The Top Customer Service Trends for 2023: As Remote and Hybrid Work Continues, the Cloud and AI Loom Large

The environment for a remote customer service agent is most often in a dedicated home office or workspace. Cloud-based software offers many advantages for call centers, including the ability to scale, manage and customize operations without the need for additional hardware. Provided your team has a strong internet connection, cloud-based software makes the transition that much easier. However, many companies continue to resist this work trend for various reasons. Some business owners may fear a lack of productivity in their employees, while others haven’t invested in teleconferencing and telework tech to support remote workers. Still, some businesses are making the necessary investments to support remote work.

It costs a lot of money and time to hire and onboard new employees, not to mention the blow to overall morale. This can be tied back to the point we made earlier about getting good equipment and tools for your staff. Having a reliable VoIP or remote call center provider can help reduce these answer times. Building rapport with every member of your team helps you gain a deeper understanding of who they are and what makes them “tick”. You will quickly pick up on subtle nuances in each employee, and in turn that will make you a more effective manager. At least once a year, you should try to host your remote employees for a few days.

FlexJobs Is SO Much More Than Just a Job Board

Similarly, if you don’t think you can successfully shortlist candidates to hire via a remote interview, you can’t really expect your new hires to provide excellent service to your customers under the same conditions. Your business might consider offering certain home-office provisions to ensure the transition to remote working is seamless and straightforward for anyone you hire. This could include office furniture, additional desktop screens, headsets, and desk lights, with someone coming on-site to check and install. To keep your knowledge base relevant, encourage your agents to update the company’s knowledge base or add new answers to foster a knowledge-sharing environment. Even the best and most independent employees may, from time-to-time, come across a question that requires a bit more research. If these employees work remotely, they can’t just stand up and come to their manager’s desk to seek help.

For example, calls can be made directly from your LiveAgent dashboard and are recorded for legal or training purposes. You can easily chat with clients and be on the phone with them at the same time. When it comes to a company’s financial performance, it’s all too easy to overemphasize the role of sales and marketing in the firm’s success. But I would argue that customer service is truly the differentiating factor between a company that fails and one that succeeds.

Remote employee management: How to avoid 11 common pitfalls

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all contact center agent jobs shifted to a work-from-home model. And now that the pandemic has basically come to an end, many of those jobs have returned to the office, but a large number of agents are expected to continue working remotely for a long time to come. Many employers require only a high school degree or equivalent, although a college degree may be required in some cases. Proficiency with computers and basic technology is usually a must to handle email, live chat, and other communication platforms. This is because the wavering economy is taking its toll on businesses everywhere. So, ensuring your customers are well-supported could make a difference in their loyalty.

That’s why it’s your job to build and improve the long-distance relationships within your remote team. You need to create a shared purpose and a sense of “virtual teamwork.” Even if they work offsite, your employees should have a sense of belonging. LiveAgent’s Automated Ticket Distribution system distributes tickets amongst your agents to make sure they have the optimal workload assigned. Easily define how many tickets your customer service representatives should receive, and in what intervals.

Deliver More Human Interactions: Pairing Customer Feedback Strategies With Messaging

By using platforms like Document360 or SharePoint, you can create a complete library of internal resources. One of the biggest challenges companies face is ensuring a seamless cumulative experience across multiple touchpoints. A remote worker cannot afford to leave chat support in the middle and ask the customer to call a customer service representative, who will then direct the call to another senior representative for answers. A customer service personnel is not alone when it comes to handling customer queries, and it should not be that way either.

Say we’ve been getting lots of questions about refunds lately and I’ve got some new hires who don’t know the policy in and out yet. The biggest use case for CRM (customer relationship management) tools https://remotemode.net/blog/what-is-remote-customer-service-exactly/ is that they contain all that customer relationship information in one place. No matter what the “best customer service software” for your business looks like, one thing to look out for is integrations.