Owning a business comes with ups and downs but how you turn your downs into ups is what matters. Having a small team for customer service comes with a lot of challenges. Handling customer grievances queries while also making efforts to give the best to your customers is a task. You cannot fail in either of these aspects as customer feedback and reviews are what fetch you, new customers. Falling short on either of these aspects might result in a huge loss. In today’s time, a customer has a voice over the internet and your reputation can be ruined in a jiffy. Your customer service team has to be on its toes to keep the brand image and customer care in check. Do not worry if you have a small customer service team. Given below are the ways, how you can handle customer service like a pro with a small-sized team:
Use the right tools
Utilizing the right tools to handle customer service is a practice often underestimated. You need to and you must use the right tools to facilitate your customer support team. Having tools that give fast resolution to problems and tools that are easy to access by your agents must be there. If you still rely solely on g-mail then no doubt you are failing miserably at providing your customers the best service.
A small customer service team is not a drawback if you know what all tools your agents might need. A small-sized team is rather agile and proactive. Tools like chatbots and preset messages can be used for handling conversations with customers.
IVR technology toll free number, call center software and call management systems can be utilized for effective communication and managing call flow. Bringing in the right tools to use for customer service will not only facilitate your small customer service team but also make services better for your customers. Eventually, making your customers happier.
Practice clear communication
Practicing clear communication is indeed an effective way to handle customer service be it with large or small customer service teams. If you keep things crystal clear with your customers it will reduce the number of follow-up calls. Maintaining ambiguity and trying to gaslight your customers will only increase your team’s burden.
Make sure clarity of communication is kept as the paramount of customer care. If you do not have a solution to a problem instantly or you need time to figure it out you must clearly ask your customer to wait and you will get in touch with them rather than trying to turn the conversation around and wasting time. The clearer the communication the better the customer service and the more the reduced number of follow-up calls.
Plan and Prioritise
There might be circumstances where you will need to focus on which clients to manage first. Maybe their issue is much more urgent or you realize they have recently held up quite a while to be attended to. Regardless of what the explanation might be, your team should have the option to know which issues should be managed first.
Even though most of such circumstances are handled but in-case something comes up all of a sudden your team must know how to prioritize and plan accordingly. Planning your work might seem a little time-consuming but it’s not a futile practice. It will help in time management and increase your team’s productivity.
Fixed response time
You must have a guide for your team in which the response time for different kinds of customer issues should be mentioned. For example, urgent requests must be taken care of within 10 minutes while others can wait. Fixing response time will make things and the process more organized giving your team adequate time to manage their work. If you have a small customer service team do not burden them, I repeat do not. Your team works really hard to do right by their job. You must understand that they are not machines and they need a break too. Set fixed response time and make sure that your team members also get small breaks in between.
Having a small customer service team definitely brings in a lot of challenges but they can be overcome by using the right techniques, trust, and constant support.
