As I’ve worked for many years in organizations before moving to consulting, I know how customer service managers put lot of energies into their job. They’re people and results oriented and also aware of organizations’ urgency to take take quick, brave decisions, in order to stay competitive. They won’t tell you though all what they need, so that’s where this article comes in.

Getting their team empowered

Many customer service managers ask for budget for omni-channel platforms to deliver support over different traditional and digital channels. In order though to deliver excellent customer experiences, they also need to change some things. Frequent examples are:

• Letting their agents have access to more, immediate information when dealing with customers to enable them fix issues. Otherwise they go with “…I can’t tell you now because such cases are handled by [name of department].” Therefore agents empowerment is essential to prevent both agents and customers frustration, thus to improve overall satisfaction. In fact as we’re all customers, we compare received responses by other companies/providers that are able instead to take ownership of our queries letting us save time and efforts.
• Improving internal communication whenever support agents actually need to exchange / get information by other departments. Otherwise here’s what sadly happens: incoming customer query > 1° agent fast response but just intermediate > then customer urges for a solution over same and/or further channels > 2° agent response trying to calm down customer and getting the information / solution > 3° agent final, late answer / solutions. Now take a break because I’ve got a question for you: if you had faced such a customer experience how much satisfied would you feel? I bet not much…

Coaching & training for digital up-skilling 

As conversations flow more and more over social media, live / video chat and messaging apps, smart customer service managers have realized that up-skilling is a priority for:

• Themselves – since also customer service managers need new, ad hoc competences, to successfully fulfill their digital role. Some of them need to set up Digital Customer Service road maps including goals, others to review and integrate metrics for digital support channels, other being able to get all relevant data and analytics by the omni-channel platform in order to take action upon them. [Untold need: 1-to-1 coaching]
• Their team – as even the most experienced agents are not able to manage online conversation to such diverse, digital channels. Those who underrate difference between channels, thus engagement rules, still make bad mistakes. Smart organizations instead are prioritizing their investments to turn their support agents into digital conversations specialists. [Untold need: guidelines and exercises led training].

Related: get to know the Digital Customer Service Personas© skill-set model.

Over to you

The common word for such customer service managers untold needs is ‘ASAP.’  In fact today if you want to stand out from competitors you need to consistently invest in Digital Customer Support. More than you used to do during the last 10 years. So here’s an important question for you in this interactive video: respond using text, audio or video.

Have great conversations.

Image credit: Unspalsh.com