How often do you meet your colleagues in person: once, twice a week or more rarely? If you manage a remote support team, especially a customer service one, you need time to have valuable conversations with them to maintain your finger on the pulse. As I know many managers complaining about not having enough time, I’m going to help you optimize it to getting your team engaged and proactive.

Strike a balance between different formats

The first thing I suggest you to focus on as a manager is having quality time with your customer service team on a regular basis: that means both in hybrid (aka ‘office and remote’) days. More specifically, make sure to schedule:

• Team meetings – to exchange updates with your people [e.g. on specific activities, ongoing projects, service KPIs evolution]. To make the best of your meetings, differentiate them in as per goals and team engagement. For example when it comes to quick updates have quick video meetings of 15-30 minutes. In case instead you need to discuss specific topics such as volume peaks or customer’s complaints schedule in person, longer meetings [45-60 minutes].
• 1-to-1 meetings – to have conversations with each person of your team. In fact it’s also crucial to have ‘private moments’ where you can 100% focus on listening and providing ad hoc feedbacks. If you’ve already built trust with your team, you can consolidate it during these 1-to-1 meetings creating a private, even safer environment to open themselves up with you.

💡 TIP: don’t rely on just one format or recipient: alternate team and 1-to-1’s, as well as video and in person meetings. I’ve learnt the importance in my previous corporate experience career and today as a consultant carrying out meetings with each client manager I work with.

Over to you

How is with your remote support team going? I’m asking you because team engagement or better – lack thereof – has become a pain point for many managers. They tell me that they need to find a new post pandemic balance both with their the team, and in terms of internal communication between each member. To help them overcome this issue I’ve designed my ‘Digital Customer Service Team’ 1-to-1 coaching plan, which also covers other useful key digital topic skills: learn more about it below. 👇

Got questions? Just drop me a line or send a voice message.

Have great conversations. 👊

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