Many of us are now working from home for the first time. In light of the global pandemic, companies have handed out laptops, closed down their offices and transitioned to being fully remote. It’s certainly not the ideal way to dip a toe into the remote workforce. However, for those of us that are lucky enough to have the opportunity, working from home means we can continue to support our customers and earn a living.
All of us are in the expectations business now, and with customer expectations reaching an all-time high, it’s up to companies to re-invent the wheel to stay relevant and engaged. But how do you identify the right channels to engage with your customers and how do you nail it the first time? That is always the burning question!
Managing a team remotely comes with its own set of pros and cons. If you’re managing a remote team for the first time, it’s easy to focus on the cons rather than the pros. You’re probably having a tough time staying on top of what everyone on your team is working on. In tandem, you’re most likely doing all you can to make sure that your team has everything they need to work conveniently.
We all know that knowledge is power. Having a colleague around, whose shoulder we could tap on and ask for help, is also something that is very powerful. However, the whole tap on the shoulder for help option hasn’t been available since most of us shifted to a work-from-home setup – the best alternative we have is reaching out to a teammate on our internal collaboration tools.
To deliver the perfect customer experience, activities such as creating efficient processes and workflows, quality management, planning shift schedules, etc. are absolutely critical. These come under the umbrella of customer service operations, a core capability that helps scale and improve the level of customer support offered by your company. So who ensures support operation tasks are ideated and executed well so that your customer service standards do not drop?
Have you ever wondered what keeps you motivated at work? Is it a word of appreciation from a colleague? Healthy competition between you and your teammates? Or a coffee-break that you spend catching up on a game or just getting a breather? Motivating factors like these work best in an office environment. However, things are different when you’re working from home.
When you order something on e-commerce sites like Amazon or order food online, tracking your delivery is very seamless. It shows they have a field service management software in place, enabling you to track everything within your app. Reaching out to field service technicians like electricians and plumbers also involves managing and planning field service.
Even with the world in a state of flux, businesses have to continue serving customers, and support teams have to adapt to their new environment. But making the transition from working together in the office to remote support can be a tricky affair. We understand completely because we at Freshworks are in the same boat.
For companies in competitive markets, customer support is a key differentiator. In fact, it can be one of the key reasons a customer decides to renew or churn. But with customer expectations higher than ever, and modern support no longer involving only simple, repeated questions, your front line is often dealing with a high volume of tickets across multiple channels that involve product and process complexity.
As organizations continue to settle into working remotely due to the ongoing crisis, customer service is under strain to deal with the rising volume of inquiries. Understandably, customers are looking for information on how the current situation affects the products and services they rely on. So how can self-service help companies reduce the burden on their agents and employees? To understand that, we had a conversation with Mr. Sagi Eliyahu, the CEO of KMS lighthouse.
