Customer service management is a term that describes the practices, strategies, and technologies that businesses use to track, manage and analyze customer interactions and data for a customer's life cycle to enhance customer relationships, promote customer retention, and boost sales.

As a manager of a customer service, your duties would include hiring, managing, training, monitoring performance, coming up with ways to enhance customer service, and, of course, inspiring your staff.

Here are 7 customer service management suggestions to get you started that will help you please both your employees and your consumers.

Recruit The Right People

Hiring personnel is the first step in managing customer service. Soft skills are very important in providing excellent customer service.

Yes, there are factors like a live chat agent's typing speed or coding experience. Such difficult technical abilities can be a tremendous advantage, other things being equal. But what would you do with a seasoned developer that is completely lacking in empathy and communication abilities?

Hence, you should have a set of soft skills for your customer service agents. The following skills should be possessed by them:

• A keen eye for detail
• Empathy
• Active hearing
• Positive outlook
• Settling disputes
• Patience
• Proactivity

How can we test these skills for the candidates? 

One of the most reliable ways to gauge applicants' soft skills is a good old job interview with the right questions. To confirm that a person has what it takes, there are extra tests you can perform.

For example, you may present a role-play scenario that calls for a particular response and see how prospective prospects manage it. Or maybe join them for a game of ping pong. Such unforeseen circumstances might be ideal for putting soft skills to the test in a more relaxed environment.

Define The Duties Of Customer Service

Depending on the size of a company, customer service can involve anything from responding to email inquiries to proactive onboarding to even upselling and cross-selling. Therefore, it is the responsibility of customer service management to outline all of the responsibilities that your team will be in charge of early on.

Of course, that means responding to all inquiries and requests from customers who contact us by phone, email, social media, or live chat. Your team should always put this as its top priority. If they reach inbox zero, though, what other options do they have?

The following extra tasks—many of which cross over with sales and marketing objectives—are typically handled by customer service:

• Assisting with onboarding new customers
• Proactive consumer outreach and assistance provision
• Establishing and managing a client knowledge base portal for self-help
• Keeping track of all typical requests and client comments
• Escalating complex problems to relevant departments
• Cross-selling or up-selling products
• Demonstrating products
• Monitoring client satisfaction and informing supervisors

The difficulty with five-star customer service management is that some of these activities might seem to belong in the sales or marketing departments. It is your responsibility to maintain constant contact not just with consumers but also with other departments. Customers should never even sense anything but excellent customer service from your company.

Organize Training

Customer service education frequently precedes staff hire. A customer service manager hires the right individual, trains them, and then terminates their employment. However, new fashions and technological advancements appear every day, so it's your responsibility to stay on top of them while also educating your staff.

Additionally, you can plan quarterly or annual internal customer service training. Role-playing games with uncertain or urgent situations where your team must come up with the best solution could be one way to do it.

Maintain Constant Contact With Other Departments

Making every department participate in the customer service department is the best thing you could do. No, I am not claiming that it distributes the final decision-making authority widely. Customer service must be a priority for the leaders of the CEO, accounts department, sales department, and all other significant departments.

You could develop more effective policies as a result, which would be advantageous. For instance, a sales team can assist you in dealing with consumers, and the budgeting team will provide this department with an appropriate budget. You could accomplish your goal by combining all of the departments in this way.

Choose The Right Technology Tools

Customer service cannot be provided without the appropriate instruments and their effective use. You can only choose the best tools based on your knowledge and experience.

You may manage your customer support team more effectively by using the following tools:

• StringeeX Omnichannel Contact Center is a tool for comprehensive omnichannel that brings a unified customer experience for better sales and customer service optimization. 
• Using a CRM (customer relationship management) solution, you may maintain a single database with all of your prospects' and leads' contact information. StringeeX provides basic CRM features, but your sales staff may prefer something more advanced like HubSpot, Zoho, or PipeDrive.
• A strong project management tool is essential. Try using programs like Notion, Fibery, or Evernote to manage your tasks, projects, and to-do lists all in one location. Developers frequently utilize Jira-style applications to keep track of issues, tasks, and bug reports.
• Any team collaboration software that your business decides on, such as Microsoft Teams, Chanty, Slack, etc. However, as a manager of the customer service, you should ensure that the team communication tool and the customer support technology of your choice is adequately integrated. Your business can integrate with Slack or other collaboration software and get all customer communications there as well as forward and tag peers.

Set Attainable KPIs For Customer Service

Your key duty is to monitor their performance once you've selected the best candidates, defined their roles, and provided them with the most effective resources. Setting KPIs (key performance indicators) for customer service that is both exact and realistic is essential.

Employees typically find KPIs to be somewhat scary. Because of this, it's crucial to build these demands on your own experience to make them realistic. A smart customer service manager is also aware that frontrunners can also be rewarded and motivated through KPIs.

The following are some of the most popular customer services KPIs that your business may want to monitor:

• Customer satisfaction rate 
• Average issue resolution time
• Average first response time
• The number of additional upsells and cross-sells
• The number of demos and their conversion rate
• The number of demos and their conversion rate

Create A Philosophy For Customer Service 

A customer service philosophy is a set of principles that you, as a manager, want your staff to share with clients.

Making sure that everyone understands how customer service should be provided at your business requires having a straightforward, well-organized customer service philosophy.

You can follow some elements mentioned below:

• Every client is the foundation of the business's future.
• Reputation is crucial.
• Quicker is always preferable.
• Say you're sorry if you make a mistake.
• Be as approachable as you can
• Maintain your clientele

To Sum Up 

When it comes to providing exceptional customer service, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, there is a tried-and-true method for developing a customer service procedure that gives your clients the impression that you have their backs.

To achieve success in customer service management, you should provide the customer service team with an effective tool to improve agent performance while enhancing customer experience.

StringeeX Ominichanel Contact Center can assist your agent throughout inbound/outbound calls, delivering exceptional service for your customer. Contact us for more information.