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How to Build a Productive Remote Technical Support Team from Scratch?

How to Build a Productive Remote Technical Support Team from Scratch

In today’s competitive market, the one thing that most successful businesses have in common is a remote working team and excellent technical support services. Remote working has become a total game-changer, especially during the pandemic times. You can save costs, boost productivity, increase efficiency and employee engagement, and have happy employees. Many support workers, such as customer service agents, IT technical support agents, and other business workers, have turned their homes into offices.

Global Workplace Analytics found that 5 million people worked from home in 2018, a 173% increase from 2005. The same study also found that 86% of employees feel that working from home reduces stress, and 77% believe working remotely improves their general health.

Remote working can indeed lead to great things for a business, but this can only happen when implemented effectively. The key to making a thriving remote working environment lies in employee engagement. Happy and inspired employees perform better. Better performance leads to better business. There’s no secret formula here. In simple words, happy employees lead to satisfied customers and a thriving business.

How to Build a Remote Technical Support Services Team?

Whether you are building an IT technical support team or any team from scratch, ensure it is structured to succeed with a strong foundation. This can be done with a bit of homework from your end.

Define ‘great technical support service’ for your company

There isn’t a business that doesn’t promise excellent customer service. But not all customers have a great customer experience. Thus, there is always space for improvement. Therefore, when building an IT technical support team, decide on the service quality you will provide and include your entire team in that process. Once you have set the ideal benchmarks for your services, you will have a standard against which you can measure your technical support service team.

Decide on which channels to provide your support

It’s pretty easy to say, “We are available on all channels all the time!” but following through with that commitment isn’t! Most companies tend to expand their services in all channels and fail to deliver quality services as they are all over the place. That ends up in a lack of quality, leading to bad reviews. Therefore, any day, choose quality over quantity. Providing good services over a few channels goes a long way than spreading your team to provide inconsistent services.

A great way to figure this out is by researching the customers’ platforms. Figure out what kind of support channels will be ideal for your business. For IT technical support, emails are the best as they are specific and detailed. But the wait for a response can get frustrating, especially if you are in a hurry. Live chat services can be a great way to address quick queries and issues of customers.

Building a Team with the Correct People

We all know that the first step to a successful team is hiring the right people, and those aren’t easy to find. As the saying goes, “Your employees are the people that make and break your business” holds this context. So how do you pick your teammates, then?

While hiring, apart from the skills and qualities you are looking for in your team, here are a few pointers you can consider that will help you build a more vigorous and more productive team-

Focus on What They Want to Achieve

Understanding their goals and dreams to align them with yours. This will also let you know how enthusiastic and dedicated they are at their tasks and their willingness to grow.

Efficient Communication Skills 

Basic communication skills are crucial for any team. Also, make sure they are team players.

Remote Working Potential

Even though it sounds easy, long-term remote work requires discipline, good prioritizing skills, and the confidence to work without constant supervision. Assess each applicant to see if they are an asset or drain to your remote team before you hire them.

Relevant Experiences in Those Roles

For a remote technical support service team, freelancers and contractors are ideal as they are already used to a remote environment. They understand expectations and challenges better and are back with solutions to tackle them.

Industry Knowledge

Working with someone who knows your business beforehand is much easier than training a new applicant.

How to Train Your Team to Increase Efficiency?

Training your team is as important as setting up a business. Your team needs to know what exactly is required from them for your business. Simply put, “Teamwork makes your dream work.” Therefore, here is a checklist to help your team increase efficiency.

Provide Extensive Onboard Training and Support

As remote support teams work alone, they might need more time to get help. Therefore, provide them with extensive training so that they can work autonomously. You can also set up a self-service help center or searchable knowledge base so that your teammates can look up and get access to the latest and most accurate information about your services and products.

Provide Them with the Right Tools

Tools act as the arms and legs of your team. Therefore, providing them with all the necessary hardware and software tools to perform their tasks is crucial.

Develop Clear Remote Working Policies

Set clear expectations for your team. Create and publish policies that tell what is and isn’t allowed. Have procedures for internal communication, recorded data of customer interactions, backup for emergencies, and at-home time tracking.

How to Create a Productive Work Environment?

Unlike other departments, remote working teams don’t get to spend time like other on-site teams. Therefore, developing a healthy work culture that will benefit your business, in the long run is vital. Wondering how to do that? Then there are a few pointers to help you decide on the things you need to implement-

Develop a Knowledge Base

Investing in a knowledge base can be time-consuming, but it can go a long way. Internally, your new employees can utilize it to solve specific issues and learn how to use different tools. Furthermore, it will help you solve recurring customer issues and assure them that there is a knowledge base for them anytime. 

Secure Your Data

Remote working increases complexity, especially when it comes to security. Therefore, implement security policies and conduct security awareness training if necessary. 

Focus on the outcomes

Rather than checking if your teammate has completed 9 hours of work, check whether they have delivered all tasks for the day. Focus on what is being accomplished than on how long it took to complete it.

Let Them Grow

Inspire your teammates, and give them attainable goals they can look forward to. This helps them push a little harder and stay optimistic. Collect feedback and conduct reviews to let them know the areas they can work on. 

Reward and Recognize Great Work

There’s no better motivation than getting appreciated for a job well done! Recognize your team’s efforts and reward them for their outstanding performances. This will create a healthy competitive culture in your workplace.

Lastly, always have your team’s back, and trust your business is in good hands. It is essential that your employees feel that they are well taken care of. After all, healthy employees are productive employees.

As more companies embrace remote working, technical support outsourcing has become quite common.

This is a much more feasible option for busy businesses looking to provide support around-the-clock.

Final Thoughts

We at Wow customer support have learned what works and what doesn’t. This firsthand experience and expertise in this field make us one of the industry’s best customer support service companies. If you want to outsource technical support services, your search ends today!

Contact us today to learn more about small business technical support services.

Interesting posts to read:

How to Build a Successful Offshore Team for Customer Support?

Why Is Customer Support Services Vital for Online Retail Business?

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