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How to Foster Collaboration in Your Customer Support Team

collaboration-in-customer-support-team

One of the biggest element which contributes to the success of any organisation is Employee Collaboration”.

When a leader remains focused on understanding the needs and perspective of its team members, then the team thrives on working for the leader’s vision rather than pursuing selfish aims. Collaborative team mindset fosters the rise of best talents by providing them with a supportive and non-judgemental environment.

In fact, according to research conducted in 2016 found,

$82 million growth in profit was observed over a tenure of four-year by improving employee engagement.

Employee engagement and cooperation in the customer support teams becomes all the way more important as agents are burdened with a large number of customer complaints and queries daily.

All the team members are required to remain on the same page to maintain the uniformity of information, and this can only be achieved when the team works inclusively and cooperatively.

Teamwork requires effort investment of leader as well as the fellow members; for a leader, it is the effort to understand the needs of team, and for a team member, it is the effort to understand the vision of their leaders who are under constant pressure of hanging deadlines.

Here are some of the key ways through which contact centre managers can cultivate team collaboration in their team:

1. Communicate A Clear Vision with Its Expected Outcomes

team-objective

Discuss the company’s vision with your team members, if every member is aware of the bigger picture, then understanding the importance of the changes and efforts becomes a lot easier.

It also instils a sense of responsibility in the agents, making them more accountable for their work.

Along with the vision, also communicate the expected target to achieve the same, it gives the whole team a sense of urgency and makes every team member aligned with a single expectation.


2. Avoid Top-Down Decision-Making

In the contact centre environment it is the agents who are directly dealing with customers, so consulting, discussing and understanding the ground level reality plays a crucial role.

If you want to improve team collaboration, then it becomes imperative to include every team member in the discussion and ask for their contribution in the form of suggestions, ideas, and feedback.  Do not impose your decisions directly rather make an outline of all the prospects points and have a thorough discussion before jumping to the conclusion.

 Include every team member in the discussion and ask for their contribution in the form of suggestions, ideas, and feedback

Following a top-down approach depletes the enthusiasm of the team members making them feel less relevant whereas following a bottom-up approach gives priority to every team member’s opinion and experiences before finalising the decision.

 

3. Discover and Leverage Members Strengths

To leverage the diverse talent of your team, you should be well-versed with the strong and weak areas of your members. It will help you to take advantage of the right talent at the right time.

A person good at building relationship can help the team in handling customers, whereas a person good at creating strategy can help the team in tackling complex situations.

Understanding every member in-depth accelerates the collaboration in your team by a huge number and also is a win-win situation for both customers and contact centres.

Recommended Reading: Your Phone Has Moved To Cloud. Why Not Your Business?

 

4. Give Feedback in A Positive Tone and Language

As a team leader of your contact support team, your focus area should remain towards providing a quality customer experience, and it can only be achieved by continually refining your process and reviewing your agent’s performance.

Giving feedback ensures that your team members are constantly improving, but the most important thing which decides the acceptance of your feedback is the tone and language used while stating your feedback.

Using a positive tone in the feedback multiplies your team collaboration as people become receptive to suggestions and also alleviates the comfort level of your team with each other.

The most important thing which decides the acceptance of your feedback is the tone and language used while stating your feedback.

Resist giving feedback in an open environment instead set up a meeting in a closed room and invite your team members over a discussion. It adds trust in them and makes them less resistive to any change or suggestion.

 

5. Organise Team Bonding Activity

As the famous proverb says,

“All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”

Working tirelessly without breaks take a toll on employees productivity and innovation.

Taking a break from hectic work life and socialising time to time in the workplace helps you refresh and bond with colleagues in a better way. So, it becomes critical to keep hitting the refresh button in the form of recreational team bonding activities, such as outdoor games or short trips.

Socialising is an unbeatable approach towards creating a conducive environment in your team and workplace. When team members become comfortable with each other then inhibition of being judged gets reduced tremendously resulting in creative ideas coming onto the table.

 

6. Reward Individual and Team Efforts

reward

Striving to achieve awards as a team adds a sense of responsibility and team spirit in the members.

Apart from the team, it is also important to recognise and reward individual performers and contributors.  This keeps team members motivated to work as an individual as well as a team player making a perfect balance of collaboration in the team.

Awarding people’s efforts should always be among the priority areas of the company, as it constantly motivates people to strive.


7. Infuse Empathy in Your Teams

According to the Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella,

There are very beautiful lessons which could be learned from practising empathy at your workplace.

empathy

Empathy in a simple word is an ability to understand the feeling of others by putting yourself in their shoes, and no better place to practice it than your workplace. Understanding your team members before complaining/escalating issues creates a helping environment which prevents a lot of team clashes beforehand.

It opens up people’s mind into accepting each other’s opinion differences and perspectives. Your team becomes more receptive and respectful to each other.


8. Unity is Strength

To successfully run a large organisation or a small team, the foremost foundational base is to infuse the sense of unity and teamwork. Following the above-mentioned suggestions will not only help you to create a supportive and cheerful working environment, it will also help you to retain the best talents of your contact centers, as the cost to replace a highly- trained and effective employee can exceed 20 of their annual salary, which is a massive cost for a company.

Contact us at 1800-120-4132  to know more.

How are you fostering collaboration in your support team? Have we missed on any important employee engagement strategy? Comment below and let us and our readers know.

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