Support Teams Should Have a Seat at the ‘Adult’ Table

Support teams should have a seat at “Adult” table means “customer support team should be given importance and given place at upper management team.” This is important so as to provide best services to customer.

Generally, it has been observed that customer support team is seen as just a sub-standard team of the organization. People take them for granted. They are taken as just customer entertainer, and are not given much importance. They are being considered as cost center and not revenue center. In most of the organizations, customer support team is not heard off; there is no system of taking feedback and suggestions from them. But the truth is that they are the most important part of the organization.

Customer Support team is one of the significant teams of any business house and business houses are required to understand this fact. It should be understood that support team can prove to be great contributor to organization’s success and can be a valuable partner, if taken seriously. Support team should be given place in decision making of the organization as customer service representatives can bring a lot of positive result to organization.

Support team as the name suggest is the main point of contact of customer. They are the ones who get to know and understand customers’ needs and expectations. Also, they are ones who get to know where customer is facing issues and what are the problems’ of customers and what is making them unhappy. This team comes to know the original feelings of customers as most of the time they are the one to get contacted by the customer. Business unit must think about this and create a place for support team at upper management level.

The member of support teams should be given right to raise their voice about customer issues. They should be encouraged to bring to notice, of upper management, the issues customers are facing, feedbacks and suggestions received from them. This will not only yield positive result for the organization, but will be beneficial for different parties involved (company, support team members, customers) in many ways.

Providing seat to support team at “adult” table and involving support team members’ in decision making will help company in various ways as mentioned below:

Benefit for Customer Support Team:

Involving members’ of customer support team in decision making will be beneficial in following manner:

• First and most significant result will be that this will boost the morale of the employees of support team. This in turn will encourage them to work with more dedication and honesty.
• When involved in decision making, they will be clearer with the objectives of the organization as to what an organization aims to achieve and resources available to reach the objective. With this, they will be at better position to respond to customer. They can decide what all can be committed to customer, what can be done to make satisfy a customer.
• They can rest assured that they are integral part of the company; they are being heard and can approach top authority whenever they need.
• Will be able to earn name for them by providing valuable feedback and suggestions.
• Can get involved in work of other departments by helping them. For example – can help product development team by suggesting improvement in product, as they get to know the exact feedback from customer.

Benefit for Customer:

Customer will have many benefits which are mentioned below:

• Getting prompt reply: As when support team members will be better aware about the objectives and resources of the company, they will be able to help customer quickly. This is because they will not require consulting senior people every time.
• Enhanced level of satisfaction can be achieved.
• They can get improvised product and services by providing exact information about drawbacks.

Benefit for Company:

Though there are benefits to various parties, but the major beneficiary is the business unit itself. This is because motivated employees, happy customers will ultimately contribute to increased profits for the company.

• Top management will come to know about the exact requirements of the customers in the form of feedback.
• Enhanced customer satisfaction will increase positive word of mouth publicity.
• Increase customer retention.
• Increased customer retention will save company’s cost as acquiring new customer is more expensive.
• Involving customer support team in decision making means improved customer service, which is key point of differentiation.
• This will enable the company to build a advanced customer support app.

Now, how this can be done? How support team members can become part of decision making and how they can earn seat at adult table? For earning a place at adult table (decision making level), members of customer support should also take initiative. If they want to be heard then they should raise their voice and present themselves in front of decision makers. This involves providing data (facts) to decision makers which can include – number of customer contacted in a day, number of conversations handled, and percentage of cases where solution could be provided, number of cases where issues cannot be resolved. Also, information about type of issues customers are facing can be shared.