Building a Rockstar Social Customer Service Team: How to Hire, Train and Measure
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Want to build a rockstar social customer care team or optimize your existing one? Learn how to effectively hire, train, measure and retain agents for the best social customer service program possible.
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Building a Rockstar Social Customer Service Team: How to Hire, Train and Measure
- 1. Building a Rockstar Social Customer Service Team How to Hire, Train and Measure
- 3. So social customer service agents: o must write well o be empathetic and resilient o have a high degree of affinity for the brand and customer service More people are tweeting at and messaging companies than ever before
- 4. Most companies base social care in the contact center o CS agents are trained to handle a variety of customer requests and resolve issues o Social care has to align with other contact center channels with regards to metrics and process o Most customer information and records are housed in the contact center
- 6. Where do you find social customer care agents? The best place to look for good candidates is internally o Internal agents should have mastered product and process knowledge before they move to handling care on social o If hiring an external candidate based on their experience, focus part of your interview on brand passion and culture
- 7. Interview tips and tricks 01 Give a written test to examine tweet & paragraph response style Get to know your candidate’s communication skills by getting snapshots of their writing sample on the spot. 02 Test for good judgement Can the candidate merge social cues with company policy when a customer makes a special request? 03 Look for clear thinking Can the candidate respond to unconventional events with creative and positive thinking?
- 8. Skills and characteristics 01 Look for tenured agents Start with tenured agents who already know your rules and policies for customer care. 02 Find committed customer fans Build a dedicated and company loving team who is ready to make deliberate and immediate impact on the customer experience. 03 Seek out good decision makers Make sure your team includes people who can exercise empathy and patience and have a keen awareness of problem solving.
- 10. Customer service agent pay today Average annual salary for an entry-level agent $28,000 or $13.50/hour Top agents can earn in excess of $41,000+ or $20/hour SOURCE: ICMI Report. (2015). Agent Apathy: The Root Cause of Poor Customer Service
- 11. Pay varies across industry and region
- 12. Social agents aren’t always paid more than other agents
- 14. Training is one of the biggest challenges faced by social care teams
- 15. Create a clear guide for social policies 01 Stay in the social channel If a customer engages with you on a social channel, continue the conversation there. 02 Keep it consistent Follow policies and deliver clear service. If you make an exception, do so on all channels. 03 Personalize the care Avoid the “we”. Even though social care is a public reflection of the brand as a whole, agents can personalize the experience by engaging in the “I”. 04 Establish a single source of knowledge Establish a shared resource or knowledge base with reference information that agents can access quickly.
- 16. Continually coach the team to success 01 Sharing and reviewing personal experiences and role play Have teams discuss personal customer service experiences and what frustrated them. 02 Engaging in group quality assurance sessions Review old, challenging customer posts in group sessions to establish best practices. 03 Setting team goals Motivate your team by setting individual and team goals.
- 17. Continually coach the team to success 04 Leveraging a built-in knowledge base Enable teams to easily find and access the right answers and resources with a built in knowledge base. 05 Having open internal communication channels Remind agents to reach out to one another via chat to ask questions and get advice on how to address specific issues. 06 Rewarding and praising good work Look for and recognize improvements in agent performance.
- 19. What has the most positive impact on agent success? Agent performance is directly dependent on having the right tools, incentives and leadership in place to support agents. SOURCE: ICMI Report. (2015). Agent Apathy: The Root Cause of Poor Customer Service
- 20. Focus on the right objectives 01 Outgoing messages Specifically, how many inquiries are being assigned to an agent and how are they being responded to by the agent? 02 Response times How long does it take, on average, to respond to an inquiry? 03 Contacts helped How many contacts is the agent helping during their shift? 04 Resolution times What are the handling and resolution times? 05 Customer satisfaction Is the customer satisfied with the experience?
- 21. Key Takeaways
- 23. Want to learn more? Watch the webinar here.
Editor's Notes
- Before we get into the meat of the webcast I wanted to take a quick moment to get us on the same baseline. A few months ago we conducted a Social Customer Service Survey that asked brands about their social customer service agents and how they structure and pay their teams. We had over 50 leading companies across the airline, retail, telco, transportation, quick serve restaurant and financial services industries respond to the survey. This data has been aggregated and is going to be presented throughout this webcast. This webinar is based off a detailed report that we will send to attendees after the webinar. We also have two polls that we’ll be conducting during the webcast, so please be sure to particpate. The data collection and results will be anonymous. Thank you in advance for your participation
- First, we all know this in some way, but the data shows it even more clearly. More people are tweeting at and messaging with companies on social today. The data you see on the right is from twitter showing the growth in customer service tweets from 2013 to 2015 across a variety of verticals. I suspect a lot of you are here today because the same is true for your companies. So social care is growing and as a result social customer service agents need a special set of capabilities, skills and training in order to be successful. At a high level this includes the: ability to write well, be empathetic and resilient, and have a high degree of affinity for the brand and customer service. Let’s take our first poll! Where is social customer service based in your company?
