No matter what business you are in, the success of it mainly depends on happy customers.
It is because the customer service team works hard to make customers happy. While it is true that a customer service team with higher productivity ensures satisfied customers, it is also vital to work smarter.
As per an AmEx survey conducted in 2011, one happy customer talks to nine people about a good customer service experience.
Assuming a business decides to create one happy customer every day by answering their emails and resolving them. They would end up with one satisfied customer who would tell nine others about their positive experience.
It would mean those happy customers have exposed your business to at least 225o people with their positive stories.
While it does seem like a simple thing to do, it does require the team to be more productive. However, higher productivity does not always mean hard work; smart work is a better option.
Let us look at a few unconventional productivity tips designed carefully after considering research to improve the team’s efficiency.
10 Crucial Reasons to Track Time for Support Tickets
1 . Avoid multitasking
Managing a conference call while attending to a few support tickets, along with the daily cuppa and a quick view of the personal emails, does feel accomplished.
However, handling these many tasks can make anyone lose focus. Whether it is a personal email or another task at work, juggling too many things could lead to chaos and never result in any achievement.
Concentrating on one thing at a time helps to complete a task. It also enables individuals to give their 100% concentration towards it, thereby ensuring a high quality of work.
However, as per research conducted in 2001, Dr. Meyer said that workers who shift between tasks suffer from brief mental blocks and lead to curtailing up to 40% of a person’s productive time.
Interesting Read : 10 Crucial Reasons to Track Time for Support Tickets
It takes more than twenty minutes for a sidetracked worker to get back to the original task, which means multitasking takes over a humongous amount of time in a given workday. This lost time is called the “switching cost” by researchers.
So one thing at a time is not only helpful in saving time, but it also enables workers to concentrate and accomplish the task at hand efficiently.
2. Accountability
Humans, by nature, tend to choose more manageable tasks over the harder ones first.
While it is a great idea to finish the more manageable tasks first, it can lead to procrastination in the customer service team if complex tickets are pushed around for long without attention.
Interesting Read : 6 Best Practices For Support Ticket Prioritization
It also leads to angry customers, thereby causing a dent in the overall business. Accountability works best in such situations.
When a team member is assigned and held accountable for managing ‘X’ number of tickets, they are sure to set their deadlines and beat procrastination.
3. Avoid distractions
Digital distractions are one of the main reasons for the lack of efficiency at work. Going back to Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter is hard. Install a site block on the browser, continue with the work assigned, and limiting the time per day to spend on such distractions can be very helpful in avoiding distractions.
Constant checking of social media apps on the phone, texting, and personal phone calls for long-duration at work can also curtail productivity and cause inefficiency.
4. Get Out of the Coffee Shop
Distributed teams with remote workers from all over the world usually have many of them working from the local coffee shop. Loud coffee shops may cause plummeting productivity because noisy surroundings may lead to distractions and reduce concentration.
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Silent surroundings with no visual distractions are better to focus on work. If the local coffee shop is your go-to place for logging in, then a change of scenery can do wonders for your efficiency at work.
5. Break boosts focus
The customer support teams often tend to be busy, and the teams may feel like avoiding breaks to get the work done. However, an occasional break can do wonders to boost focus and improve productivity.
As per research by the University of Michigan, a group of tired employees was measured for mood and focus at work, divided into two groups, and asked to take an hour-long walk where the first group went on a nature trail and the second one went to walk around the downtown.
Upon returning, the mood and focus of these employees seemed to have improved. For example, the group that walked around the nature trail scored 200% higher than the other group.
So unplugging with a ten-minute break can give surprising results by boosting the mood and focus of employees.
6. Tools to the rescue
Automation helps to reduce repetitive tasks. Choosing the right tools, learning a new workflow, and automating helps to simplify work and cut down any repetitive tasks.
Automation helps to streamline work and ensure the employees concentrate on better utilizing their time. Automation, among few other Unconventional Productivity Tips, is beneficial to simplify tasks, improve the team’s productivity, and save hundreds of hours each year.
7. Feedback
Giving and receiving feedback helps boost productivity. Listening to employees offer insights into the challenges the teams face daily. Understanding those needs, addressing, and resolving them helps boost their morale and result in higher productivity.
Two-way feedback helps both the management and the employees share their thoughts grievances and removes any unwanted blockage of information, thereby improving work and interpersonal relationships.
8. Empower the team
Using measuring reports to ascertain the capabilities of each employee and training them to excel in it not only helps to ramp up SME’s in the team and boost the morale of the employees.
Encouraging the customer support team to take the initiative and offer personalized solutions (like offering discounts, free shipping, and replacements) would help the customer feel valued. It also helps to improve the team’s overall productivity.
Encouraging the team to make swift decisions and flattening the hierarchy at the workplace is helpful to resolve tickets faster and enables the team to perform better.
9. Measuring everything can backfire
Measuring the time taken to close a ticket may be helpful. However, measuring every waking moment of the time spent by the team and tracking every activity may damage the team’s overall productivity.
Micromanagement has never really resulted in any good. It only makes the group vulnerable and reduces the overall performance since the morale is much lower with all the constant measuring.
10. Cut those meetings
Long-running meeting time not only curbs the overall performance it also causes lethargy in the team members. Therefore, cutting down meetings to minimal time and canceling meetings when there are few updates/exchange of views required is one of the best Unconventional Productivity Tips.
Meeting are constructive when there are updates to be announced and strategies to be formed. However, regular meetings that run for more extended hours can bite into the performing hours of the team and result in lower productivity.
Therefore, it is best to stick to short meetings and avoid any if they are not necessary.
Conclusion
Unconventional productivity tips like creating accountability, discouraging multitasking, empowering the team, improving employee engagement, automation, and utilizing tools to encourage productivity might do wonders in boosting the team’s overall morale.
In addition, open communication, two-way feedback, removing the hierarchy in the team, and giving the team a free hand at making personalized decisions to make the customer happy might help improve the overall team performance and increase the number of satisfied customers.
