Top 3 tips to create a strong customer service team
Kristina: What should employees be doing to better aid customers?
Johnny Hou, CEO & Founder, NZXT: The biggest thing employees, or any business owner, can do is to listen and understand what a customer is telling you. Empathy goes a long way towards understanding the customer pain points, and in turn, remedying them holistically. It also helps to retain customers and to attract new ones. In an era of ubiquitous, public feedback, nobody can afford a reputation for poor customer service. Brands who take the time to listen and handle complaints with empathy are taking the extra step to show they truly care.
Kristina: What is the importance of a customer-first mindset?
Johnny: You never know how influential any one customer can be. So a customer-first mindset delivers happiness throughout the entire relationship, and a vocal minority will tell all their friends. Thinking customer-first keeps the organization proactive in solving problems, and anticipating new services and product offerings that delight customers.
Kristina: What are your top 3 tips for creating a successful customer service team?
Johnny: Build a team of ’empathisers’ who are effective communicators. In an ideal world, whether you run a startup or a large enterprise, customer service representatives must be communications professionals who represent your target customers. This helps the reps understand and empathize with the customer’s pain points which should result in aiding customers more effectively. Additionally, ensure your reps are polite, helpful, engaging while knowing your product and customer needs well.
Build processes to understand the performance of your customer service teams, and set a baseline for delivering customer success. Many companies will only measure the quantity of resolves and stop there. But that only pressures reps to get off the phone (or more often today, out of the chat window) quickly. Time to response, quality of discussion, repeat complaints, time to resolve, and of course, satisfaction and repeat purchases from the customer are all important metrics for a successful customer service operation.
Make sure your customer service team knows you care about them. Sometimes it can feel thankless to work with frustrated customers all day. As a brand leader or executive, you want your employees to know you care about their feedback. They are a direct line to the consumers, after all, and this will empower the team to better help the customer. The same way that you would ask customers for feedback, ask your representatives what your company can be doing better. The goal should be to create a safe, fun and enjoyable place to work, where people want to show up every day and help solve problems.