- [talk about poll results and how they compare to the report] Our survey revealed that 84% of respondents have social customer service based in the contact center. Within that response group about 36% have dedicated social care agents, while 48% have agents that handle multiple channels such as chat, email and social. 8% have social care based in the marketing team. Social initially started out as a marketing channel, but has moved towards being a one-on-one customer service and engagement channel that makes it well suited for the contact center Survey respondents stated that social care is based in the contact center for the following reasons: Customer service agents are trained to handle a variety of customer requests and often times know the products and services better than marketing social media managers. Customers want to talk to someone who can resolve their issues and not be transferred to other people on different channels. Social care has to align with other contact center channels with regards to metrics and process. Most customer information and records are housed in the contact center, making it easier for social agents to access the information they need at the moment they need it. We’ll continue the rest of the webcast from the POV of hiring social customer service agents that are based in the contact center.
- Now that we’ve aligned on the baseline, let’s talk about how to find and interview agents.
- The best place to look for social customer service candidates is internally. Our survey found that a majority of companies recruit and hire social agents from within the cadre of existing agents. If you’re hiring internally, culture and brand knowledge likely already exist, so spend more time making sure their skills are up to your team’s standards. Agents at companies like Delta Air Lines, Uber, Zappos, and others need to first be able to show they have mastered product and process knowledge before they move to handling care on social. For these companies social care is a role that agents aspire to join. If you are hiring an external candidate based on their experience, focus part of your interview on brand passion and culture. A pro tip from a customer of ours: encouraging current employees to refer friends for positions can improve the quality of applicants and boost long term employee morale, so if it is a viable option for your company consider it.
- Now that you’ve identified a candidate, how do you interview them? A written exam is not uncommon for many contact center jobs, but this must be modified to fit the medium of social interactions. While some people are excellent and witty writers, not everyone types the same way they write. So, let’s cover some best practices from our survey on how to hire the right candidates: Give a writing test to examine the candidate’s tweet-style and paragraph response style Remember that responding on Twitter is different from Facebook as they have different character limitations, so keep these factors in mind. Get to know your candidate’s communication skills by getting snapshots of their writing sample on the spot. How do they manage customer care over refund requests in 140 characters? What does the conversation on fees look like in direct or private messages? Test for good judgement Can the candidate merge social cues with company policy when a customer makes a special request? How does the interviewee practice empathy with a customer whose baggage is lost? Is the candidate able to respond with measured thought to a frustrated VIP? Look for clear-thinking Can the candidate respond to unconventional events with creative and positive thinking? Is the candidate comfortable in the gray zone? Does he or she know what it takes to say “yes,” and know how to deliver “no”? Confidence and clear-headedness in moments of uncertainty are key attributes of a successful social customer service agent.
- You will also need to look for particular skills and characteristics when interviewing. Finding candidates that are passionate about your brand and customer service is the most important characteristic as they will need to show it publicly. Other than that, here are three other things that our respondants looked for: Tenured agents Start with tenured agents who already know your rules and policies for customer care. This group is can translate their customer service experience within the company to social thinking more seamlessly. Committed customer fans Build a dedicated and company-loving team who is ready to make deliberate and immediate impact on the customer experience. This team is passionate about social media and sees this channel as a means of engaging in personalized customer support. Good decision-makers Make sure your team includes people who can exercise empathy and patience, and have a keen awareness of problem solving. Quick thinking is definitely an important part of social care, but given that social care is public facing, good judgement is a necessity. Pro tip- introduce top candidates to your team members and leaders to see how they get along and get additional feedback. Finally, don’t hire a candidate who doesn’t make the cut – your job as a hiring manager and your brand’s reputation are on the line. Take time to be intentional about hiring the best person for the job and spend less time hiring their replacements every few months.
