How to create a good culture in your startup’s customer support team
By culture, I don't mean any any type of culture, but the one that makes sure all customers feel like they're the only one that matters.
One thing is the vision and culture inside the whole company, but as your startup grows you need to define a culture for each of the departments, and in tech and especially in SaaS, it’s often only the customer service team that interacts with your users/clients/users on a daily basis.
Split the mission and the goals
The first thing you need to understand is that a goal is not the same as reaching for a vision or a purpose.
Goals are usually something with a set date, something specific. However, the overall mission is much bigger and more important to create a good culture.
“We'll revolutionize how small and medium business do HR”
That's a mission.
When the mission is clear, you need to start focus on the specifics — the goals.
To put it in perspective:
A mission gives you purpose to get out of bed and go to work. Daily goals gives you a feeling of achievement when you get into bed after a long day at the office.
Don't let your team forget that they're the first to see a possible fire burning in your startup. If they don't react to what they hear or see, it can evolve into a major issue, so don't let anyone think that they're not important to the company.
As customers get more demanding, customer service becomes more and more important.
Don't be afraid of humor
As customer service often is about helping frustrated customers, the mood of your team can often decide the results of the customer success.
Even though your dealing with serious business, don't avoid humor in your team, it might actually be one of the things keeping them going through the day and through hundreds of conversations with stressed customers.
It’s one thing arguing with your co-workers, where your word counts as much as anyone else’s. In CS, the customers word is law, and a big of humor can enlighten the everyday life of your team.
Some companies treat customer service like it's not a real part of the company, hiring external companies to do the job. But if you really want to educate your clients and customers, you need your CS executives connected with the business, as I mentioned earlier, they’re the first to see the flames of a potential fire.
Because of this, your CS team also need to know that they always can report concerning conversation about the product or the service to their supervisor. This should be repeated and rewarded every month or quarter.
Don't be industrial about the tasks, you're dealing with people, so giving each person autonomy to treat each customer the way they see fitting is important.
In the end it’s all about fixing the root cause and not only single problems. It’s fixing the root causes that drives success with CS, and if you have that in mind both the purpose and the efficiency will boost your teams’ morale.
Hire emphatic people
Before you build the culture you want in your team, you need to have the right people in place, and that all starts with hiring.
You need a team with feelings or at least empathy for the person on the “other side”. It really shines through, no matter if you're writing or talking on the phone, if the CS agent really cares.
And if you hire people that actually care about random customer, chances are that they'll often care a lot about their co-workers as well, which makes it much easier to create a good work environment and a good culture.
The sum it up for you, if you thought to yourself tl;dr:
- Have both a clear mission and concrete goals.
- Don’t be afraid of humor
- Make sure your team feels valued, and that they know how and why to report issues with the product.
- Fix the root cause of a problem.
- Hire emphatic people.
This post was written by Sindre Hopland, media manager itnig, with the help of Carles Roca-Font, customer support manager @camaloon.
