In this playbook, I’ll teach you how to build a support team that puts a smile on your customers’ faces.
You’d learn steps, tactics and tools for building and managing a support team.
It’s not as difficult as it may look. But you and I know nothing good comes easy.
This playbook was reviewed by Vasudev Jagarlamudi, the Head of Customer Success at Telebu.
You can also watch my interview with Amandeep (a member of my team) on a related topic on how to train a customer support team that always puts a smile on your customers’ faces.
Shall we begin?
Want to make it 10X easier and more fun for your agents to provide the best customer support experiences? Use TelebuSocial omnichannel solution. See how it works, or get started for free. |
How to build a customer support team from scratch
Building a high-performing customer support team from the ground up demands meticulous planning and execution.
Also check out:
- The Complete Customer Support Agent Playbook (A-Z Guide)
- How to Supercharge Your Customer Support Processes with AI
- How to Enhance Customer Experience in Your Company: 7 Ways According to The Experts
I know you need to pay attention. But you don’t need to overthink it.
Here’s a simple roadmap to guide you.
We created a playbook for customer support agents to equip them with the skills they need to put smiles on your customers’ faces. Check it out and share it with your team.
1. Specify what success is for your future support team
Before hiring, you must write what you want to accomplish with the team.
If you specify these two things, you’re good to go:
- Identifying key metrics. Customer satisfaction scores, resolution times, or first contact resolution rates. Choose the metric you want.
- Setting realistic goals. After choosing the metric you want to use, add a number for each. Don’t overshoot now. You’ll have enough time to revisit and go higher.
Next…
2. Create a hiring roadmap and process
Hire proactively, not reactively.
Let’s break that down.
Don’t wait for customer complaints to pile up before building your team. Start planning and hiring proactively.
In line with your goals, project how your customer support needs will change, then plan hiring to meet those needs as they arise.
A hiring roadmap outlines your team’s structure. It also includes the number of team members needed and their specific skill sets.
3. Train your new hires like a champion
You’ve found your dream team, but they’re not ready to tackle customer challenges yet. Time to give them the tools and skills they need to shine.
Here’s how to create a training and onboarding program that’s more fun than boring:
- Omit nothing. Disclose everything there is to know about your product or service. When they know it inside and out, they’ll represent you better.
- Customer service superheroes. Train your team to talk to customers like kind and helpful friends. They should be able to listen well, solve problems, and always be polite.
- Learn the ropes. Help your team understand your company’s goals and values. This will make them feel like part of the team and proud of their work.
Onboarding should be a welcoming experience, not a confusing one:
- Set clear goals. Explain what’s expected of each new team member just like you’d explain the rules of a game before the kickoff whistle.
- Find a mentor: Pair your new team members with experienced colleagues who can answer questions and show them the ropes. We call them “buddies” in Telebu.
- Regular 1-1 check-ins: As your new hires resume onboarding, you must let them know they can reach out for help, especially if your team is remote. You can create this feeling through regular check-ins.
Now, that’s a team that’s ready to help anyone.
5. Define roles clearly (everyone needs a job)
Imagine your team as a team of chefs in a kitchen. Everyone needs to know what they’re responsible for so the food comes out delicious.
Here’s how to set clear roles and responsibilities:
- Give everyone a job. Maximise each team member’s unique strengths by assigning tasks that align with their areas of expertise.
- Write it down. Create a clear list of who does what and when. Think of it like a recipe book for your team.
Now, that’s a team that works together like a well-oiled machine.
Moving on…
So you’ve assembled your dream team, ready to harmonise, roll with punches, and climb the learning ladder.
Also read: How to Enhance Customer Experience in Your Company: 7 Ways According to The Experts
Let’s talk team management tactics.
7 foolproof tactics for building a winning support team
Building an exciting support team isn’t rocket science. On the contrary, it’s easy. Stick to these seven easy tactics, and you’re in for the win.
1. Encourage commitment
Do you know what separates your team from the product team?
Your team has more human contact with your customers than the tech or product team. So, if the product team needs commitment to build the best products, your customer support team needs double that.
Building a winning support team isn’t just about technical expertise. It’s about having a passionate and dedicated crew.
Here’s how to build a team that’s committed:
- Hire people persons. Look beyond technical qualifications and prioritise individuals with genuine warmth and a natural desire to assist others. These are the people that’ll brighten the lives of your customers.
- Illuminate the “Why”. Help your team understand the broader impact of their contributions. And explain how their role directly affects customer satisfaction and the company’s success. This will foster a sense of purpose and ownership.
- Use powerful tools. If you provide your support team with the best tools to communicate with your customers, they’ll feel your company is serious about customers. They, in turn, will become more serious about their work.
Check out TelebuSocial, the only omnichannel customer support tool you’ll need to make your customers love you more.
