What is customer service management

Customer service management (CSM) is a strategic approach to ensuring the smooth functioning of customer service interactions. It is a broad definition which encompasses:

• Handling troubleshooting requests;
• Representing the company brand both in-person and online;
• Storing customer data;
• Keeping the customer journey and customer experience (CX) smooth
• Collecting customer feedback;
• Interacting and assisting customers via online and traditional posts in-person;
• Recording and analysing customer satisfaction;
• Educating employees and customers about new products and their features;
• Assisting with the onboarding of new customers;
• Training customer support teams in customer retention strategy including psychological tactics, conflict resolution and other relevant soft skills.

This type of management can be broken down into two distinct categories: 

• Responsibilities customer support teams have internally towards the business;
• Responsibilities customer support teams have externally towards business customers.

Internal vs external responsibilities

Their internal responsibilities often involve customer support teams reporting back on customer satisfaction and other kinds of customer feedback. It also involves the management of customer support systems and software, as well as the training of new employees.

External responsibilities are those that involve being the face of the business. Customer support teams work to ensure that the front-of-house appropriately represents the company brand and supports customers throughout their journey.

How to build a customer service management team

Building an effective customer service management team is central to providing top support to customers, as well as learning about what drives customer wants and needs. Learning about customers can shape a customer service strategy as well, meaning that employers can consider customer service management as a feedback system.

Types of customer service employees

A customer service management team needs to have all the right people in place to support this system. As such, it might comprise the following people:

• Customer service manager;
• Communications officer;
• Technical support engineer;
• Customer assistant;
• Front of house assistant;
• Customer outreach;
• Accounts coordinator;
• Client service consultant;
• Call centre representative.

Building a customer service team is just one aspect of customer service management. Developing a successful customer service management strategy is also key. In these next sections, we’ll explore some challenges employers may be facing in customer service management. We’ll look at some tips for improving customer service management and responding to these challenges. 

Challenges to successful customer service management

As customers may be increasingly interested in online shopping, providing the best online customer experience may be at the forefront of many employers’ minds. With AI automation now available, some may also be interested in whether they can improve customer service management with the help of this technology.

Safely managing customer data

Customer onboarding can involve using sensitive customer information such as their financial information, name, address and more. It is therefore up to businesses to look at ways to safely store and manage this data.

According to our data protection guide: ‘The Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into play in order to protect individuals’ misuse of data in the digital age. Negligence of both the Data Protection Act and the GDPR can result in prosecution and heavy penalties for your company’. This applies to sensitive people data including both employee and customer data. 

Keeping customer satisfaction high

Maintaining customer satisfaction may be a challenge in a fast-paced industry. Customer expectations regarding a product can change over time. It is important to keep up with them. Being able to both analyse and predict customer needs may be another challenge to customer service management. 

Involving customers and stakeholders in prototype testing, as well as conducting surveys can help businesses find out what their customers are looking for. Learning how to segment customer bases into key demographics can also be useful, as different customers will have different reasons or desires for purchasing the same product.

Keeping customer service management technology up-to-date

Customer service management tech can keep the customer journey smooth. But if it’s not up-to-date, then customers could experience friction. These can be webpage timeouts or an overly complex shopping journey that could lead to shopping cart abandonment.

Other aspects of customer service technology to consider include:

• Keeping customers safe from cybercrime;
• Issues with integrating different customer service management tools into one workflow, such as ticketing systems, live chat and a knowledge base system;
• Making sure the technology is easy-to-use for customers who are unfamiliar with the technology.

Tips to improve customer service management

With some contemporary challenges to customer service in mind, let’s look at some tips that may help improve customer service management.

Educate your customer support team in cybersecurity

Customer support teams can benefit from cybersecurity training. According to Indeed’s guide to cybersecurity skills gaps, more than a quarter of all digital attacks are the result of negligent employee or contractor behaviour.

Keeping customer information confidential and safe is essential. Businesses may be able to achieve this with the right data management systems. Providing staff with information on how to avoid phishing attacks is paramount as well. Some criminals can be especially convincing in their phishing attacks. training that explains to never give out customer data even if it is to someone who appears to be a trusted colleague is essential.

Look at how your customer service tools integrate

If customer service tools don’t integrate well, managing customer experience may be more difficult. For this reason it is important for businesses to look into fully integrating their customer support software and technology. This can involve:

• Making sure that customer support tech is ‘below eye level’ and does not interfere with the seamless experience of the company website;
• Assessing any customer support needs and how they need to be integrated together;
• Looking at hiring a systems integrator to integrate the customer support package;
• Testing any tools thoroughly before implementing them;
• Gathering feedback from testers and customers to make sure that customer support tools are performing well.

Use an Agile approach to customer service

Customer satisfaction is at the centre of the Agile approach. Companies can use this philosophy to quickly and efficiently provide customer service. Agile delivery includes responding to customer needs both early and continuously.

While some Agile approaches to customer service may be hard to get right, they can be beneficial to businesses when used well. Training customer support in Agile and having regular Agile meetings could be a good strategy. Some ways businesses can introduce Agile to customer service include:

• Allowing teams to self-manage some processes, such as troubleshooting;
• Allowing teams to be responsible for customer satisfaction, revenue and costs targets, creating incentives for meeting these targets;
• Automating standard tasks to allow customer ‘experts’ to deal with more complex customer issues.

Customer service management is an important part of reaching customer needs. By providing successful customer service, businesses improve customer satisfaction and create a strong business reputation. Being able to safely store customer data and protect them from cybercrime may also be becoming an important part of customer service management.