An Actionable Game Plan for Effective Support Teams

An Actionable Game Plan For Effective Support TeamsYour agents have a great deal to tell you about how to create a better support center, in every dimension ofyour operations - from morale and turnover to long-term strategic direction. Lets boil down this view of theworld into an actionable game plan for effective support, and how making your agents part of the processcan improve productivity, control costs, and lead to a much better customer experience. These four stepscan help you put this feedback into action:Step 1. Accomplish more by doing less. The past decades rapid increase in measurement, monitoring, andsupport processes have increased the visibility of a support manager, at a cost of becoming Big Brother andleading teams of adult employees who feel treated like children. Experiment with reducing the bandwidth ofbeing a support agent, and create an environment where most agents can play to their strengths withoutfear, and watch what happens to your performance, morale, and support culture.Step 2. Become a learning organization. Research is increasingly showing that "over-trainers" get betterresults in customer satisfaction, while building the professionalism of your organization. Seek ways to buildskills and incorporate more training, coaching and learning into the rhythm of your support operationsStep 3. Invest in the right tools. Enabling technologies increase productivity and job satisfaction. Many ofthese tools have become less expensive and more scalable than ever before, particularly with the growth ofcloud and SaaS applications. More important, the growing adoption of these tools means that notimplementing many of them risks putting your customer contact operation at a competitive disadvantage.Step 4. Leverage the voice of your agents. Over a generation ago, the management classic In Search ofExcellence preached the value of being close to people on the front line, maintaining that no one knew howto do a job better than the people doing it. Beyond getting valuable intelligence from your agents, there is aneven more subtle benefit to giving them a voice: it creates a culture of ownership that, in turn, can have apositive impact on morale, turnover, productivity, and overall customer satisfaction.Beyond these specific issues, consider organized ways to capture to voice of your agents in your regularstream of business. For example, have regular meetings designed to expose agents to the larger strategicissues, or build their input into future decisions. By leveraging this voice - which is, in turn, the voice of yourcustomer - you can truly become a customer-centric support operation that succeeds even better.Data reproduced from SupportIndustry.coms 2012 White Paper: Confessions of a Support Center Professional -7 Ways Expectations Differ From Reality 1 An Actionable Game Plan for Effective Support Teams, 2012

An Actionable Game Plan for Effective Support Teams

by GoToAssist on Aug 03, 2012

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An Actionable Game Plan for Effective Support Teams Document Transcript