2. Appreciate even little efforts
Just like plants need sunshine to thrive, your support team needs appreciation to blossom.
Here’s how to show them you care and keep their spirits high:
- Praise in the open. Don’t let your team’s hard work go unnoticed. If Tim helped a customer so much that the customer dropped positive feedback, let the entire team know what Tim did.
- Personalise conversations. Thought of taking praise a step further? A handwritten note of gratitude is the next step for you. A gesture like this makes your team feel you think about them. Imagine how they’d translate that to your customers.
- Celebrate milestones. Big or small, celebrate team victories. If your team hits a target metric, you can acknowledge it with a team lunch. They’d unconsciously double down on their work because they’d love another lunch.
- Go beyond just words. If your team goes the extra mile, consider offering more flexible hours, paid time off, or a team activity. This shows (not just tell) that you’re reciprocating their extra effort. They, too, will want to re-reciprocate.
In Telebu, when a customer sends positive customer service feedback, the entire Telebu team sees it. Not just the support team but even the marketing team see it.
3. Share positive communication
Here’s how to cultivate an environment of mutual respect and open dialogue:
- Encourage open feedback. The best way to know what your team needs to work better is to ask them. You can do this in many ways, but the easiest and most effective are 1-1 conversations and anonymous surveys.
- Practice active listening. Whether you use surveys or speak 1-1, pay attention to your team. You need this so that the next time you ask for feedback, you’ll get it. How do you show you’re listening? By acting on what they tell you.
- Acknowledge mistakes as learning opportunities. If you can make mistakes, so can your teammates. Make it easy for them to come to you with their mistakes and help them learn from them.
- Celebrate different opinions. If you have team meetings, it means you want diverse opinions. When you receive these conflicting opinions, you need to ensure everyone feels comfortable sharing them. This is how you gather creative ideas.
4. Spend off-line time together
While remote working has benefits, it can also create challenges for building rapport and trust among team members. So when you can, ditch the screens for a moment.
- Encourage after-work hangouts. Whether grabbing coffee or attending a local event, getting your team together outside work helps them feel like a real team. Also, it doesn’t have to be the whole team at once.
- Celebrate special occasions. Take birthdays and work anniversaries as opportunities to show your team you care. You can send a small gift or get everyone to sign a card.
- Create casual chat spaces. Set up a break room where your team can talk about anything, not just work. This helps them connect on a personal level and build stronger bonds.
I know I said, “Ditch the screens”, but when you can’t do this, you can replicate this virtually.
For example, at Telebu, our team is almost 100% virtual, and getting everyone together regularly is expensive. So, we use our virtual office, Talk Magnet, to sustain that feeling of belonging.
5. Align team values
Imagine your support team as a music band. You wouldn’t want them playing different songs while on stage, right?
That’s why you must create harmony in what your team stands for and how your support agents should treat your customers.
Explore more about: Expert’s Secrets on How to Train Customer Support Agents Who Win Hearts and Solve Problems
Here’s how to ensure everyone’s belting out the same awesome melody:
- Define your values. Figure out what makes your team tick. Is it going the extra mile? Being a learning machine? Make it clear, and make it your team’s anthem.
- Hire for harmony. When adding new members, find people who naturally resonate with your team’s values. Think of it like adding a pianist who knows all of Mozart’s songs by heart to a classical music band. Proper fit, you’d agree.
- Address off-key notes. Worried that someone’s actions still don’t quite fit the melody? Have an open and honest conversation. Work together to find a solution, or consider a smooth reshuffle.
A simple-to-use team communication app like Talk Magnet will make this very easy if you run a remote team.
6. Prepare for rainy days
Made plans, and are you sure they’ll yield excellent results?
Reality check. Even the best plans can go awry.
To equip your team to handle anything that comes their way:
- Prepare for surprises beforehand (not later). Walk through your team’s workflow and brainstorm possible problems. Then, prepare a suitable solution in case it happens. You can do this with your team.
- Foster a culture of open communication. Encourage your team to speak up when they encounter unexpected difficulties. This minimises the time you take to address issues and any negative impact.
- Empower your team to make decisions. I know you’re the “BOSS”. But, if you want to grow team members who feel responsible for their actions, you need to trust their judgment and let them solve problems how they see fit sometimes.
7. Encourage personal development
Your customers will remain humans. But their demands change faster than you have realised.
Here’s how to ensure your team stays ahead of the curve:
- Invest in training: Offer your team access to resources for learning new skills and keeping up with industry trends. It is the most effective way to help your team adapt to changing needs and consistently deliver exceptional service.
- Encourage knowledge sharing. In addition to courses, your team members can be one another’s learning resources. One way we do this at Telebu is to assign a buddy to each team member. Another way is to organise meetings where the team listens to a team member teach.
