Customer Service Resolutions To Make You A Better Leader In 2020

It is easy for a leader in any type of business to become focused on sales and the revenue-generating parts of the business. This is natural, but it is also shortsighted and may actually be hindering aspects of your business that are most vital to your customers’ positive image of your company and the loyalty to your brand. 

The customer service and support part of any business is often seen as a department that can basically run itself as it just has to respond to questions, problems, issues, and perhaps provide troubleshooting support for customers. If leaders stop and think about that, customer service is really all of the pre and post-sales experience for the customer, and it should be a focus at an equal level with sales, service, and leadership development for the business. 

To step up to the plate in 2020 to become a top leader for all departments and employees in your company or business, here are three critical factors to implement in your customer service and support department. 

Provide Engaging and Educational Training

There is a lot of information on the importance of emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, effective communication, and even understanding how consumers behave that is important to the customer service department or team. 

Providing training for staff in these areas is a critical way to make all customer service staff more capable of responding to customers and dealing with issues in a customer-friendly way.

Coach and Mentor Customer Service Managers and Team Members

Coaching and mentoring are two invaluable options used in sales and service departments as well as in leadership development. Implementing managers as coaches and mentoring programs for new employees is a simple way to not only increase the performance of the customer service and support department but also to provide staff with the tools they need to continue their professional development. 

With both education and training, all members of the customer service and support team are more competent and confident in working with customers. They also have a better understanding of the role they play in the company’s success, which increases employee retention in an area that has historically high staff turnover in any industry.

Develop Decision Making Authority for Customer Service Team Members

A very effective trend with many of the top companies is to provide education and training to their customer service and support teams, and then also provide them with the autonomy to make decisions. 

This does require clear expectations and understanding of the levels of decision making possible, but it is an amazing way to build your brand and obtain high levels of customer ratings and feedback. 

When the customer service rep can make a decision to send a new product, process an immediate discount or authorize a return or service all on the spot, the customer is less frustrated, the employee feels great about their ability to help the customer, and the business leader can expect to see positive feedback about the brand.