Customer support sub-teams are an essential part of the CS department. They play a critical role in ensuring that the department’s team members receive the assistance and support they need to perform their duties effectively, and to resolve any issues that may arise at the work place.
The primary role of customer support sub-teams is to provide support to their team members.
Training and mentorship
Facilitating career growth
Responding to individual workplace concerns
Performance monitoring, evaluation and assessment
Providing feedback to agents
Communication and dissemination of departmental information
Fostering team spirit and healthy competition
Setting team performance goals and objectives according to departmental KPIs
Identifying and responding to both positive and negative workplace patterns
The customer support sub-teams typically have different roles that work together to achieve their goals. These roles include trainers, team leads, customer service representatives, and the quality assurance advisor.
Customer service representatives are the front-line role that interacts directly with customers. They are responsible for answering customer inquiries, troubleshooting technical problems, providing information on products and services, and handling complaints and feedback. They can also be called upon to perform additional tasks such as trainings, organizing meetings, minute taking and special tasks within their sub-teams. Their personal performance ratings make up the bulk of metrics against which their sub-team performance is measured.
Trainers are responsible for providing training and support to other customer support team members. They can be sourced from within the CS department or external departments within the company. Training and performance evaluation sessions are held periodically as determined by the sub-team members. They can be in-person or online meetings. Regular training provides development opportunities, and enables the team members to identify their strengths, opportunities for improvement and pursue career growth opportunities.
Quality assurance roles are responsible for monitoring and evaluating the quality of the team members’ output. By monitoring the sub-team members, the QA officer or manager ensures that the team is providing accurate, consistent, and helpful information to customers while also meeting the set KPIs.
The sub-teams also undergo monthly and quarterly performance evaluation as well as individual and team performance rankings. Quarterly sub-team reshuffles have also been found to be essential to the department’s performance as they discourage laxity and friction among agents.
In general, the sub-teams enable all customer support team members to work together to provide a high level of customer service and meet departmental goals.