5 Ways to Scale Your Customer Support Team Without Sacrificing Quality

One of the biggest challenges faced by companies is maintaining stellar customer support as they scale.

More customers means more calls to answer, more problems to solve, more complaints to make right. Without quality training and systems, your support team simply won’t be able to keep pace even when you hire additional agents. Important indicators like Client Satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores will start to suffer, and you may not be able to keep growing as quickly as you planned.

Don’t panic yet though!

Here at FluentStream, we’re lucky enough to have our own in-house customer satisfaction guru to help lead us down the path of support enlightenment. His name is Casey McNally, and he’s been helping companies successfully scale their support teams longer than I’ve been alive.

Let’s take a quick look at his credentials:

  • Started his own internet communications company in the late 90’s and had to set up a national contact center from scratch
  • Spent over 15 years at HomeAdvisor, working with a contact center team of 650+ people
  • Has guided FluentStream to multiple customer service awards while more than doubling the size of our team

You can usually find Casey floating above his office chair, numerous headsets taped to his head so he can handle eight support calls at once. However, today he was nice enough to take a break and share the top lessons for scaling a customer support team without sacrificing quality.

1. Make Sure Employees are Well-Trained

“The single most important factor in successfully scaling a support team is to make sure you have the right people who are trained properly. No matter how many agents you add, your training needs to stay consistent and high-quality across the board.

Believe it or not, your phone system can actually be a massive help.”

VoIP systems like FluentStream allow your new hires to listen in on live calls and easily review recordings to see how the pros handle difficult situations. In both cases, your customers won’t be able to hear them, allowing new hires to ask as many questions as they want without interrupting your calls.

When new hires can finally start taking calls of their own, they won’t have to do so alone. Managers or experienced agents can also join the call — once again without the customer being able to hear — feeding answers and advice to make sure your new hires don’t panic or leave the customer on hold forever.

As if all that wasn’t enough to help get new hires up to speed, all those on-call training features we just discussed can be used remotely on any internet-connected device.

For all the details on how a VoIP phone system helps you do a better job of training new support agents, check out our full blog. 

2. Save Everyone Time with Auto Attendants

“Every time someone calls your business, their goal is to get what they need as quickly as possible. So if the wrong employee answers, the customer will have to articulate what they want, be told they aren’t speaking to the right person, and then wait on hold to explain themselves all over again.”

Auto Attendants present every caller with a polite introduction and then a clear, concise menu of their options. Instead of bogging down your support agents with unrelated questions, they can connect directly to the person who can actually help them.

That means more time for your support agents to actually, you know, support customers with problems instead of acting like switchboard operators.

Overall, the key to a successful Auto Attendant is to make sure it addresses the most common reasons customers call your business and provides pathways for them to get help before one of your phones even has to ring.  

3. Use Automatic Feedback Features to Your Advantage

“Nothing frustrates a customer more than calling into a support line and not getting the level of service they expect. Sure, sometimes they’ll let you know point blank that they’re unhappy, but most folks will be polite on the phone and then just take their business elsewhere.

If you don’t have ways for customers to let you know they had a negative experience besides saying it on the phone, you’re losing customers.”

Options like automatic post-call surveys and follow-up satisfaction emails give customers a chance to review their experience without having to be confrontational. They’re a fantastic improvement tool for any team, but especially when your business is growing and you’re concerned about maintaining your usual level of quality.

Another useful tool for catching customer problems before they spiral into complaints is Voicemail Sentiment Analysis. I know, I know… it sounds like some fancy thingamajig off CSI: Miami, but it’s actually quite simple. Whenever your support team receives an angry or negative voicemail, managers or even the whole team can be instantly alerted.

That way, the customer gets a call back immediately and leaves the conversation happy rather than having to wait, festering, until someone happens to check their inbox.

Remember, even if the majority of your customer support calls go well, adding automatic feedback features to your toolbox can help you improve in ways you didn’t know were necessary.

4. Leverage Call Parking and Advanced Queues

“No matter how good your support agents are, when things get busy, they’re going to need to either put some people on hold or send them to voicemail. When you’re scaling the business, the number of calls you’re taking tends to stay ahead of how fast you can hire.

