It’s plain to see that your customer support team doesn’t buy into your company’s vision and mission — or they don’t act like it, at least. The thought of it troubles you.
As a business owner, you know full well how important it is for your team’s actions and mindsets to be consistent with your company’s goal. After all, if your customer support team isn’t aligned with your business’s creed, then you will never be able to establish a culture of unity and single-mindedness towards achieving the goals that you have set for your company.
As you call your customer support team for a brown-bag meeting, however, you are amazed at the kind of feedback that you’ve gotten from them.
Apparently, they were never against any of your goals. In fact, they found your goals to be meaningful, and reasonable.
The gap lies in how your message was not conveyed to them clearly.
All the while, they were using route A because they thought that’s where you wanted them to go, when in reality, you told them to use route B but they misunderstood your message.
Don’t you just hate it when your message doesn’t get across your team the way it’s supposed to? If you’ve had your fair share of this mishap and you’d like to prevent this happening again, then you might want to read the tips in this post.
#1. Regular huddles
Setting up a 10-minute huddle to remind your customer support team what their focus should be before they even start receiving or making calls should be good enough. You don’t have to extend your regular huddles into 1-hour meetings, however.
Also, by “regular huddles,” I’m talking about doing them every day. Considering how a customer service agents’ day is packed with frustrations and struggles, there’s a good chance they’ll forget what their goals are. That being said, it is imperative that you do your regular huddles every single day.
There are a plethora of benefits to be had during the regular huddles, not only will you be able to remind your customer support team of their goals, but you can also get feedback from them. It’s during these times when you can learn what your team’s roadblocks are so you can address them accordingly.
#2. Create a QA system that aligns your organization with your message
Integrate your goals or your message on your QA metrics.
For example, if your customer support team weren’t up selling your products in the past even though you told them to, then you need to add up selling as one of the key metrics when your supervisors start reviewing your team’s calls. That way, your team is always reminded of how crucial the responsibility of up selling is for them.
#3. Constant (yet reasonable) monitoring of your managers
When your leaders feel strongly about your message, they will push their team members to align to it every time. Their actions are going to be proactive, and they will even take the time to strategize just to make sure that their team members will also buy-in to your message.
While that sounds fantastic, you need to realize that the opposite is also true. If your leaders aren’t interested (maybe rebellious, even) in what your goals are, then they will never take the effort to align your customer support team to achieving it.
It’s because of this that you need to build a strong relationship with your leaders and continue to show them how much you value them. That way, you can win their loyalty and their team members as well. The last thing you want is to have a strong feeling of resentment between you (the owner of the company), and your managers who are hands on in directing your customer support team.
#4. Conduct seminars
When you conduct seminars on certain topics, it gives everyone in your company an impression of how much you value that topic.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say that you are bothered by how poorly your customer support team is performing. You know they aren’t doing such a great job since their customer satisfaction rating has plummeted.
To express to your team how strongly you want them to start performing, you can look for guest speakers or trainers who can conduct seminars about how to provide fantastic customer support.
Because of you — the owner of the company — had to bring in and pay for a speaker, it will send a strong message to everyone that you are dead serious about improving your customer support team’s satisfaction rating.
#5. Don’t overwhelm your team
When there is too much going on in your company, there is a good chance of your team getting overwhelmed with all the noise.
It’s in situations like these when your message can easily get diluted.
There are a couple of ways that you can prevent this from happening, however. You can create a priority list, stop your other managers from giving out too many directives, or you can reiterate your message to your team frequently.
#6. Use bulletin boards
For a lot of managers and business owners, bulletin boards are such a heaven sent. It’s a simple yet effective tool that you can use to communicate your message to your employees.
I mean, when you have a ginormous bulletin board at the entrance of your office, there’s no way your team would miss whatever message you’ll add on it.
To make this work; however, you need to ensure that your bulletin board isn’t filled with all sorts of notification. It needs to have clarity and focus — focus on your message, that is.
What’s next?
When your message doesn’t reach your team the way you intended it to be, you are bound to deal with a lot of firefighting. Of course, not only are these kinds of tasks frustrating, but they are downright counterproductive.
What are some tips that you can share to get your message across to your teams effectively? Please share them in the comments section below. Cheers!
Images: Author’s Own
