It’s no secret customer service plays a crucial role in your company’s success. Even with a good product or service, customers equally care about the experience you provide them.
Your customer support team plays a vital role when it comes to providing an excellent customer experience. Your customer support team isn’t just the face of the business, but they are interacting with and serving the needs of customers on a daily basis.
This is why it’s so important for businesses to keep their customer support team motivated. You want your team to continue to meet business goals, create a positive customer experience that leaves a lasting impression, and secure sales. Essentially, when your team is motivated, they will perform at their peak, which means businesses will see consistent positive results.
Let’s discuss 6 ways you can keep your support team motivated.
1. Understand What Motivates Your Team
One of the first and easiest things businesses can do to motivate their customer support team is to understand what drives each individual team member. The reality is, no two team members are the same. Everyone is motivated differently and it’s your job to find out how.
Look at it this way. Just as serving each customer is important, ensuring your team’s needs are met is important for optimal job performance. Additionally, understanding what motivates each team member is important because it allows service leaders to be attentive to each team member and understand who they are as an employee.
Sure, you know your customer support team will essentially align with your company’s mission but it’s also necessary to understand their individual purpose and what inspires them to come into work every day.
For instance, some team members may be intrinsically motivated and are more interested in reaching a new personal best on the job. On the other hand, some team members may be extrinsically motivated and are inspired by a reward system. Understanding this will help businesses meet the team’s needs so that the team is motivated to continue to meet customer needs.
2. Provide Opportunities for Growth
Most individuals desire growth and that desire is most notably seen when it comes to their career. A great deal of our time is spent at work, which means our work plays a considerable role in overall happiness.
This means keeping your customer support team motivated will require some motivation in the form of new growth opportunities. If you find that your team is less motivated than what they previously were, this might be due to them feeling stagnant. Without any growth opportunities, your team is likely to feel less inspired as they have learned all they can, they are no longer being challenged, and the job has become repetitive
To keep your customer support team motivated, think about creating new opportunities that can inspire them to get back engaged in their role. For instance, businesses can provide opportunities for employees to sharpen their skills and knowledge. This can be through things like training, conferences, and online courses.
3. Listen to your Team
Another way to motivate your customer support team is by showing them they are a valued member of the company. After all, your customer support team is the one mostly interacting with your customers, which means their voice matters.
When your team doesn’t feel heard, it demotivates them as they may feel their efforts don’t matter and they play an insignificant role in the company. Though your team won’t make any final decisions, asking for their input on certain things regarding the business will show them that their presence and contributions to the company matter.
This will certainly give your team members a sense of worth, and they are more likely to take pride in their work and not only feel like they need to but will desire to perform at their very best.
4. Share Customer Appreciation and Acknowledge Achievements
Customer service isn’t the easiest job to have. Between handling customer complaints and concerns and dealing with other job responsibilities, it’s easy for your team to often feel discouraged and unmotivated. One of the best ways to combat this is by sharing customers’ positive feedback and acknowledging achievements.
For starters, by sharing positive feedback from customers, you show team members how much of an impact their interactions with customers have. Sharing positive feedback will also motivate your customer support team to work harder so they can continue to drive positive results.
Along with this, businesses should acknowledge achievements because it shows you appreciate all their hard work. When a team member’s positive efforts are recognized, he will feel motivated to continue their high performance and will feel a sense of personal fulfillment and happiness.
You can acknowledge achievements simply by having an employee of the month or giving out gift cards for top-performing team members.
5. Promote Friendly Competition
Promoting a friendly competition among team members is certainly a great way to inspire your team members and motivate them to perform at their best.
Sometimes it takes placing a goal in front of your team to get them going again. Plus, having competition can create some fun in the workplace and help team members break away from the repetitiveness that often comes with their job responsibilities.
One idea is to split your customer support team into two groups and see who can get the most positive reviews from customers in a month. The group that wins receives a reward.
6. Have a Remote Team? Encourage Frequent Communication
If you have remote customer support team members, keeping them motivated to perform well can be difficult. It’s not uncommon for remote team members to feel isolated and left out of the loop, especially if they are not included in important discussions. This will ultimately make them feel like their contributions have little impact and will often result in team members doing the bare minimum effort.
To combat this, businesses need to focus on establishing strong internal communications with remote team members. Make it a priority to have routine video-calls with remote team members. These meetings give remote team members the chance to discuss any questions or concerns and allow service leaders to ask for important feedback and address any changes that may be ahead.
Keeping the line of communication open will make remote team members actually feel part of the team, and they will hold a higher sense of responsibility to perform at their best.
Effective customer service will always be central to business sustainability and success. Your customer support team members are key players when it comes to improving the customer experience. Because of this, you need to ensure your team stays motivated to ensure optimal performance.
GlowTouch provides result-driven solutions with proven ROI. We support critical aspects of your business including but not limited to welcome-onboarding, Tier 1, 2, and 3 technical support, and email and chat support.