Setting up features like call parking and queues for your support team goes a long way towards keeping customers from going to voicemail and keeping everything manageable for your team.”

Call parking is a business phone feature that allows you to put a call on hold (or “park” it) so that other support agents can pick it up on their phones when available.

Meanwhile, call queues have grown far past their humble beginnings as a communications waiting room that plays seasonal hold music. On modern VoIP systems, call queues can play custom messages about deals or promotions, give customers the option to receive a call back instead of waiting, and even provide you with in-depth reporting on the performance of your team.

5. Stay Available with Forwarding and After-Hours Options

"When your team is small and dedicated, it’s easy to stay nimble and provide whatever help your customers need whenever they need it. Whether there’s an assigned after-hours cell phone someone takes home every night, or a communal voicemail you check throughout the evening, help is always just a call away.

But then, as your company grows, it’s easy to start using your standard business hours and busy schedules as excuses that are more convenient for your staff than your customers. I get it, you have enough to keep track of already, but once again this is where a VoIP phone system can come to your rescue."

Easy forwarding to employee cell phones, browser dialers that allows you to make and receive calls on your laptop, a mobile app so you can use your cell phone to talk with customers without giving out your personal number — FluentStream has all these features and more to make sure you’re able to provide support anywhere, at any time.

Plus, it’s easy as pie to set up an after-hours auto attendant that kicks in automatically outside your normal business hours, giving your customers even more choices for how they want their problems to be solved.

Have more questions about how to scale your support team without sacrificing quality? Want to learn more about how a FluentStream system can improve your customer experience and increase revenue? Let us know at sales@fluentstream.com or by calling 303-GO-CLOUD and selecting Option 1.

One of the biggest challenges faced by companies is maintaining stellar customer support as they scale.

More customers means more calls to answer, more problems to solve, more complaints to make right. Without quality training and systems, your support team simply won’t be able to keep pace even when you hire additional agents. Important indicators like Client Satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores will start to suffer, and you may not be able to keep growing as quickly as you planned.

Don’t panic yet though!

Here at FluentStream, we’re lucky enough to have our own in-house customer satisfaction guru to help lead us down the path of support enlightenment. His name is Casey McNally, and he’s been helping companies successfully scale their support teams longer than I’ve been alive.

Let’s take a quick look at his credentials:

  • Started his own internet communications company in the late 90’s and had to set up a national contact center from scratch
  • Spent over 15 years at HomeAdvisor, working with a contact center team of 650+ people
  • Has guided FluentStream to multiple customer service awards while more than doubling the size of our team

You can usually find Casey floating above his office chair, numerous headsets taped to his head so he can handle eight support calls at once. However, today he was nice enough to take a break and share the top lessons for scaling a customer support team without sacrificing quality.

1. Make Sure Employees are Well-Trained

“The single most important factor in successfully scaling a support team is to make sure you have the right people who are trained properly. No matter how many agents you add, your training needs to stay consistent and high-quality across the board.

Believe it or not, your phone system can actually be a massive help.”

VoIP systems like FluentStream allow your new hires to listen in on live calls and easily review recordings to see how the pros handle difficult situations. In both cases, your customers won’t be able to hear them, allowing new hires to ask as many questions as they want without interrupting your calls.

When new hires can finally start taking calls of their own, they won’t have to do so alone. Managers or experienced agents can also join the call — once again without the customer being able to hear — feeding answers and advice to make sure your new hires don’t panic or leave the customer on hold forever.

As if all that wasn’t enough to help get new hires up to speed, all those on-call training features we just discussed can be used remotely on any internet-connected device.

For all the details on how a VoIP phone system helps you do a better job of training new support agents, check out our full blog. 

2. Save Everyone Time with Auto Attendants

“Every time someone calls your business, their goal is to get what they need as quickly as possible. So if the wrong employee answers, the customer will have to articulate what they want, be told they aren’t speaking to the right person, and then wait on hold to explain themselves all over again.”

Auto Attendants present every caller with a polite introduction and then a clear, concise menu of their options. Instead of bogging down your support agents with unrelated questions, they can connect directly to the person who can actually help them.

That means more time for your support agents to actually, you know, support customers with problems instead of acting like switchboard operators.