- Embrace feedback. Encourage your team to seek and welcome feedback, both positive and negative. The feedback you receive will highlight areas where your team needs additional training.
- Celebrate continuous growth. Recognise and celebrate your team’s efforts to learn and grow. It reinforces the importance of continuous learning and motivates them to keep striving for improvement.
The best music bands have the best instruments and vocalists. It’s as simple as that. The right tools make the job faster, more effective, and ultimately, create happier customers.
How to choose and use the right tools for support teams
Here’s how to choose the right customer engagement tools for a support team that crushes it:
- Target pain points, not hype. Forget flashy features. Simply focus on tools that solve your team’s real problems. Drowning in emails? Grab a ticketing system. Repetitive questions got you down? Chatbots are your new best friend.
- Usability is king. Interfaces should be as intuitive as a high five. So, the less complex it is, the better. Plus, clear instructions are a must-have, not a bonus.
- Integration is your secret weapon. Tools that efficiently work together are game-changers. Imagine pulling customer data from one system and blasting out updates in another. That’s the power of easy integration.
- Smart technologies boost team morale. Because happy reps = happy customers. Explore tools with interactive dashboards or built-in collaboration features. This makes work less like work.
- Data is the key to your business’s future. Pick tools with solid analytics. The data they provide shows you what’s working or not. It shows you what to improve or fine-tune. Clean data unlocks peak performance.
TelebuSocial and TelebuHub are two customer experience tools that provide all of these.
Now you know how to choose the best customer support tools. Here are tools for everything you need.
40+ best tools for amazing customer support
I covered them across the different tasks or “things” your support team members do on a typical day in the office.
Project management
1. Basecamp– This is the tool we use at Telebu. While it has pros and cons, we’ve seen good results since 2022.
2. Asana – Popular project management tool with task lists, deadlines, and team collaboration features.
3. Trello – Kanban-style board for visualising tasks and progress.
Scheduling
4. TelebuHub – Schedule calls and manage team availability.
5. Calendly – Easy scheduling tool for clients to book appointments with your team.
6. Doodle – Simple poll-based scheduling to find common meeting times.
Time tracking
7. Hubstaff– Monitor team work hours and identify areas for improvement.
8. Toggl Track – Popular time-tracking app with detailed reports and invoicing features.
9. Harvest – Time tracking software with project management and payroll integrations.
Internal chat
10. Talk Magnet and Ping– Secure and efficient communication within your team. If you use TelebuHub, you get Ping along with it.
11. Slack – Popular internal chat platform with integrations for various tools.
12. Microsoft Teams – Integrated chat, calling, and video conferencing tool within the Microsoft suite.
Video calls
13. Zoom – Widely used video conferencing platform for meetings and presentations.
14. Google Meet – Free video conferencing tool with integration to Google Workspace.
15. Microsoft Teams – Offers video calling alongside chat and collaboration features.
With Talk Magnet, you don’t need another video conferencing tool. Talk Magnet has Audio and video conferencing integrated natively.
Screen sharing
16. Loom – Easy screen recording and sharing tool with annotation and comment features.
17. Zoom – Screen sharing option available within the video conferencing platform.
18. GoToMeeting – Video conferencing tool with screen sharing and recording capabilities.
Ticketing system
19. TelebuHub – Manage and prioritise customer tickets.
20. Zendesk – Popular help desk solution with ticketing, self-service portal, and reporting.
21. Freshdesk – User-friendly help desk software with ticketing, knowledge base, and automation features.
Live chat
22. TelebuSocial – Offer real-time support and answer customer questions directly on WhatsApp, IG, FB, X, TG and other social channels.
23. Intercom – Live chat tool with messaging, chatbots, and customer support features.
24. Drift – Conversational marketing and live chat platform with chatbots and lead generation tools.
Email Management
25. Gmail – Free email service with powerful search and organisation features.
26. Help Scout – Email support platform with a ticketing system, automation, and reporting.
27. Superhuman – AI-powered email client designed for increased efficiency and productivity.
Knowledge base
28. HelpDocs – User-friendly platform for building and managing online knowledge bases.
30. Confluence – Enterprise knowledge base and content management system.
Internal knowledge base
31. Notion – Collaboration and knowledge management platform with wikis, databases, and notes.
32. Slite – Internal wiki tool for team knowledge sharing and collaboration.
33. Tettra – Internal knowledge base platform with search, version control, and permission features.
Chatbots
34. TelebuSocial – Chatbot platform for building AI-powered chatbots for WhatsApp, IG, FB and other channels. Plus, FREE chatbot templates for every industry.
