How to Empower Your Team to

Deliver Great Customer Service

Success
  Snigdha Patel
Updated August 27th, 2020
Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Business strategies have certainly evolved but the core element of achieving
customer satisfaction will never change i.e. delivering great customer service.
According to Microsoft, “54% of consumers say that they have higher
customer service expectations than they earlier.”

The secret to providing excellent support is to empower customer service

teams and employees. Hence, for the empowerment of customer service
success, you need to focus on two P’s. They are:

 People – People refer to the customer support team that interacts and
engages with customers on behalf of your company.
 Process – Process refers to the understanding of work within the
company, which is an ongoing mechanism.
Customer service widely differs industry wise. In regards to that, the approach
alters but what remains unchanged is not to miss out a single chance to
delight your customers. Happy customers choose to retain your business and
have a higher lifetime value (LTV).

You can read more about how other brands have delivered excellent
customer service.

H2 – What is customer service

empowerment?
Empowerment of customer service can be defined as authorizing your support
representatives to make real time decisions in favor of the customer. It is
critically important for organizations to empower agents to go the extra mile to
deliver a great customer experience.

Businesses adopting employee empowerment strategies can engage

customers better and boost their satisfaction. Higher satisfaction has an
impact on customer retention rates and brand credibility.

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Why empowering employees is the pillar for
customer service?
Empowering employees means to give them the authority, right technology,
systems and freedom to go the extra mile to make customers happy.
Empowering customer service teams requires thorough training of employees
to identify and act on the opportunities to enhance the quality of support.

The key benefits of empowering your employees are as follows:

 The employees have complete freedom and knowledge to handle

customer’s queries independently. They have ownership to make
customers happy.
 As a team, they can perform together. Thus, deliver superior customer
service and improve brand credibility.
 Employees’ feedback is directly aligned with the company objective.
The company’s mission and employee’s opinion are linked that makes
them valued.

Giving employees ownership for their own work will not only boost motivation
but also increase service quality, team productivity, and quick decision-
making.
10 key ways of empowering customer
service personnel to deliver quality service
Team management needs a clear understanding of the thing that your
success depends upon your employee’s success.  When your team has the
authority to make independent decisions, they make the best of every
opportunity of making customers satisfied by exceeding their expectations.

Let us discuss 10 practical ways to empower your customer service

employees for better outcomes.

1. Define employee engagement plan

To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.”  Doug Conant

An organization that encourages a well defined employee engagement plan

undoubtedly delivers superior customer service. As per CBI news, “44% of
businesses think improved employee engagement would lead to
retaining them better.”

Employee engagement plan includes how well the employees are engaged,
involved in the work process not because they are paid to be, but they are
emotionally connected with the organization.
 Source

Studies on employee engagement conclude that the emotional convergence

that develops between customers and employees leads in improving
customer experience.

Here are some ways to encourage employee engagement.

 Develop a pleasant work environment – You can build a work

environment to make your employees feel comfortable and happy. It
develops loyalty and encourages them to perform productively, which
translates into delivering effective customer service.
  Strengthen employee value – Making your employees an integral part
of the team and company gives them a sense of entitlement. Making
their presence valuable brings a huge difference and major contribution
to the company’s success.
 Allow work independently – After creating a comfortable aura at work
and improving the value of the employees, you need to allow them to
work independently so that they can show their outstanding
performance.
 Avoid micromanagement – Micromanagement has a negative
connotation that restricts freedom and affects work ambience. Do not
control your employees and let them enjoy their work.

2. Define internal processes

“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design,
manufacturing, layout, processes, and procedures.” Tom Peters

Having a defined process helps to structure your resources efficiently to have

the accountability of your team or individual agent. It also provides customers
the real value of using your solution. For that,  updated information should be
circulated across sales, support, and marketing teams.

Let say, you anticipate that the customer may not understand your product
well. So you can collaborate with your team to prepare informative tutorials or
how-to videos shared on your website or email them.

