Why Remote Customer Service Teams Should Always Leverage Customer Feedback

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The connection between customers and support teams is vital to every business’s success. This has become especially important as companies have had to move to remote formats in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As employees have had to adjust to new working remote work, they have also had to address frustrated and angry consumers more often than normal.

While this may seem like something that teams will have to grin and bear, this can be an opportunity to leverage customer feedback. Though tensions may be running high, you can garner very useful information about what is most important to consumers. Leveraging this information can help you build smoother and more effective workflows for your team, and reduce stress.

To take full advantage of the information you receive, you have to be mindful of how clients are asked for feedback. Ensure that you are incentivizing the completion of client evaluations by building easy avenues for commentary, and putting the responses you receive to good use. This will give you tangible data that you can use to improve your business and customer experience.

Soliciting Customer Feedback

Soliciting customer feedback is a challenge in all industries. More often than not, reviews reflect either the best or the worst customer experiences and not much in between. As you gather more public reviews and data on customer experience, you can find what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Once you have found where you have opportunities for improvement, leverage this information to inform workflow, training, and communication changes. You can only do this effectively, however, if your feedback system is well designed. There are a few common formats to consider when building this part of your workflow.

Post-service surveys are the most common ways to request customer feedback. This especially true for teams that interact directly with customers, who can ask clients to fill out a survey after a call or interaction is completed. By building surveys into your website, improving representative workflow, or sending a follow-up email, you can make clients more likely to provide feedback.

Automating the survey process can also streamline your team’s workflow by cutting down on repetitive tasks. Consider focusing surveys on specific areas of service or tailoring them to the questions that the customer was asking. This can help make surveys feel like another part of the process for the customer, rather than an extra step that they have to take.

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A tried and true method of incentivizing engagement is offering a reward for completing surveys or leaving a review. The reward can be anything from a discount on their next transaction, or a small gift card either for your business or somewhere else. This can appeal to both a customer’s sense of loyalty to your brand, and provide them with a personal gain. All this data is useless, however, if you don’t leverage it properly.

Improving Customer Experience

Millennials make up the largest demographic in the economy right now, and they have some very specific preferences. You are dealing with a generation that remembers when the internet was new and who have come to expect a certain level of reactivity and ease of use.

Once you’ve tailored your surveys to their experience, make sure that you are asking questions about the responsiveness of your website, app, and contact methods. This can provide some telling information about whether or not you are fulfilling their needs.

Image: beekeeper.io

Improving customer service experience is more than having responsive and well-trained representatives. Rather, it’s about knowing what your clients are looking for and providing it to them before they ask for it. Use feedback to evaluate not only your customer satisfaction but their experience overall.

Be sure to address mobile accessibility, ease of access, and interactions with automated chatbots when soliciting information about their experience. This will improve the customer experience with all aspects of the company while helping you identify gaps in training for your team.

At the core of all of this data is the team that you have trained to handle both curious and dissatisfied customers. Take this moment to find out what the pain points are for your team, as well as your customers. New problems are appearing as remote access and ease of use become integral to consumer experiences, now more than ever.

Your team may need to know how to troubleshoot more advanced technical issues or training in how the product is functioning in a remote context. Looking at your customer experience in light of new challenges can help you understand the root of the problem and address it at an organizational level.

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Improving Your Team’s Workflow

Customer feedback can tell you a lot about your team, and the experience they are creating. People are experiencing high levels of stress because of the COVID-19 pandemic. When receiving negative feedback, take a moment to evaluate it in this new context, both for your client and your team.

Search for signals that you can highlight that will motivate your team while also identifying opportunities for improvement. When possible, discuss both individual and team successes, and solicit feedback from your team about how to better prepare them for any new obstacles.

When evaluating negative feedback, evaluate both the response of the customer and the customer service representative. Were the expectations of the representative reasonable? Was the team member trained for the problem raised? Do this before counting the experience against your team to find the root cause, and only then decide how to address the issue. With tensions high, you have to take a very human point of view when evaluating your team.

Businesses thrive on customer feedback. It is a powerful tool that can build a positive reputation and customer loyalty while highlighting areas of the business that need improvement.

Be sure to solicit feedback, search for the root cause of customer dissatisfaction, and support your team. By leveraging your feedback you can deliver an unparalleled customer experience and keep your employees happy and up to date.

Luke Smith
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