Team Management, path to Excellence in Customer Supp & Serv

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In Customer Support & Services, team organization, skills, experience, knowledge are game changers.

It sounds natural and basic; so prioritize on your busy schedule and take good care of them. 

People is part of the big picture !!

To form a good team with experienced and skilled people takes time, especially when soft skills, maturity and experience have a considerable weight in the final result.

The ability to create the wow moments, the unexpected solution to a tough situation won’t be all in procedures; they will be on people’s skills and knowledge.

The ownership on very hard cases, where the world seems like working against, you don’t find in every corner.

The ability to move one entire organization to solve a customer issue is rare.

So, hiring well and valuing what you have will bring the excellence you are looking for.

They are the ones who will write procedures, create processes, develop tools, pass the knowledge to others and directly interface with your customers.

There are plenty of good sources of materials, books from several gurus about properly managing a team. 

The intention here is to emphasize some specific points which will make a big difference in Customer Support & Services:

· If you don’t know what you need from your team it is going to be difficult to get excellence levels from them. So, for each position you should list which skills and abilities you need. (use this list also to establish the hiring requirements). Then determine the balance between quantity and maturity/seniority necessary.

· Based on your goals, identify team gaps and produce action plans (for the team and individuals) to cover the gaps and keep monitoring (PDCA). Be creative and leave no gap without an action. 

· Be very disciplined on this matter, on top of the fact that you are raising the bar, your team will be motivated by a leader who is concerned in improving the team’s skills and performance.

· The team must be prepared to excel with customers.

· Make sure customer orientation is well developed on your requirements and plan. 

· Create internal forums of discussions to listen to their day-to-day experience and change whatever is needed when demonstrated necessary.

· Motivate internal collaboration. A team member supports each other and together there is no issue they can not address and solve.

· Have them to get close to the customer and to the production / engineering, so they will have the knowledge of all sides to help them judge the best actions.

· Prepare them to communicate well internally and with customers and suppliers. A big portion of support failures happen because there was a communication issue in one of these channels, either to understand or to make people understand.

· Establish KPIs (key performance indicators) and their targets together with the team. This will naturally create a sense of ownership with everyone. 

· From time to time, for example yearly, have an individual appraisal done. Try to assess the same requirements you established. Have each one to build their own plan to improve and grow and let them manage (thus will help building ownership to his own future). Be together with them whenever they need. Provide regular feedbacks. Do not label people based on the results, you might be loosing diamonds because they are not yet polished enough. 

· Recognise their efforts and their successes; celebrate small victories.

· Give them autonomy to operate. 

Manage the outcome remembering not to negatively criticise if a decision made was not the best. This is part of becoming more mature. Be a good coach and show the way. A one-to-one feedback will perfectly work and generic discussions in forums will spread the lessons learned.

· Give them proper tools and workplace. 

· Be always open to discuss issues and to listen to criticism.

· Allow a proper work-life balance if you are planning to have them for a longer term.

· Make sure your “walk the talk” has honesty, respect, ownership, care for each individual and focus on the results of the team and the company.

Important matters deserve serious approach and team management is certainly one of them.

Excellence in Customer Support & Services demands outstanding team management.

August 2019