How to Build the Best Team Support Ever?

This blog summarizes the key points from a recent article from David McGeough at Scorebuddy where he provides a comprehensive guide that aims to help you with all the information required to assemble the most excellent support team possible for your business.

Customer service has evolved, and today, exceptional service is a necessity, not a luxury. Nearly 70% of customers say they would spend more if they received better support. This highlights the importance of strong team support for business success.

What Is the Support Team in Customer Service?

Customer service and customer support are often intertwined but differ slightly.

• Customer Service: Assists customers before, during, and after a purchase.
• Customer Support: A subset of customer service focused on resolving specific issues and enhancing user experiences.

Customers expect consistent care across channels, leading many companies to merge customer service and support roles for seamless interactions.

The growth of support teams in customer service highlights how traditional distinctions no longer match consumer expectations in the digital age. Support team members handle diverse tasks, from problem-solving to collaborating with product teams to enhance the customer journey.

Why Is Team Support Important?

Investing in customer support offers long-term benefits for businesses:

• Increases Customer Retention: Just a 5% increase in retention can boost profits by 25%.
• Builds Loyalty: 96% of customers base brand loyalty on support quality.
• Enhances Marketing: Positive experiences, shared on social media by 70% of customers, attract new buyers.

A strong support team positively impacts marketing, acquisition, retention, and profitability, making it a worthy investment for any organization.

What Makes a Good Customer Support Team?

A top-notch support team goes beyond resolving issues – it nurtures customer success throughout the relationship.

Key qualities of a great team include being skilled in communication, emotional intelligence, and technical tools and the ability to adapt to modern platforms, such as social media and CRM systems.

The best teams align their mission with company values and customer needs, ensuring that support continues post-sale for a lasting impact.

How to Build a Customer Support Team in 7 Steps

1. Define Metrics for Success

What does exceptional customer service look like for your company? It can vary across industries. For example, logistics companies may define it as timely deliveries and proactive updates, while retail businesses might prioritize flexible returns policies or detailed sizing guides to help customers find the perfect fit.

To establish effective metrics for your customer support team, consider these key questions:

• How do your company’s values align with your customer service goals? A strong, values-driven foundation helps create a consistent service philosophy.
• What are your customers’ main expectations? Many seek fast responses and clear, transparent solutions.
• How does your competition measure up? Research shows that 67% of consumers are willing to pay more for superior customer service.

Use industry research, customer feedback, and employee insights to gather valuable data for shaping these metrics.

2. Prioritize Communication Channels

It’s nearly impossible to monitor every customer interaction across all communication channels at once. Instead, focus on the channels where most of your customer interactions already take place.

For example, phone calls, live chats, social media, and email are among the most commonly used. However, some channels may be more suitable depending on the type of product or service offered.

To better understand your audience’s preferred communication methods, consult your marketing team for insights on customer personas. For retail or travel, live chat may be the ideal option.

Always consider which channels are most effective for your brand in resolving customer issues. Customers tend to prefer working with familiar faces, so having a consistent support team can build trust and loyalty.

3. Hire the Right Talent

A great customer experience relies not only on tools but also on a skilled team. Top customer service representatives blend both hard and soft skills.

For example, an agent needs to master systems like POS, but also possess emotional intelligence, strong communication, and problem-solving abilities.

Key soft skills for support staff include:

• Friendly demeanour
• Emotional intelligence
• Strong organization
• Effective listening and communication
• Calmness under pressure

Work with top performers to identify additional valuable soft skills and create a recruitment strategy to fill any gaps. Align hiring with business growth and use tools like skills gap analyses to improve your hiring process.

Focus on retaining top talent, fostering diversity, and ensuring new hires align with your company culture and values.

4. Analyse Key Data Points

Track essential metrics that align with your customer service goals and ensure your team has the right skills to improve them. Avoid reporting fatigue by focusing on the most relevant data.

Identify key metrics, such as skill gaps or common support issues, and tailor reports to your audience.

Focus on critical metrics like:

• Interactions to resolution
• Customer satisfaction
• Upselling and cross-selling
• Reviews
• Resolved vs. unresolved issues
• Time to resolution

These metrics help boost team performance and customer outcomes.

5. Equip Your Team With the Right Tools

Even top customer service agents need the right tools to improve satisfaction ratings. The right software can simplify, speed up, and enhance service effectiveness.

Build a list of essential tools for your customer service stack, focusing on quality over complexity. Ensure the tools integrate with your existing systems.

Key resources for a modern team include:

• Live chat solution
• Social media management tool
• Phone and texting support software
• Help desk software & ticketing system
• Customer relationship management tool

Consider using a real-time dashboard to consolidate all metrics for easier tracking.

6. Build a Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is a collection of manuals, FAQs, how-to videos, and other resources that help customers resolve issues without contacting support.

It benefits both customers and support agents by saving time on common queries and making instructions easier to find.

Many knowledge base tools also offer reporting features to identify recurring issues, helping product teams prioritize future updates and improvements.

7. Integrate Support Across Teams

Customers expect all employees to go the extra mile to assist them. To meet these expectations, integrate support into broader business processes.

Provide cross-departmental training to create a customer-first culture, and equip frontline staff with the tools to handle inquiries and troubleshoot effectively.

Automate simple tasks or offer self-service options to reduce friction. Ensure smooth information sharing and follow-up between teams to avoid delays and keep everyone aligned. This internal transparency helps retain customers by addressing their needs efficiently.

Final Thoughts

Building a customer support team starts with understanding customer needs and equipping agents with the right skills and tools.

By prioritizing team integration, knowledge-sharing, and modern support solutions, businesses can elevate customer experiences while driving loyalty and growth. For more insights into customer service and hiring top talent, explore our blog!

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Scorebuddy – View the Original Article

For more information about Scorebuddy - visit the Scorebuddy Website

About Scorebuddy

Scorebuddy is quality assurance solution for scoring customer service calls, emails and web chat. It is a dedicated, stand-alone staff scoring system based in the cloud, requiring no integration.

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: Scorebuddy
Reviewed by: Megan Jones