How can defining the internal process can help to empower the customer
service team?

 Escalate the issue to the right team– Not necessarily all the time the
issues will be support related. It might be shipping or billing issues, and
escalating it to the right team helps in delivering faster solutions.
 Typical response time – You need to define a response time for fixing
an issue or answering a query. For e.g set response time of minimum
15 mins to 2 days maximum, depending upon the problem.
  Resolving complaints – It should be well defined across the teams
that anyhow a complaint has to be closed within ‘x’ days. 
 Collect customer feedback – Ask your customers to provide feedback
about their experience after the service is delivered. 

Pro tip: Many businesses use internal communication tools to empower

customer service

3. Empower customer support team with

the right tools
One of the ways to empower customer service employees is by using the
appropriate tools for delivering better service. Deploying the right customer
service tools encourages customers to have better interaction with your brand.

Here are some customer service tools that can fulfill customer communication
objectives.
  Email helpdesk – Email is one of the oldest and most used tools by all
companies to reach out to their customers. Suggested tool – Zendesk
 Live chat – Live chat software provides instant assistance to your
visitors and customers across over website, mobile and messaging
apps to deliver superior customer service. Suggested tool – REVE Chat 
 Phone support – Phone is the most preferred and quickest way to
connect with your customers. Suggested tool – Aircall
 Customer feedback – Collecting customer feedback helps to know
your customer’s opinions about your product and services and improve
the brand image. Suggested tool – Qualtrics

The above tools not only empower customer support but also improves team
productivity.

4. Measure your employee performance

Productive employees are lifelines for every business. But how do you
measure your employee performance levels? Every company should
continually monitor and evaluate their employees. Here are some KPIs to
gauge your employee’s efficiency and performance.

 First response time: FCR is the time between the chat attempt made
by the customer to when it was responded by the support
representative.
 Chat surveys: A chat survey can quickly measure employee
performance and identify the issues. A positive response indicates your
employee performance is meeting or exceeding expectations.
 Average resolution time: It refers to the average time taken to fix the
issue or answer a query by the customer support agent after the
conversation begins.
 Total resolved conversations: These are the conversations that are
resolved successfully by the support executive from what was assigned.

From the above mentioned metrics, you can get a complete overview of the
employee performance and ensure that you have your hand on the pulse.
Evaluating employee performance should be carried out on an on-going basis
and encompass all areas of their work ethic and individual achievements. 

Here are some best practices to follow:

 Focus on employees’ effort and praise it. It encourages them to be more

productive.
 Earn trust from employees by being there through thick and thin.
 Celebrate important moments as a team, not yourself.
 Give enough room for your employees to grow.

Following the above tips helps to empower the customer service team and
foster loyalty tenacity in your employees.

5. Give ownership to your team

One of the best things you can do is give them the power to go the extra mile
and make your customers happy with a budget that matches the end result
you expect. After all, they will have the rights and authorities that you will give
them. You can empower your customer support team to make autonomous
decisions.

Best example to empower customer service team – Ritz

Carlton Hotels 

The slogan that Ritz-Carlton Group believes is – “the key to making

customer service visionary is team engagement.”
 Source

Ritz-Carlton’s commitment to excellent customer service is so focused that all

the employees have the authority to spend up to $2,000 per day to make their
guests happy with their service. 

Key takeaways:

 You can structure and incentivize your team so that your employees can
work independently to resolve customer queries keeping themselves on
their feet. 
 Empower your customer service reps by measuring the feedback
collected and total resolved queries that were assigned.

6. Engage with your customers in real time

Equipping your support team with live engagement tools is a great employee
empowerment strategy. Visual engagement tools such as video & voice chat
and co-browsing can be used to create an emotional connections between
customers and deliver a better experience to customers.

Allow your sales and support team to collaborate with your customers in real
time and deliver than an in-person experience with co-browsing software. You
can assist your customers with video chat in order to reduce response time
and boost customer satisfaction

How empowering the customer service team with customer

engagement helps your business?

