Let’s face it: remote work is here to stay. Remote work brings a sense of autonomy, flexibility, and ownership and can be incredibly empowering to employees.
Here are 3 key insights for helping your customer service team adapt and thrive in a fully remote work environment.
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Use technology to your advantage
At times, technology can be the biggest challenge of working remotely. Getting a remote employee set up at home brings additional challenges and requires additional effort by the employee and manager. Make sure that your employees are equipped with the technology needed to perform at their highest level. This includes things like monitors, laptops, phones, headsets, and any software they might need.
If the technology aspect sounds like a daunting task, it may help to find an outsourced staffing firm to help with things like onboarding and technology.
With tools like Slack, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Teams, email, and more, there are a variety of different ways for your team to communicate. But sometimes, without face-to-face interaction, employees can feel cut off from their peers. We recommend setting up channels for your team to communicate through, utilizing the technology you already have.
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Keep communication open
As a manager, it can be extremely hard to manage a remote team. You don’t want to micromanage your agents, but you also want to make sure they’re staying on top of incoming inquiries, answering questions correctly, and representing your company well in each interaction.
We recommend checking in once a day with your agents to see how they’re feeling about work and the interactions they had that day. This allows you to ensure that they’re doing a great job and also gives the employee a chance to discuss their current situation and workload.
By implementing an open and honest channel for feedback, you’ll help your teammates feel a sense of community while working remotely.
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Recognize your team
When you’re in the office, it’s a lot easier to recognize and reward your team members. Whether it’s an in-person shout out during a team meeting or a casual conversation in the breakroom, these are important moments that shouldn’t be lost while transitioning to remote work.
While in a remote environment, we encourage you to create a communication channel that is specifically for acknowledgement. This is a great way for your team members to share kudos quickly and easily with their fellow employees and managers can work together to improve morale.
Conclusion
As more and more businesses continue to work fully remote, it’s important to keep the health and happiness of your employees top of mind. By focusing on helping your agents adapt and thrive in a remote environment, you guarantee a delightful customer experience on each of their calls.
At Salem, we are experts in staffing remote customer service positions. Do you need help staffing remote employees for your contact center? Let us know!
