Remote work: how to maintain quality customer service

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Many companies have already begun to feel the economic effects of the coronavirus. Here in Brazil, depending on the location, shopping malls and non-essential businesses are being closed by state decrees. Meanwhile, the Post Office expects that the shipment of parcels will increase given the greater isolation of the population, as happened during the quarantine in China.

This means that some business models will continue to operate, whether focused on the online sale of consumer goods or cloud services, such as B2B or B2C platforms and software .

Many of these companies are embracing the 100% remote work movement or selecting employees who do not need to be present in offices and factories. The fact is that your customers will continue to have problems, doubts and need service and support from your company . And luckily for employees, this can be done from the safety of their home office. #StaySafe

What to consider in the contingency plan for support teams?
Support, Customer Success, SAC or customer service. All of these areas are the basis for maintaining ongoing consumer satisfaction . They are the ones who usually deal with customer dissatisfaction and resolve issues as quickly as possible so that they do not turn into potential crises on social media – and then it becomes much more difficult for your brand to resolve them.

How long does it usually take for you to respond to your customers?

It’s definitely not the 7 days that are being recommended for isolation during the coronavirus quarantine. You need to have your support team active, even in critical moments like the one we’re going through. Now is not the time to increase your consumers’ anxiety even more.

This means being available to provide almost immediate responses and ensuring that problems are resolved as quickly as possible, of course. And during the pandemic, problems will continue to arise and it will be almost impossible to keep up with tickets afterwards.

But what does your team need to be comfortable and remain efficient during this time?

This is the first step in putting together your contingency plan: make a list of all the tools, passwords and logins that your employees need to access.

Most of the platforms used by support teams today are in the cloud, but in certain cases you will need to use your company's local servers. In this case, consider hiring a VPN so that your employees can access your servers securely.

It is also important to find a secure way to store logins and passwords that can be accessed quickly and by specific people. Don't put everything in a spreadsheet!

In Bitrix24 , for example, you can create a Workgroup and, within it, make lists available, sharing, for example, the access path, login and password.

>> See how to create a list in your Bitrix24

Now that you've taken care of data security and shared access, what are these essential tools?

Easy to access and update knowledge base
Every responsive support team has a knowledge base. A place where all the team's bahrain telemarketing data knowledge can be gathered over time to make it easier to serve customers and also easier to train new employees.

We are not just talking about a document with standard answers, but the centralization of all the rules, standards and manuals for your product and service.

Ideally, you should have a tool that has structures to facilitate content updates and, most importantly, research when things get tough during service. After all, we are talking about speed! Have you ever considered that spreadsheets and documents might not be as efficient for the team?

>> See how to create knowledge bases in your Bitrix24 within workgroups and projects.

How to communicate with your customers
Nowadays, most communication with customers is done digitally: via email, chats and social media. However, there are still issues that need to be resolved over the phone . Sometimes your customer simply wishes it were that way.

And how can you allow your employee to receive or make calls outside the office?

In Bitrix24, for example, you can make external calls to landlines and mobile phones. Simply sign up for a cloud-based business telephony service like Jive and connect it to your Bitrix24.

The support team will not only be able to make and answer calls, but will have a single number for all employees in the area . In addition, your calls will be automatically recorded for future reference.

In addition to telephone messages, it is important that emails and social messages are centralized so that your customer service team can talk to the customer, regardless of the channel they came through .

With BItrix24 you can connect your email, social networks and transfer chats from Open Channels to the employee who can best answer the call.

If your business, for example, often uses WhatsApp for customer service, you can receive and send messages to your contacts using PowerZAP WhatsApp API , an application for Bitrix24 that allows you to centralize and record interactions.