Building Culture in Distributed Customer Support Teams Inside This ebook: Foster a Sense of Appreciation Reward Outstanding Performance Case Study: Thumbtack Culture-building is one of the most effective and one of the most overlooked aspects of maintaining a high-functioning distributed team. Here are some ways to create a distributed team that feels appreciated and is consistently motivated to provide the best work possible. Adapted from Happy Customers, Successful Companies. Your Guide to Building a World-Class Distributed Customer Support Team 1
When you re working with a remote team, it is of critical importance to treat every representative as an important contributor. How can you do this? By communicating early, communicating often and did we mention that you ll really need to work on communicating? oster a ense of ppreciation 2
Keeping a remote team informed of everything is super critical. It is harder, but the benefits are worth it. Elizabeth Tse, SVP Operations, Upwork 3
This is easier said than done. The most successful remote teams are those in companies that have a team communication strategy in place and that go the extra mile to make each person feel appreciated. Here are a few things you can do to be sure all of your distributed team feel appreciated and engaged: Have one-on-one meetings. One-on-one meetings foster closeness, help the team troubleshoot issues, and keep the wheels going in general. Share goals using quarterly OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). By sharing your OKRs the ambitious goals you want to achieve and the measurable results you anticipate your team will be invested in the process and will share in your success. Hold quarterly town hall meetings. Be sure they re set up so that all distributed workers can listen, watch, and ask questions of their own. Talk about the team s achievements, the company s goals, and have a member or two of the executive team present on the state of the business and their vision for the future. Send a monthly newsletter. Use some virtual ink to highlight new team members and praise top contributors. Recap any changes that happened in terms of new product releases. And have a little fun! Birthdays, anniversaries, and individual accomplishments (Who ran a marathon? Who had a baby?) are always welcome. Get your chat on. Have a constant professional chat covering any and all issues requesting assistance, sharing customer concerns that flows between anyone working. While a team leader should always be involved to answer higher-level questions or make quick approvals, let the team members jump in and answer questions when they can. More informally, use chat for quick peer communication. This can be a powerful bonding tool, creating a virtual water cooler where people s personalities are learned and lives are shared. Stay social. Create a dedicated Facebook group for your distributed team to share their lives outside of work. They can post pictures of kids, what they did over the weekend the kinds of things you would chat about with your colleagues if you were sitting in a traditional work environment. This also might be where they organize a group outing or some other off-hours social function. A little investment in culture translates into happy teams, even happier clients, and a better bottom line for your business. Consider this a huge benefit as you build and grow your team. 4
Reward Outstanding Work Consider giving rate increases to remote team members on at least an annual basis. Look at the rates of each team member and consider cost of living and quality of work. Allowing them to keep progressing up in terms of hourly rate should help with retention. 5
Case Study: Thumbtack Having the combination of an in-house phone support team and a remote email team does allow us to handle less complex tickets offshore and then seamlessly funnel very complex tickets to an expert email team in Utah, or the phone team there when it makes sense. Jodie Auster, Director of Customer Operations, Thumbtack 6
Case Study: Thumbtack Thumbtack is a marketplace that introduces customers to the right professional to help accomplish their personal projects, from language tutors to home repair to party planners. Thumbtack at a Glance Founded: 2009 Industry: Consumer services Team Size: 300 full-time employees in San Francisco and Salt Lake City Support Team: ~150 agents in the U.S., ~100 remote Location: San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Philippines thumbtack.com The Situation: An early adopter of online work, Thumbtack was familiar with the benefits of hiring remote service professionals. And as inbound email volume grew steadily along with business growth, they effectively scaled their remote email support team on Upwork. However, the demand for inbound phone support also grew rapidly, and their high-touch service model made it more and more necessary to expand phone support capacity. The Solution: To maintain their high-quality customer service standard in a way that was effective and affordable, Thumbtack created a hybrid team of online email support reps and an in-house phone support team based in Salt Lake City, Utah. To improve the consistency of the customer experience, the Philippines email support team reports into the U.S.-based support leadership, and training materials are shared where possible. Onboarding has evolved to include a mix of virtual group check-ins and self-paced learning using a strong library of Lesson.ly training modules. The Result: Building a remote operations and support workforce allowed Thumbtack to scale at great speed and to test new ideas quickly and effectively. By specializing the email support team to handle tickets based on complexity and potential to anger users, and by creating a dedicated team of categorizers who funnel email tickets to the correct tier for a response, Thumbtack raised their email CSAT from 67% to 92%. Next Steps: Thumbtack will continue to scale its team in both places (online for email, in the office for phone) to keep up with continued growth. 7
Adapted from Happy Customers, Successful Companies. Your Guide to Building a World-Class Distributed Customer Support Team You can download this guide here 2015 Upwork, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Upwork is the trademark of Upwork, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.