“How to scale customer support” has been an age-old question asked by several companies, no matter how big or small. Growing businesses are bound to grow out of their traditional operations owing to inevitable change – which ironically has become the only constant in today’s business industry.
One minute your customer service processes may be running smoothly, and the next minute – well, they’re not. Contrary to popular belief, you can scale customer support functions while maintaining the quality of customer experience and without killing your budget. What it takes are a conscious effort and proactive decision-making.
Before we answer the “How to scale a customer support team?” question, we need to understand what it means to commercial-scale customer support.
What Does it Mean to Commercially Scale Customer Support?
This may seem counter-intuitive, but the answer to this question heavily relies on your business’s needs. When beginning to understand what it means to scale your customer support, an important aspect is providing an excellent customer experience and keeping it consistently high within the available resources.
Next, knowing when your current operations aren’t cutting it is important. Some reasons why you might want to consider scaling include:
- Â Catering to a wider audience and different times zones
- Â Optimizing your business’s presence on different social media platforms
- Â Supporting additional products and services
Here’s How to Scale Your Customer Support Team
- Â Â Don’t Shy Away from Embracing Automation
The future is automation, and there’s no denying that. You can either jump on the bandwagon and leverage all the benefits it brings or get left behind in the race to be the best. While it may seem that chatbots provide a less personal experience, automation can greatly enhance customer support, allowing you to focus on another aspect that requires the human touch.
- Â Â Convenient Self-Service to the Rescue
Sometimes, customers don’t want to talk to a customer representative, making it crucial for you to reevaluate and redesign your contact points. In such situations, a detailed additional support channel can do wonders and empowers your customers to find their answers independently.
- Â Â Monitor Your Progress
You can only see how far you’ve come if you look back to where your business first was. Monitoring your business’s progress allows you to maintain performance and quality while still identifying areas where you may be lacking.
While it’s near impossible to measure every aspect of your operations since so much goes backstage, it’s a good idea to pick a handful of key performance indicators to do the job for you.
- Â The Right Person for the Right Job
Sometimes, you can only keep up with everchanging client demands and maintain a standard for your customer service operations by upsizing your current workforce. But this involves a rigorous hiring process that includes aptitude and personality tests to gauge whether the individual will be a valuable addition to your business.
