By now, it’s clear that the pandemic has forced businesses to pivot their offline strategies to a thriving online model. From conducting virtual demos to selling products via digital platforms, the business world has adapted to the remote work culture overnight.
That said, this shift in the work dynamics has left the customer service teams feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable. If you, too, are finding yourself at the short end of the stick, keep reading. In this blog, we’ll list five useful strategies that can help your CX team go remote seamlessly and sustainably.
Top-5 Tactics That Can Guide You in Your Remote Transition
1. Live Chat for Sales & Customer Support
“Using live chat increases sales conversions by 35%.”
One of the greatest setbacks of working remotely is the inability to assist customers 24×7 on a more personal and intimate level. Enter- a live chat feature, which allows you to engage with customers in a conversational manner.
You can think of this live chat functionality as a virtual guide that allows the brand to connect with visitors in real-time and instantly. Plus, you can qualify leads and nurture them round-the-clock and throughout the customer life cycle by collecting user information via 24×7 contact forms. Using ControlHippo you can share your WhatsApp chat with your sales and support team.
That’s not all. Live chat automation (think: chatbots) can boost sales and enhance the overall customer experience. One way they can achieve the latter is by empowering customers to self-serve via an in-depth and updated knowledge base. Plus, on the business side, teams can collaborate seamlessly by sharing files, launching video chats, starting audio chat or phone calls, screen-sharing, co-browsing, among others, at the click of a button.
Key takeaway: Using the right automation tool such as live chat can help you scale your business while providing individualized attention, from the comfort of your screen. In today’s remote-driven work culture, live chat has become a necessity.
2. Work towards Conserving Team Unity & Creativity
Working remotely has a huge impact on our mental health. In fact, a lot has been spoken about how working from home can lead to increased feelings of loneliness and isolation. Now, if your employees are unhappy, you can rest assured that the quality of service will get hampered, and your customers will feel dissatisfied with the service. Plus, your productivity levels are sure to take a dip. So, here are some measures you can take to keep the work culture customer- as well as employee-focused:
- Keep the joy of spontaneous interactions alive by using video conferencing tools to ‘catch up’ with team members (also known as virtual meet-ups). You could initiate fun remote team-building activities such as team lunches, pizza parties, Zumba sessions, etc. to drive team bonding and engagement:
- Encourage open and honest communication among team members to boost their morale.
- Appreciate employees as often as needed with heartfelt gestures and mindful incentives.
- Create a more friendly work atmosphere and a healthy team spirit where agents are given more freedom to make decisions and troubleshoot.
- Build a useful repository or resource center – complete with documents, educational videos, and detailed protocols – that talks about the diverse issues employees as well as customers may face and how the agents can tackle the same. As you can imagine, this streamlines knowledge management and makes everyone’s life easier.
- Additionally, consider collaborating with corporate travel agents to organize occasional team retreats or off-site events, providing employees with opportunities to bond in person and rejuvenate their spirits, ultimately fostering a stronger sense of camaraderie and teamwork.
Key takeaway: When it comes to working remotely, most CX leaders focus on the technology part of it, without paying attention to the mental needs of their employees and the physical demands of the work culture – a big mistake. If you wish to boost your sales and user happiness, you need to ensure that your employees are happy with this ‘new normal’ and can reach out to you as needed.
3. Invest in Useful Productivity Tools
Working remotely can be challenging – from collaborating with team members to keeping a sense of ‘who sent what’ email, the sheer volume of interactions on diverse channels can be frustrating.
This is where you need project management tools that come equipped with a shared inbox that allows you to view files and mails from a centralized place on the Cloud, and offer easy-to-use screen-sharing capabilities if any team member gets stuck on the job.
Key takeaway: To get a decent head start to your day, you need the right tools at hand – from Cloud-based software that enable seamless collaboration to automated communication tools including call center software and social networking platforms such as live chat, trigger SMS, email, Slack, Nuovoteam, etc., there are multiple software and channels that can take off some of the team’s workload and drive agent communication as well as productivity.
4. Collect Feedback from Customers, Employees, & Partners
As is said for customers, collecting feedback is equally important within your organization to understand what’s working and what’s not. Clearly, not everyone will be comfortable with working remotely from the get-go. You can make things simpler by asking employees and other stakeholders about what their pain points might be and working towards addressing their queries. From gauging their work satisfaction rate to understanding which automated tools might be working best, there are a lot of territories you can cover.
Handy tip: You don’t always have to talk shop with your team. Mix things up a little by sharing personal news and engage in casual small talk to blow off some steam.
Key takeaway: The importance of collecting customer as well as employee feedback cannot be stated enough. By identifying the key roadblocks, you can look at establishing relevant solutions in place and tackle issues from the roots.
5. Set & Monitor Customer-Centric KPIs to Track Growth
If you don’t measure the structure, processes, and service in place, you won’t know where your team is going wrong with respect to CX – be it lower conversion rates, poor customer feedback, low employee morale, among other issues.
In other words, you need to create a crystal-clear road map for analyzing important customer metrics such as:
- Customer retention level: Focus on retaining existing customers in addition to acquiring new ones by building a positive brand image, consider putting your logo everywhere and using business cards to appear more professional.
- Average response time: The faster and more effective your service, the happier your customers will be. This is where you can leverage automated replies for speedy, efficient responses.
- Customer satisfaction score: As a golden rule, make sure to roll out satisfaction surveys after a chat. You can send personalized follow-up emails or send surveys in-app.
- Net promoter score: NPS can help you gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. The higher your net promoter score, the more profitable the brand.
- Keep track of incoming queries: At all times, it is essential that you measure the volume of chats, calls, and requests in addition to monitoring your team’s performance.
Key takeaway: Measuring customer metrics is the next logical step in your CX journey to understand the effectiveness of all the CX measures in place. After all, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. In addition to monitoring the KPIs mentioned above, you can also monitor call reports, analyze the time spent on each call, work on inbound-outbound analytics, and listen to call recordings for quality assurance.
Final Thoughts
With a heady combination of the right CX tools, measures, strategies, and mindset in place, working remotely can become a cake-walk (contrary to popular opinion). So try these tried-and-tested tricks and work on the fly like its second nature. To wrap up:
- Use live chat for improved sales and enhanced customer support.
- Work towards conserving team culture and creativity.
- Invest in useful productivity tools to drive efficiency.
- Collect feedback from customers, employees, and partners on a consistent basis.
- Monitor customer-centric KPIs to track growth.
What’s your recipe for success when it comes to remote working? We’re all ears.