- We also asked survey respondants to share hourly rates for their social teams. But first, let’s look at the average salaries for comparisons sake. The average annual salary for an entry-level agent is $28,000, roughly $13.50 per hour. According to a 2015 report by ICMI, top paid agents can earn in excess of $20 per hour, or $41,000+ annually.
- The results were varied based on the size of the team and the industry, but the results were closely distributed between $12-15/hour, $15-18/hour, and more than $18/hour. We did run an analysis across industry to see if there were any differences there, but even those vertical analysis revealed a similar distribution. For example, all of our airline respondants showed a similar breakdown in hourly pay. Time for our second poll question. Do you pay social customer service agents more than other agents in the contact center?
- [Review poll results and compare to ours] We also asked companies if there is a difference in the pay between social care agents and other contact center agents, and 45% of respondents said that there is no difference. Nevertheless, 35% of respondents said they do pay social care team members more, as they require additional training and skills and social customer service is considered a promotion internally.
- In some ways this is the most important when it comes to getting agents off to the right start.
- 52% of respondents to Sparkcentral’s survey stated that ongoing mentoring and training of agents was one of the biggest challenges that faced their social care team. Respondants stated that agent retention and happiness is directly tied to ongoing coaching and training, so setting up such a process will be essential to your team’s success. Social customer service teams require channel specific training, as agents must be comfortable engaging with customers on public channels. Accordingly, 80% of respondents to the Sparkcentral survey said that social care team members received additional training over their contact center counterparts. Think about it - with phone calls, agents can get a sense of the caller’s tone and level of frustration and can adjust their approach as needed. With channels such as Twitter or Facebook, the agent must make assumptions based on the written words. Channel specific training enables them to understand customer expectations and deliver service accordingly.
- So, start by familiarizing agents on how to provide customer service on social channels. For example, what are the service level expectations on Twitter compared to Facebook or even phone calls? If agents have not used supported channels (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, etc.) before, educate them on the differences between them. Our customers encourage agents to establish their own accounts to understand how consumers typically use them. This is particularly important for new channels. This practice alone can help agents dramatically increase their understanding of the end customer experience on social and empower them respond to customers in relevant and time saving ways. You’ll also need to create a clear guide for social policies. Best practices include the following: Stay in the social channel If a customer engages with you on a social channel, continue the conversation there. So if a person contacts your company via Twitter, keep them on Twitter. Be sure to enable direct messaging capabilities so customers can choose a private channel if they prefer. Some companies like T-Mobile use a secure authentication capability in order to verify and authenticate customers on social securely. Don’t let technology limit how you offer care. Keep it consistent Follow policies and deliver clear service. If you make an exception, do so on all channels. Social care can be spontaneous and fun, but customers love consistency. Personalize the care Avoid the “we”. Even though social care is a public reflection of the brand as a whole, agents can personalize the experience by engaging in the “I”. Even signing off with an agent’s initials puts a real person behind the social message. Most experienced social customer service companies utilize this practice. Establish a single source of knowledge and information Establish a shared resource or knowledge base with reference information that agents can access quickly. List basic responses and links that can be copied and pasted (and customized), and encourage agents to create their own knowledge repositories. Customize standard best practices for different social channels as needed. Another pro tip from our survey: Pair trainees with more experience agents so they can learn firsthand how to work in your social customer service system as well as gain needed information to get up and running quickly. This way trainees can get feedback from their experienced counterparts in real time and make changes at the right moments.
- A key element to driving social agent success is continual and personalized coaching. Research by the Corporate Executive Board shows that customer service organizations that focus only on an initial training have lower performing agents compared to those that also place an emphasis on ongoing coaching. For example, start by reviewing outbound messages to establish best practices and do’s and don’ts for social. How are you responding to customers? How are they responding to you? Share examples of social media threads and conversations with new team members. Creating a coaching culture for social agents is imperative as some of the skills needed are more art than science, and having a process in place to continually guide agents leads to long-term retention. There are many definitions of coaching out there, but the one that aligns with our point of view best comes from The Effortless Experience (read it if you haven’t). In it, the authors describe coaching as: - Focused on improving future performance - Ongoing - Equally driven by the coach and coachee Tailored to an individual’s development needs With that in mind try and integrate coaching into daily work and focuse on identifying behaviors and skills in need of refinement. Coaching best practices include: Sharing and reviewing personal experiences and role play Have teams discuss personal customer service experiences and what frustrated them. Encourage them to begin using social care channels in their personal lives in order to see how others are doing it. Creating a personal connection to the channel in which agents work drives empathy for the customer. Role play sessions also enable them to test out new response styles to determine potential customer reactions. Engaging in group quality assurance sessions Review old, challenging customer posts in group sessions to establish best practices. Put agents in teams and ask them to create a variety of responses to share with other groups and have them evaluate the merits against a set of best practice criteria. Share examples of social media threads and conversations to build smarter engagement opportunities. By engaging the team in evaluating good and bad interactions, they become a part of determining what makes for the best quality of care. Setting team goals Motivate your team by setting individual and team goals. Rather than just focus on response rates, measure customer satisfaction along with general sentiment around social care. Teams that are involved in determining their goal setting are more committed to delivering on the outcomes.
