‘Team Together’

 

Great customer service starts with you and your team. If you have a team that clearly enjoys working with you and can openly approach you then you are on the right road.

What can you do as boss to make your team the happiest it can be? And it needn’t mean expensive team bonding away days either.

Coffee and cake Fridays, a monthly swifty after work, a team t-shirt, free drinks and snacks on the job or an informal zoom catch up call with everyone present are some of the ways that you can begin to develop and enhance your ‘team together’ culture. Make sure you know at least a little something about each team member and always recognise as much effort and good as you can. After all kind words, a joke, empathy and understanding are all completely cost free, and the benefits are immeasurable. Pick one employee to touch base with each day and watch your team flourish.

Have you thought about how you manage inter team communications? It can bring a team together to have a shared platform alongside email to enhance communication. Find out what everyone on your team is comfortable using and has access to and hopefully there will be one that works for all of you. Note that this platform should not replace formal communications such as job lists and private work conversations. A shared platform can be a quick and easy way to share humour from the day, praise, social arrangements and informal work news. Do make sure new members are added as soon as possible so that they feel part of the team straight away.

Ensure that your team are confident in making appropriate decisions without having to constantly check in with you or a higher line manager. Your customers will have confidence in you and your team if you do. Create times for team training and conversations where you and your team can get on exactly the same page. Your team will excel if they feel secure in their decision making knowing that you trust them 100% to do what is right. When talking to your customers, make sure that you convey a sense of trust in your team.

Clear lines of communication between you, your team and your customers are also key to excellent customer services. Whether a customer wants to buy, praise or complain, they are going to be more receptive and responsive if they have been able to reach you quickly and efficiently. Check that customers can access all your communication links; this means on having the details for all your comms on all your comms. Add the links to emails, leaflets, invoices, business cards and adverts.

Make the effort to go above and beyond for your customers and this does not have to mean giving your services away for free. Going the extra mile for a customer in any way that you and your team can will pay you back tenfold in positive reviews, feedback and word of mouth. Tell your team that this is expected too and that efforts will be recognised and appreciated as standard.

Of course, you, your team and your customers will all make mistakes at some point. Learn from these mistakes instead of finding fault and finger pointing. Yes, mistakes can be annoying and costly, but if you manage these with an empathetic, patient and a solution-based outlook then you will be exemplifying the highest standards of professionality and customer service that will keep your customers happy and returning for a long time to come.