How Remote Working Impacts Customer Success Teams
Remote work changes how customer success teams operate. Learn the three biggest impacts — project tracking, customer issues, communication — and how to adapt.
TL;DR
- Remote work impacts customer success teams in three big ways: staying on top of critical projects, mitigating customer issues, and communicating internally and with customers.
- Remote teams need fail-proof project tracking with clear visibility into who owns which tasks, since you can't just lean over to the next desk for an answer.
- Customers still expect a high level of service regardless of your working arrangement, so a single point of contact to relay information keeps them from feeling overlooked.
- Over-communicating — through weekly or even daily updates and longer checkpoint calls — proves a CS team's dedication and resilience during periods of uncertainty.
If you’re like most organizations over the past few weeks, you’ve received orders (whether government-mandated or from your leadership team) that have forced your team to work remote for the foreseeable future. While remote work can be challenging for any team not used to working outside of an office environment, it can present unique challenges to customer success teams who need to stay connected with each other and with external customers.
Here are three big ways remote working impacts customer success teams:
1) Staying on top of critical projects
For some customer success teams, it can be hard to stay ahead of critical customer projects even when everyone is in the office together. When your team is remote, leaning over to the desk next to yours with a question is impossible, and hunting down answers isn’t quite as easy. Customer success teams must have fail-proof project tracking tools in place – including visibility into who is responsible for what tasks – to ensure everyone knows exactly what they’re accountable for while remote.
2) Mitigating customer issues
Unfortunately, customers won’t care that your team is switching up its working arrangements and working remote. Customers still expect an extremely high level of service and dedication from vendors, and this sentiment is even more true now that there is so much uncertainty from outside factors. There are going to be customer issues and questions and having a plan in place to mitigate these issues is key for remote teams. While one conversation with every member of a remote customer project team could be overwhelming for a customer, having a single point of contact to relay information and responses ensures the customer doesn’t feel overlooked in this time of panic.
3) Communicating internally and with customers
Last but certainly not least, communication should not be left to fall to the wayside during periods of remote work. At every level of a team and, in reality, a business, communicating effectively and clearly is now more important than ever. While executives, department heads, and team leaders should be clearly communicating internal protocols and changes with the team, customer success managers must be even more diligent on relaying significant updates and communications to customers. This could means sending weekly (or even daily!) updates to clients via email or extending weekly checkpoint calls to an hour instead of thirty minutes. By over-communicating with customers and keeping them informed during this time, customer success teams can prove they’re dedication and resilience during a time of unrest.
While working remote for an extended period of time can seem daunting at first, with the right tools and resources customer success teams can seamlessly transition from in-person workflows to fully remote processes without a hitch. Having a plan in place that doesn’t impact customers and continues to provide them with the highest level of service possible is paramount. You can learn more about dealing with remote work plans here.
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