Overall, the key to a successful Auto Attendant is to make sure it addresses the most common reasons customers call your business and provides pathways for them to get help before one of your phones even has to ring.  

3. Use Automatic Feedback Features to Your Advantage

“Nothing frustrates a customer more than calling into a support line and not getting the level of service they expect. Sure, sometimes they’ll let you know point blank that they’re unhappy, but most folks will be polite on the phone and then just take their business elsewhere.

If you don’t have ways for customers to let you know they had a negative experience besides saying it on the phone, you’re losing customers.”

Options like automatic post-call surveys and follow-up satisfaction emails give customers a chance to review their experience without having to be confrontational. They’re a fantastic improvement tool for any team, but especially when your business is growing and you’re concerned about maintaining your usual level of quality.

Another useful tool for catching customer problems before they spiral into complaints is Voicemail Sentiment Analysis. I know, I know… it sounds like some fancy thingamajig off CSI: Miami, but it’s actually quite simple. Whenever your support team receives an angry or negative voicemail, managers or even the whole team can be instantly alerted.

That way, the customer gets a call back immediately and leaves the conversation happy rather than having to wait, festering, until someone happens to check their inbox.

Remember, even if the majority of your customer support calls go well, adding automatic feedback features to your toolbox can help you improve in ways you didn’t know were necessary.

4. Leverage Call Parking and Advanced Queues

“No matter how good your support agents are, when things get busy, they’re going to need to either put some people on hold or send them to voicemail. When you’re scaling the business, the number of calls you’re taking tends to stay ahead of how fast you can hire.

Setting up features like call parking and queues for your support team goes a long way towards keeping customers from going to voicemail and keeping everything manageable for your team.”

Call parking is a business phone feature that allows you to put a call on hold (or “park” it) so that other support agents can pick it up on their phones when available.

Meanwhile, call queues have grown far past their humble beginnings as a communications waiting room that plays seasonal hold music. On modern VoIP systems, call queues can play custom messages about deals or promotions, give customers the option to receive a call back instead of waiting, and even provide you with in-depth reporting on the performance of your team.

5. Stay Available with Forwarding and After-Hours Options

"When your team is small and dedicated, it’s easy to stay nimble and provide whatever help your customers need whenever they need it. Whether there’s an assigned after-hours cell phone someone takes home every night, or a communal voicemail you check throughout the evening, help is always just a call away.

But then, as your company grows, it’s easy to start using your standard business hours and busy schedules as excuses that are more convenient for your staff than your customers. I get it, you have enough to keep track of already, but once again this is where a VoIP phone system can come to your rescue."

Easy forwarding to employee cell phones, browser dialers that allows you to make and receive calls on your laptop, a mobile app so you can use your cell phone to talk with customers without giving out your personal number — FluentStream has all these features and more to make sure you’re able to provide support anywhere, at any time.

Plus, it’s easy as pie to set up an after-hours auto attendant that kicks in automatically outside your normal business hours, giving your customers even more choices for how they want their problems to be solved.

Have more questions about how to scale your support team without sacrificing quality? Want to learn more about how a FluentStream system can improve your customer experience and increase revenue? Let us know at sales@fluentstream.com or by calling 303-GO-CLOUD and selecting Option 1.

Across the country, stay-at-home guidelines are being lifted and slowly, one by one, companies are starting to invite employees back to work. Things may not be back to normal, whatever that word even means anymore, but they’ll certainly be closer to the work environment we’re used to. 

Working from home posed numerous new challenges for businesses, but it also provided an opportunity to try out new ways of “working." 

Some of these, like taking a work call without wearing pants, are better left for when you are working from home. But there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are plenty of productivity ideas that you’ve been experimenting while at home that can enhance your ability to work when you are back in your office. 

1. Write Yourself Daily and Weekly Task Lists

In our 10 Trusty Tips for Working from Home, we discussed how setting agendas ahead of time leads to higher productivity. While your office has probably fewer distractions than your home, writing manageable task lists at the start of every week and every day is a great way to stay focused no matter what curveballs come your way.

