Hints and Tips | | Published January 22, 2015

When it Comes to Customer Support, the More the Merrier!

In the past we’ve discussed reasons why Team Support is the best customer support app, especially for B2B companies. Collaboration is at the top of this list, since it lets many team members work together on the same problem. It also prevents confusion when it comes to helping customers as wires don’t get crossed and messes don’t get made when different customer support agents encounter the same customer.people

But if you’ve ever run into the downsides of collaboration – overlap, mistakes, confused customers – you may be wondering why you’d want to embrace too much collaboration in your customer support arena. Well, wonder no more.

Different Perspectives

We’ve all had that difficult case we just can’t crack. A customer calls or emails and you work on the problem for hours or even days without coming up with a solution. It can be one of the most frustrating things about working in the customer service industry. It makes you feel helpless.

However, you’ve probably also been in a situation where a fresh set of eyes made all the difference. One look from a coworker told them what the answer was and how you can fix everything for the customer. All it took was a different perspective on the issue.

We all come to each problem with a varied set of life experiences and specialties. Missing the solution to an issue doesn’t mean you’re a terrible rep; it simply means you didn’t have the right experience yet. When you collaborate, you get to tap into a vast amount of experience that could lead to the right solution much quicker than if you try to go it alone. And in the meantime, you add more knowledge to your arsenal. This is especially helpful for new support reps as it helps speed up the learning process by giving them access to all the collective knowledge of the support team (and others)!

Timeliness

Speaking of figuring out solutions quickly, one aspect of customer service that can always be improved is how fast you solve someone’s problem. The longer you keep the customer on the phone or waiting for an email, the more likely it is they’ll get irritated and say something they don’t mean. Or, worse, never work with your company again.

So timeliness is key. When you have more than one person looking at the notes for the problem, you’ll be able to come up with a valid solution much quicker. This will decrease the time you have to keep the customer waiting and gives them more time to enjoy your product.

Backup

If you had just one customer contact you each day, that would be ideal, wouldn’t it? You could spend all your time helping them with your full attention on their issue and you would never forget anything.

However, that’s not the way it works. You likely have a steady stream of customers calling or emailing you about various problems, and sometimes it’s hard to keep it all straight. If you happen to be the person who receives a piece of information that is needed later, forgetting it could literally cost you customers.

With collaborative customer support software like Team Support, a lot of that risk goes away. As soon as you enter the info into the notes for that customer, you know all your team members can also see it. This adds a level of security since they will also be apprised of that piece of information and may be able to retain it in the event of an emergency. At the very least, anyone can access it in the notes on the system.

What are some other ways it helps to have multiple team members on a customer service project?