

Not simply that, reps also won't experience rushed considering they'll have opportunities to have meaningful conversations with customers. Given that 70% of purchasing decisions are based on how people feel they're treated, personalized service is an absolute must. You have a improve shot of achieving this if everyone'due south working together and making sure that each person has fourth dimension to talk to every customer.

vii ways to bring your client service squad closer together

And so, what does client service teamwork actually look like in activity? The following 7 strategies are fair game for any support team looking to work in tandem. (Learn more about the difference between "customer back up" and "client service.")

1. Speed upwardly and streamline advice between reps

For starters, teams need to be able to communicate swiftly and effectively.

From off-the-cuff conversations to internal meetings, a good advice tool can help teams go answers instantly and address customer service concerns faster.

Tools similar RingCentral are standard for customer service teams who need to stay in touch. If you can become features like automated call routing between reps and video chats with file sharing (acquire more well-nigh automatic customer service), you'll make it easier for your client service team to work together and set them upwardly for success. Here's a look at how it works:

The other nice thing about having a alive-chat tool is that it can certificate all this advice and help reps hold themselves answerable.

For reference, here are a few teamwork scenarios in the workplace where a dedicated communication platform would aid you provide crawly customer service:

  • A rep needs to clarify a question with their director—with an instant messaging tool, you lot tin practise it in real-fourth dimension without putting your client on concur.
  • A customer wants to go from text or email direct to a phone call with the aforementioned rep without having to wait on concord all over once more.
  • A rep needs to paw off a customer last minute to someone else and wants to give the new rep a heads-up (especially useful if you're working remotely).
RingCentral messaging app

Having a squad messaging app lets customer service reps communicate with each other in real fourth dimension even when they're on a call. From sharing a file to asking for assistance when there's a backed-upward queue, they can get the information they demand without waiting hours or even days.

Keeping communication such every bit phone calls, messages, and texts in a single platform also ways that you don't take to toggle between windows and tabs. The finish result: more customers served—and serious time saved.

2. Get aligned on your cadre behavior and values

Popular quiz: what are your company'southward values when information technology comes to customer service?

Teams today hold themselves to high standards because expectations from customers are higher than ever .

It's not good enough just to answer questions. Looking at Zappos' core values , we have a neat example of how customer service teams can adopt a mission statement that's easy to sympathise:

Zappos Core Value: Deliver WOW Through Service

Whether or not yous prefer a "WOW" mentality, having a defined set of goals and values gives your team a vision to rally around and consider when talking to customers.

iii. Brand your hiring and grooming procedure meaningful, memorable, and personal

So much of coming together client expectations and delivering consistent service boils downwards to your approach to hiring and training.

If you can get your reps started on the right pes as shortly every bit they're hired, they're more than likely to adapt to the way you want to do customer service.

How exercise you make it happen, though?

Well, let'south look at an instance. The customer service squad at Zendesk advocates for a rep training program that's "80% uniform." In other words, reps get through a more often than not similar fix of exercises and scripts to foster a sense of familiarity for what effective service looks like.

Additionally, Zendesk also has new reps shadow more experienced reps—in addition to assigning them mentors.

This approach is brilliant—non only does information technology educate reps on what "good" service looks like, just it also helps new reps build relationships in the workplace.

4. Review your customer personas together

While customer and user personas are ofttimes associated with marketing and product teams, they're incredibly valuable to reps who literally work with customers day in and 24-hour interval out. (And if you really wanted to practise it right, you could adapt these marketing personas and add more details to them that relate to their preferences when it comes to customer service.)

To put together a persona, you need to break down the characteristics of your ideal customers. What are their hurting points and challenges?  What are their most common questions?

If y'all want to build up a kit of tools for your marketing stack, tools like Smaply and Hubspot's Make My Persona are perfect for putting together detailed personas you can share with new hires:

Detailed personas for new hires

Information technology's non uncommon for businesses to take multiple personas, by the way.

For instance, you might serve both an older and younger demographic who support your business only are interested in two separate products.

These dissimilar types of customers probably ask different types of questions—and need to be handled in different ways. Your older customers may prefer to communicate over the phone, while your average millennial may exist totally text-based and look responses ASAP.

Chances are, you already take a practiced idea of what your customer personas look like. Regardless, they're definitely worth writing out and reviewing with your team and then anybody's on the same page when handling customers.

5. Appoint a decision maker

This might seem obvious, but it'due south definitely worth mentioning.

Not all businesses have a formal chain of control when it comes to customer service.

For example, some larger companies might accept Tier 1 back up staff who answer basic questions via scripts while Tier 2 and iii agents are more than hands-on, tackling bug that require serious technical know-how.

If you don't have that level of structure for your small business organization , that's okay.

What matters is that your reps have become-to teammates to report to in case they have a question or are dealing with something that's beyond their scope of noesis. By default, this responsibility will likely be assigned to more than senior client service managers.

The idea hither is that your reps feel comfortable asking questions rather than trying to "wing information technology." This is again an surface area where a advice tool like RingCentral is useful, as it lets reps quickly inquire each other questions without wasting fourth dimension.

half dozen. Make customer information bachelor to everyone

The more information you lot have on manus for whatsoever given customer, the easier it is to address their questions.

For example, let'southward say someone hands off a customer to y'all that you've never talked to before. Without some sort of history or background data, it can exist hard to find your footing in the conversation.

That's a large reason why businesses are investing in CRM (customer relationship management) like never before. These platforms give you a bird's-center view of your customers, including their transaction history, notes from past conversations, and contact preferences (call up: phone, email, text). With a CRM, yous have a detailed history of your buyers and nobody ever feels like a stranger—fifty-fifty if it's your rep'due south showtime time talking to someone.

If your phone organisation or communication tool can integrate with a CRM similar Zoho or Salesforce, it'll make your life much easier. These integrations tin do annihilation from automatically logging interactions such as calls, texts, and emails, to filling out information in your customer profiles for you:

7. Be open about your goals and objectives

Finally, reps should regularly review their goals and more chiefly, understand how their individual functioning contributes to the business as a whole.

For example, yous may exist laser-focused on lowering customer turnover or scoring more positive feedback from buyers. Regularly reporting on these data points will assist tie your customer service efforts to physical metrics that encourage your team to better over time.

For reference, Xtension's gratuitous customer success report template is a great example of how to organize your customer service metrics and talking points:

Xtension's free customer success report template

What'south the about common reason for the entering calls yous're getting? What does turnover expect similar? These answers should exist discussed in the open with your team.

Of class, y'all need a way to get those numbers and metrics (Any service you're using for your business phone or communications should have that performance data for you lot.) For case, RingCentral's analytics portal includes quality of service reports and telephone call center metrics then you lot can see things like how quickly you're picking upwardly your customers' calls:

This can serve equally serious motivation for reps looking to improve their individual numbers—and to help the team, of course.

Ready to level upwardly your customer service teamwork?

Teamwork and client service go manus in paw, and both your reps and customers benefit when teams work together.

From resolving more than questions more apace to building stronger relationships with customers and colleagues, the upside of a team-based arroyo to client service is huge.

With the tips and tools above, you can go far easier for your team to provide the kind of client service that keeps people coming back—and that tin can make the deviation when you lot and your competitors are neck-in-neck.

Originally published Mar 05, 2020, updated Nov xviii, 2021