It’s called hyperbolic discounting, and it works the same way that making a shopping list beforehand helps keep you from buying unhealthy or unnecessary food. Especially during the excitement of returning to the office, it’s equally important to stay on-task and not over-commit. Having concrete, achievable goals laid out for both your day and week is an easy way to accomplish both.

2. End Your Day by Starting a Fun Project

Whether you’re working from home or back at your desk, starting a new project can be daunting (especially first thing in the morning). If you’re like me, you tend to procrastinate by getting a cup of coffee, chatting with the receptionist, getting a second cup of coffee, checking ESPN, getting a third cup of… you get the idea.

Instead, try to plan out and even start new projects at the end of your day so you can dive right in the next morning. The fewer mental hurdles there are between you and productive work, the less likely you are to stumble over some distraction or another.

Plus, this strategy allows you to look at your projects with a fresh set of eyes before you get too far to change course if needed. Especially when it comes to editing or long-term planning, I find that looking over my afternoon ideas with a morning mindset saves me from a lot of headaches.

3. Schedule Shorter Meetings More Often

As everyone adapted to the disjointed pace of working from home, it became much more difficult to schedule meetings with multiple people.

Kids needed to be attended to. Lunch wasn’t going to make itself and. And naps, well, naps needed to be taken.

By necessity, team or department powwows were boiled down to the truly essential topics and questions.

Instead of going back to the way things used to be – with meetings so long you had to order food in the middle of them just to keep employees invested – continue keeping things short and to the point. If a question doesn’t involve everyone present, save it for a direct message. If you haven’t yet made progress on a project, don’t bother bringing it up. Questions like “How was everyone’s weekend?” may break the ice, but if your team is anything like ours, they always lead to lengthy tangents.

Much like we suggest setting task lists for yourself every day, always set agendas with your meeting invites and then stick to them.

4. Keep Forwarding Your Calls When You’re at the Office

While working remotely, making sure that your calls were being forwarded to your cell phone was a necessity. Now that you’re back in the office with your beloved desk phone, is it still?

Yes!

No matter how much of the day you spend at your desk, there are still opportunities for you to miss important calls. Maybe you got bamboozled into a string of meetings. Maybe you went out for lunch with a few coworkers you haven’t seen for a while. Maybe you just decided to stretch your legs and take a lap around the office. Whatever the case, having your extension forwarded to your cell phone makes sure you never miss a thing – just like it did at home.

5. Don’t be Afraid to Set Work Time Boundaries

At home, surrounded by partners, kids, and pets all clamoring for our attention, many of us were forced to set “Do Not Disturb” hours. These peaceful, critical time blocks allowed us to buckle down and focus on projects without fear of interruption.

Don’t be afraid to do the same at your office. Coworkers constantly stopping by your desk to chat or ask questions can derail your train of thought just as quickly as a hungry toddler.

For example, I block off the start and end of every week for the administrative tasks I tend to forget. On Monday morning, it helps me set priorities for the week. On Friday afternoons, it’s the time I take to send follow up/reminder emails and be sure we’re making good progress on long-term projects.

6. Work Out Before Work

Stuck at home for months, morning workouts became mandatory if you wanted to combat the lethargy and snack intake of quarantine. They also helped wake up your brain and start every day with a win.

Waking up early to work out before your morning commute may not sound like the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it will allow you to carry the benefits back into your normal work life. I can tell you from personal experience that I’ve only been drinking about half as much coffee since I started doing yoga instead of hitting snooze until right before my morning meeting.

7. Maintain Your New and Improved Work-Life Balance

I just have a grumpy cat to take care of during these uncertain times, so I turned to our very own Marketing Director Eli Gurock to explain how the extended period of working from home has affected his scheduling.

“My wife and I plan meals and child care responsibilities for the week on Sunday evenings. When we were both working from home, we talked about who had early morning or late afternoon meetings and calls so the other knew when they’d need to put their Primary Parent hat on. 

Now that we’re back in the office, those Sunday planning sessions are just as helpful to talk about daycare pick up duties and deadlines for when we each need to be home.” 

One of the most important lessons to take from this pandemic is that sometimes it’s okay to plan more around your family and less around your office. Keep doing what’s best for you and you’ll notice how much more productive you are at work without the added stresses you left behind.

Related Posts