How Do You Motivate Your Team of Customer Support Agents?

If there is a list of the top five occupations with the most hectic schedules, we will undoubtedly add customer support to the list. There is a joke for this: a customer support representative doesn’t even have a holiday.

In some contexts, that’s not even a joke. So, occupations like this need continuous motivation to keep their work wheels moving.

Furthermore, a motivated team will be more efficient in achieving the true potential of your business. Then, why wait to motivate your customer support representatives?

So, if you have a customer support team, then how do you motivate your team? Don’t have any guidelines?

Don’t worry. In this blog, we have included some guidelines for motivating your customer support team.

Just prepare a beverage for you and start reading this interesting blog!

So, let’s get started.

How do you motivate your team of customer support agents?

We will talk about the best four steps for how to motivate your team. In this section, you will explore the guidelines you actually need a deep understanding of. The other steps, like increasing salary, lightening up the work environment, and rewarding, are the common motivation steps that people usually know.

So, without further ado, let’s begin!

1. Understand what motivates your customer support team

When you are motivating the customer support team, your first and foremost step should be to understand your customer support representatives. You can never actualize it unless you don’t know what drives them to be motivated.

Therefore, you should explore what affects their performance as well as what incentives they look for to feel inspired on the job.

In most cases, a motivator could make two types of mistakes:

1. He may go for team motivation following a “one-size-fits-all” approach
2. He may initiate the process by following others’ strategies.

Let’s explore the solutions and align them with the process of your team’s motivation.

First of all, every individual on your support team may have different personalities, interests, and beliefs. They may be unique to one another.

And that’s not cool stuff to get the job done with the same course of action. To ensure the ultimate team motivation, you need to come up with your own crafted strategies.

Dedicate your time and effort to going for a personal level of understanding. A continuous process of communication or one-on-one conversations could assist you so far.

One simple and effective way to understand individual motivation is to conduct surveys.

The second solution is to never blindly follow others’ strategies. This is because your support team may have unique circumstances and characteristics compared to others.

All you can do is glance over their strategies for generating ideas.

Scheduling regular meetings with them or discussing things by having a water cooler conversation could be a good option for you. Try to engage them so smoothly that they don’t feel like they’re being put on the spot.

In this manner, you can get insights into what types of action hit hard for the motivation of your customer support representatives.

2. Set realistic goals for your customer support team

Say you have gathered the best customer support representatives in your hands. With that confidence in mind, you begin the support process without setting a clear goal for them.

But do you have any idea about the actual outcome of that decision?

Since there is no goal to achieve for them, an atmosphere of demotivation will be created automatically. This will result in a drop in the productivity level of your customer support team.

Your support reps will be in a dilemma about what to do or what not to do. Your workflow will be disorganized, which could probably make your business go nowhere.

On the other hand, a predefined goal will undoubtedly guide your support system to a proactive position, creating a pathway to do things accordingly. Additionally, a clear and to-the-point goal can eliminate the confusion in your support system.

Obviously, plan your goal to be attainable and realistic. Don’t let your support representatives be bogged down by unrealistic conditions.

While setting up a goal, always keep in mind these below-mentioned things:

No doubt, providing customer support is a kind of occupation with a non-stop pace. Typically, pressure and workload will be present on your support agents to reach the goal. 

All you have to do is hold the grip on regulating all the tasks. By doing so, you can mitigate the pressure on your workforce, and targets appear to be achievable for your agents.

3. Empower your customer support team

A trained customer support team equipped with advanced tools is jam-packed to provide stellar service. Simultaneously, this top-notch combination will keep the motivation alive in your team and help your business grow.

A trained customer support representative has the potential to convert a customer interaction into a permanent one. He could add value by addressing their pain points. This type of agent is a gem for your team.

Typically, companies value these types of support representatives, and they feel inspired to work effortlessly.

Got the answer to why you need to include continuous training for team motivation?

A wise move for you is to incorporate the training process early in the onboarding process. Try to focus on soft skills, like communication, handling difficult conversations and support, taking care of negative feedback, etc.

They will undoubtedly feel more confident and motivated once they have mastered these soft skills. Then you go for the second step of training. Make the training process so smooth that it won’t result in agents’ burnout.

In the training process, your second step can be to keep your support representatives updated with complete knowledge of your products or services. Doing so will make them feel confident while providing support to a customer.

On the other hand, when your support reps are not updated thoroughly about the products, it will lead to procrastination. Not only that, but a fear of mistakes and an inability to get the work done will weaken your support system.

Lastly, a support team equipped with advanced tools is more effective at delivering quality support. Even a well-trained support agent could be frustrated due to the unavailability of advanced tools.

Empower your support system with right support tools, like live chat, video chat, chatbots, etc. Don’t combine your support system into a single channel. Instead, embrace omnichannel support in your support system.

In one word, well-trained support agents equipped with advanced tools—the combination is pretty good to uphold the spirit of your business.

4. Foster healthy competition between team members

Let’s talk about a creative technique to motivate your customer support team.

And that is to incorporate the thrill of competition into your customer support team. If you want a tremendous result in your team performance, start fostering healthy competition between your team members.

The benefit of this technique is that you do not need to invest your time and energy in it for a long period of time. What you have to do is set the stage for a healthy competition. Then human nature will take over the rest of the responsibility, as people’s tendencies are to be competitive.

When an atmosphere of friendly competition grows within your team, you can notice a spike in improvement, which will definitely lead to continuous improvement.

Yes! We are talking about this technique that simultaneously boosts the motivation of your team and the overall improvement of your company.

Moreover, you can do the process with a playful twist, like gamification, to supercharge your team’s motivation. Research shows that 89% of employees who engage in gamification activities at work feel more motivated at work. So, consider this number and incorporate this gamification idea into your support team.

Another effective idea for fostering healthy competition is dividing your team into several groups. Then create a rewarding system for the team that gets the perfect CSAT score.

Note: We are suggesting this motivation technique to add a little bit of extra fun to the tasks. So, before implementing this technique, make sure that there is not too much competition.

Wrapping up

In terms of establishing brand loyalty or customer satisfaction, the customer support team sometimes works on the frontlines of it. So, make the best use of your customer support representatives by motivating them.

Now you have a strong idea of how to motivate your customer support team. It’s your time to generate your own idea from that and craft a strategy to uphold the spirit of your team.