35. Drift – This conversational marketing platform allows you to build chatbots alongside live chat features.
36. Zendesk Chat – Chatbot builder integrated with the Zendesk help desk platform.
Help desk analytics
37. Zendesk Explore – Powerful analytics platform for help desk data and customer behaviour insights.
38. Freshdesk – Provides reports and insights on customer interactions within the Freshdesk platform.
39. Help Scout Insights – Analyze customer support data to improve efficiency and identify trends.
Customer satisfaction surveys
40. TelebuSocial – You can use broadcasts or chatbots to conduct surveys on WhatsApp and other social channels.
42. SurveyMonkey – Popular platform for creating and sending customer satisfaction surveys.
43. Typeform – Interactive and engaging survey creation tool for collecting customer feedback.
Do you remember those metrics you initially chose when setting up your team? Let me show you how to measure and improve using those metrics.
How to measure and improve team performance
Here’s how you should do it.
Create a dashboard with your selected metrics and their target numbers. You can use a spreadsheet to keep this simple.
The next step is to set up a schedule for entering the numbers for those metrics in your dashboard. Then, compare your performance with your targets to see how your team is performing.
This can be daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
So that you can make changes fast without over-micromanaging, I’d recommend a weekly review.
When you think about it, metrics are only quantitative — so they do not tell the whole story about how your team is faring.
For example, your first call resolution rate might drop by 50% from the previous week. But if you do not know that a team member is sick or experiencing burnout, you may immediately assume your team is becoming lazy.
You need something qualitative to complete the story.
That is where regular performance reviews and 1-1 conversations with your team come in. Your tools and tactics may change, but nothing can replace a human connection.
Let’s talk about the future of customer support.
The trends shaping customer support
Several key trends are shaping the future of customer support.
I believe these four are the strongest:
- AI and automation
- Remote and flexible work
- Omnichannel support
Let’s walk through each of them.
#1. AI and automation
AI chatbots can handle routine inquiries, answer FAQs, and automate repetitive tasks. They free up human agents for complex issues and personalised support.
Also, there are sentiment analysis tools that analyse customer sentiment. They allow for proactive issue resolution and improved experiences.
Imagine a customer contacts your company through a chatbot with a simple question. The AI understands the issue and then provides relevant FAQs or suggests self-service options.
If the inquiry is complex? The chatbot can hand off the customer to a live agent, providing all the relevant context.
How is AI and automation shaping the future of customer support?
I believe in two ways:
- 24/7 availability of support despite time zones
- Smaller customer support teams
If you start adopting AI in your customer support today, you’ll be on your way to increasing the number of customers who send happy support feedback. Also, you’d reduce the cost of operation and all the headaches that come with it.
#2. Remote and flexible work
Customer support used to be an in-house cubicle and a 9-5 game.
The truth is it’s easier to monitor and help your team that way.
But the story is different today.
You can insist on keeping your team in-house in a cubicle, but you may miss out on the large pool of remote talents that could improve how you delight your customers. As well as all the perks that come with it.
At Telebu, we’ve transitioned to a fully remote customer support team.
So far, this transition has made us heavily reliant on collaboration tools. These include video conferencing, project management platforms, and instant messaging.
We use:
- Talk Magnet for internal messaging,
- BaseCamp for project management,
- TelebuHub and TelebuSocial for ticketing and customer support conversations
- Grptalk and TelebuJoin for audio/video conferencing
- tl;dv, Screenpal, and Loom for video recording.
We originally built some of these tools in-house for our team, but we’re excited to announce that they’re now available to help other teams like you delight your agents and customers.
In addition, it also means we had to create clearer standard operating procedures, document them and invest in training and development.
Start optimizing your strategy with: Expert Tips on How to Effectively Manage Customer Support Agents
Furthermore, we had to learn to trust our team more and give them reasons to take their work seriously, even while working at their desks, beds, or sofas.
3. Omnichannel support channels and platforms
Gone are the days of boring emails. Today’s customers want an enjoyable omnichannel experience.
They want to be able to access support through their preferred channels. Be it chat, email, social media, phone, or self-service options.
For example, a customer initiates a chat about a product issue on your website but requires further assistance. They want to switch to a phone call with an agent or a quick chat on WhatsApp without having to repeat themselves.
In addition to that, customers want to be able to solve problems on their own. Waiting for an agent can be tedious.
This is where your knowledge base and self-service resources come in.
They can access videos on YouTube, your website’s knowledge base pages, or downloadable documentation. The more comprehensive and actionable you make them, the more satisfaction your customers will get. And they may not need to contact your team.
You’re all set to delight your customers.
Just a quick roundup.
Buckle up because the customer service landscape is on a wild ride.
It’s not just about phone calls and robotic greetings anymore.
We’re talking AI, remote teams scattered across the globe, and customers who expect the moon and the stars (delivered with a smile, of course).
So, to build a support team that can conquer this new world, embrace change, invest in your agents, and put your customers front and centre.
Do these, and your support team will become an unstoppable force, and your customers will be satisfied.
Check out our suite of customer service tools like TelebuSocial and TelebuHub.