 Educate and assist your customers with video chat and voice chat for
product demos or virtual training/support.
 Combine co-browsing with video chat to control your customer’s
browser and proactively guide them to the right direction.
 With video chat, guide your customers and offer solutions for quick
decision making by personalizing chat conversations. 
  Co-browsing solution provides real time assistance for sales, customer
service, product demos, and customer onboarding. It also helps your
customers and visitors on your website to fill up a form successfully.

7. Train your customer support team

regularly
Refining product understanding, training and emotional intelligence is an
important part of customer service. Providing better customer service training
tips to your team will certainly help polish ways of customer interaction to
deliver excellent customer experience.

You can conduct company wide training sessions and make it an ongoing
process across all departments. The training programs must be compulsory
and involve participation from top management to the employees. 

There are certain grounds that can be covered. They are as follows:

 Adequate product knowledge

 Time management skills
 Employee communication skills
 Patience and perseverance at the workplace
 Interpersonal skills
Empower your customer service team with thorough training about the work
process. Building certain goals for the team and employees can empower
customer service in a positive way. These goals motivate employees. You can
declare surprises to make your team put their best efforts to reach the goals.

 Special incentives or gift coupons for best-performing employee

 An employee of the month declaration backed with a cash prize and
appreciation letter

Such small things bring a big difference and certainly empowers customer
service.

8. Let seniors mentor the new customer

support employees
Mentoring by seniors at the workplace is a great way for teams to onboard
new employees seamlessly. 

But mentoring should not be restricted only for onboarding new employees.
While strong mentoring programs provide better support for new hires, it also
creates an open culture that encourages other teams and employees to
contribute their ideas for improving the company growth.

Mentoring by senior people in the workplace also encourages setting new

goals. 93% of the workers surveyed said goal setting is important to their
work performance, yet for some professionals, those discussions with
managers never happen.

Key benefits of mentoring at the workplace

 Increased knowledge transfer

 Better job satisfaction
 The motivation for professional development and accountability
 Improved employee retention

Those businesses that welcome mentoring by seniors are benefited from the
best training as it comprises experience and loyalty.

9. Focus on soft communication skills

Soft communication skills at the workplace are very important and a part of
company culture. Soft skills can be utilized to make a routine support
experience something that stays with a customer for a long time and helps
drive loyalty and satisfaction. 

Communicating politely with superiors, colleagues, and team members help

you to develop better grounds for success. At times, communicating with
customers includes challenging and complex conversations. Empowering your
support team with the soft skills that help to deliver effective solutions

Delighting the customer with humble conversations builds customer’s

confidence in your company.
Here are some key skills to empower customer service employees.

 Ensure your customers remember you positively – Avoid

responding passively to customer concerns and ensure that your team
knows all products and services inside out — including applications and
trends.
 Involve your customers in the solution process – Personally
involving your customers in the solution process gives them a sense of
being valued and the feeling of being taken seriously. 
 Try not to make your customer feel uneasy –  Customers should feel
positive in finding a solution to a similar problem themselves in the
future and reaching you out if support is needed.

10. Give your employees enough time

A new workplace certainly brings new things that an employee needs to adapt
to. For understanding the new products, services, work culture you generally
can give them enough time. 

Generally, this time includes:

 To learn all the products or services in details

 Enough time to experiment and get a better idea about the products
 To manage for getting better their personal affairs
 For understanding the work process

Giving time to the employee allows them to perform effectively that nurtures in
growth and productivity of the company. Not always you can please your
employees with other benefits but giving the benefit of time produces better
results for sure.

Final thoughts on how to empower

customer service team
When you make superior customer service as a mission of your company it is
easier to empower your customer service teams to deliver great service and
boost customer experience with every interaction. 

Providing the right customer service tools and maintaining transparency with
the company goals and critical information gives employees ownership of their
projects, as well as a voice. Ultimately, your employees will feel motivated to
provide a delightful customer experience!