This blog post is the second part of our three-part series (the first part is here) on building and maintaining strong relationships with customers who prefer live chat. In the first part of our series, we focused on the pre-conversation efforts of setting yourself up for successful chat interactions with customers. For this part, we’ll focus on how the actual chat conversation impacts the customer relationship.

It’s no secret that more B2B (business-to-business) customers are using live chat than ever before. A simple way to get a response from a business without having to call (and often face hold times) or email, chat is a real-time form of communication many businesses leverage daily. But what happens when most, if not all, of your conversations with a customer happen over chat?

In Part 1 of this series, we introduced Mike Caracalas, leadership coach, executive consultant, and author of Ten Strategies to Get Better Results with People, who says that “Right now, you as leaders have only one option: Lead your way out of this challenge.” We continue our chat with Mike, talking about how to keep things fresh as the weeks go on and how to reacclimate to working “together” in the literal sense when our workplace doors open back up.

“Right now, you as leaders have only one option: Lead your way out of this challenge.” That’s what Mike Caracalas, leadership coach, executive consultant, and author of Ten Strategies to Get Better Results with People advises. He’s right. But leading in the best of times is difficult, and while many of the best leadership qualities and practices must apply these days more than ever, leaders must quickly adapt to an ongoing, very complex way of getting work done.

Especially in an era of remote work, it can be difficult to manage the morale of your customer support team. After all, a support agent isn’t a career choice for professionals who are afraid to talk to people. Support teams in the B2B (business-to-business) industry are often full of social personalities and employees who choose to work in an office environment where they can collaborate with colleagues to solve problems.

Creating a great support team isn’t something that happens in a day, a week, or even a month. It’s a long-term goal for many companies, and even when they get there, it’s important to sustain that excellence over time, particularly as the company grows. The pressure to maintain a high level of support exists because of the impact the support team has on their business’ reputation.

In an era where remote work has become commonplace, many customer success managers aren’t too happy. Why? Don’t the enjoy working from their home office? Sure, many professionals do, but their dissatisfaction is because the home office lifestyle inhibits their ability to meet face-to-face with customers. These in person interactions are the foundation of many excellent customer relationships, and it can sometimes be a challenge to build or sustain relationships without them.

For a variety of reasons, be it a cultural shift in the workplace or a major event like COVID-19, more companies have employees working remotely with little to no in-person interaction. And, for every time there's a remote employee, there's also someone who's tasked with managing a remote team. So, how can you keep a support team happy and working together when they are 10, 100, or even 1,000 miles apart? Here are 7 tips for managing a remote customer support team…

Everything is moving along nicely with your company and then – out of nowhere – an emergency pops up. For some companies it could be their software is having login issues, but one emergency many companies are working through currently is the emerging concern and uncertainty created by the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Events around the world are being postponed or cancelled, and it’s fundamentally changing the way people work and interact with each other.

As a customer, hearing the answer “go read this self-service article” from a support agent can be a frustrating experience. So many companies do self-service poorly that this type of response can feel like the agent is brushing the customer aside to focus on another issue. However, a great self-service experience can change this feeling of being ignored to one of feeling satisfied and empowered.