- Leveraging a built-in knowledge base By having a knowledge base integrated into your social service platform, agents can easily find, access and send the right answers to customers. A well set up knowledge base can become an excellent means to quickly share information to any channel or team. Additionally, agents can contribute to it so best practices are always accessible to the whole team. Having open internal communication channels This may be the most important means of real-time coaching. Remind agents they can reach out to one another via a chat function to ask more experienced agents questions about how to best address specific issues. Additionally, coaches can use internal chat tools to work with remote teams and discuss pressing topics as they emerge. Rewarding and praising good work Look for and recognize improvements in agent performance. Agent happiness is correlated with management being vested in their growth and improvement, so don’t forget to focus on that as well. Really, the key to successful agent onboarding is to set them up with social customer service software that enables you to easily review their work and make suggestions for improvements. Pro tip: Have a way for team leads and coaches to review agent responses in real-time to help improve future performance.
- Before we review metrics to measure, let’s quickly look at what impacts agent performance and success. An ICMI report on Agent Apathy found that possessing the right tools to effectively perform in the position had the greatest positive impact on agent performance. Having a clear understanding of how their job contributes to business strategy and ongoing training and career development opportunities came in second and third, respectively. Agent performance is directly dependent on having the right tools, incentives and leadership in place to support agents.
- Measuring team performance can be difficult to standardize across different teams, but a good place to start is to match social customer service agent metrics to those in the rest of the contact center. This will help with optimizing team schedules and forecasting volume as social care grows. However, in order to set baselines that are attainable and realistic, it is essential that teams benchmark agent productivity against other social agents and not agents working in other channels. Metrics should be dependant upon your business objectives and the needs of the customer. Regardless, good starting points include first response time (this matters on social), handle and resolution time, volume handled per agent, customer satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores, are among some to consider. High-level metrics to track on an agent level include: Outgoing messages Specifically, how many inquiries are being assigned to an agent and how are they being responded to by the agent? Evaluating the number of outgoing messages is a key metric to track in order to assess agent productivity. Response times How long does it take, on average, to respond to an inquiry? Customers on social expect fast responses, which is one of the main reasons they reach out on these channels. While first response time is important, this metric needs to be evaluated in context with other metrics. It’s important that agents let customers know they have acknowledged the service request and are looking into it. Contacts helped How many contacts is the agent helping during their shift? Evaluating the number of contacts helped can help managers and team leads create accurate handle and resolution times. Resolution times What are the handling and resolution times? Team leads need to understand how quickly an issue is resolved by an agent along with how much time was needed. This way, they can better determine if additional coaching is needed, or perhaps a new software technology or process in order to improve resolution times. Customer satisfaction Is the customer satisfied with the experience? Fast response times and the number of contacts helped need to be compared to customer satisfaction rates around those service experiences. If the numbers look good, but the satisfaction rates are low, it may be an indication that the agent needs additional training. On the other hand, if CSAT rates are high, but the numbers appear lower than expected, you have more context into what metrics matter the most.
- Hire Look for candidates internally and have clear job requirements Give a writing test to examine the candidate’s tweet-style and paragraph response style Find committed customer fans who are good decision makers Pay Determine if being a social service rep is a promotion, and pay accordingly Establish clear performance based pay scales Train Train for the nuances of social channels and customer expectations Pair new social agents with experienced ones to offer one-on-one mentoring and coaching Establish a single source of knowledge and information for your agents Measure Start by evaluating the key drivers of agent performance internally and correct technology and process issues Match social service metrics with others in the contact center, but amend them to match the nuances of social engagement Establish internal benchmarks and evaluate agent performance in context with other metrics Retain Make coaching an ongoing part of the agent’s work Set team goals and engage in ongoing group quality assurance sessions Have internal open communication channels for agents and remember to reward and praise good work