Customer Support Software Featured Articles

While it’s critical to ensure all employees are turning in their best performances on the job, with customer-facing employees, it can make or break the business. Customer support personnel such as sales people, tech support and contact center agents are the company’s frontline, and there are countless examples in the media of bad agent behavior recorded by customers and going viral, costing companies a great deal of customer goodwill.

Part of the recipe for building great customer-facing support teams is about leadership. Employees take their cues from managers, and employees who feel valued are more likely to become engaged with their jobs.

“Developing effective customer service leadership — leadership that coaxes great behaviors and performance from your customer-facing employees — is a key to creating a successful customer experience,” wrote Forbes’ Michah Solomon recently. “Once you’ve gotten the ball rolling by hiring employees with the right potential, you also need a specific leadership mindset and methodology to bring out that potential fully.”

Companies often hire employees because they have technical skills or knowledge. For customer-facing employees, this may not be enough. Effective leaders need to help their agents understand that they are the face of the company, and that their jobs are critical. Valued employees are more likely to value their own jobs and strive to improve their performance.

There’s another aspect to getting the most out of customer-facing employees: the best trained agents in the world with the most positive attitude cannot function without the right tools, particularly in the contact center. The right customer support software will provide agents with all the access they require – and quickly – to an integrated knowledgebase they can use to ensure they’re giving customers the right answers. This includes past customer transactions, billing and shipping information, well-crafted but flexible scripts, customer relationship management and sales information, and accurate product and service information.

The goal is to make the experience more personal and positive, which is something customers demand today. Many businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors with nothing more than the quality of the customer support experience they hand out. Offering a sub-par customer experience is a quick way to induce customers to flee. Disjointed, poorly integrated systems, siloed databases and slow networks can all contribute to roadblocks that prevent the delivery of excellent customer support.

Solutions providers such as TeamSupport offer cloud-based customer support software that provides companies with cost-effective and flexible options for improving the quality of service they offer. These solutions boost the ability of companies’ support teams to communicate, collaborate and serve customers better. It’s a way to complete the triangle of people, leadership and solutions, positioning companies to succeed in a more demanding customer support environment.