Almost 9 out of 10 senior business leaders in the UK see customer experience as their top-growth strategy, but only 1 in 3 feel prepared to address it. Our service desk team is a regular point of contact in our business between our customers and ourselves, so mobilising our team to be effective and drive customer satisfaction is crucial. 

Some common problems across service teams include poorly optimised processes or damaging habits that don’t support the company’s goals. A lack of appropriate tools to streamline performance or poor communications can also affect a team’s potential.  

It can be difficult to know where to start when facing one, or many of these challenges. A proactive approach we take is to break it down into 4 key concepts: people, processes, tools, and governance. This addresses all the essential areas to drive our team’s productivity, effectiveness, and morale, so our customer’s experience continues to improve. 

Start with the people 

Team dynamics are important, establishing a strong relationship goes a long way in getting your team’s support. We regularly sit down with our team members to observe how they work and identify pain points. We ask them questions about how they feel the team is working in order to decide our next steps. When establishing goals, we make them realistic and achievable for team leaders and fellow workers.  

Fostering and maintaining positive interactions within our team is a priority. We set meetings frequently with individuals to discuss personal development and support training to help them advance in their careers and boost their professional skills.  

Interpersonal skills are imperative to driving customer satisfaction. Prioritise engaging with customers and building rapport, then customer satisfaction and quality of service will inevitably increase.

Creating processes to support business goals 

Processes need to be fit for purpose to support business needs and goals. Introduce clear procedures with specific outcomes in mind. For example, we prioritise customer satisfaction, so we use our customers feedback both good and bad to highlight where our processes can improve and readjust them.  

High performing teams need a vision to motivate them to commit to common and individual goals. Giving teams a structure that provides a strong sense of direction and outlines expectations. It is equally important to create pathways for personal goals, so team members feel supported in their development journey. At razorblue, we set aside monthly days for our team members to work on their development plans, so they can keep progressing in their careers. 

Implementing the right tools 

Identify the right tools and determining if they are supporting business goals is key. Giving teams the right tools to streamline processes within the business will increase their effectiveness in dealing with customers and processing queries. 

We frequently look at which business applications are currently being used and think about what could be put into operation to improve both the customer and team’s experience. Within our business we implemented a “call forwarding system” that recognises a client’s number and forwards them to the same member of the team they have dealt with previously, to improve customer experience and make the team more efficient.  The goal here is integrating solutions and automating as many tasks as possible, to boost productivity and improve our team’s interactions with customers. 

Leading by example 

As leaders, we inspire others by demonstrating the behaviours we want to see in our team. Build trust within the team with honesty and integrity. Be committed and assertive with the decisions you make that work towards goals to reinforce expectations for team.

We work with clear business and team values and find ways operationalise them into teachable and observable behaviours that are used to train our employees and hold our team accountable.  

Our customer’s success is our success. By providing our team with the right processes and tools to help them stay engaged, improve their skills, and be more efficient, we can provide our customers with the highest quality service. A high-performing team equals better customer service and satisfaction.