In recent years, synergy, niche, next-gen, and new normal are some of the most common (and hated/cringed-upon) business buzzwords. Interestingly, “synergy” tops the list quite often. 

While the psychological explanation for why we cringe at things can be complex, it can be simply understood this way — overused terms often misused in wrong contexts can lose their meaning and cause cringe, becoming a buzzword. However, this shouldn’t mean that you should always have a negative association to such words. 

For instance, synergy shouldn’t always translate to a tech CEO using it as an adjective on their website for the software their company creates. It can also mean a highly functional, in-sync team having both peace and productivity inadequacy.

In this blog, we will discuss how to enable your help desk workforce by building “synergy” within it.

5 Steps to building synergy in your help desk team

Synergy in your help desk ticketing software team gives you happy customers and therefore increased sales, ROIs, and CLV. The happier your customer support team, the better they’ll serve your customers. Your help desk team is your direct POC with prospects and customers. The quality of your help desk software team will determine the kind of brand you become. 

Here are some classic tips for creating synergy in your help desk software team:

1. Communication is more than a mere exchange of words

Good communication lays the foundation for creating good workplace relationships – it helps give teams an environment where all problems become solvable through dialogue and understanding and avoids situations to tailspin.

Tips for communicating better are:

a. Active Listening 

One should not listen to react but listen to absorb information and then respond. Active listening also includes listening without any biases. 

b. Practice Empathy 

Empathy makes you understand people’s points of view even when they’re different from you. It prevents you from being blinded by your opinion and biases. It helps you consider contradictory information without resistance. 

c.  Work Towards a Common Goal 

Communication turns into arguments and conflicts when you take things personally and focus on winning the argument rather than being right and meeting the common goal of serving customers better.

We strongly suggest you read the in-depth, actionable article on how to perfect corporate communication by Tony Robbins. 

2. Encourage creative input from agents

One of the most depreciating things a customer support leader can do is not take any agents’ input. Agents are not cogs in a machine where their role is confined to serving customers. They need to have a voice. Encourage them to actively be vocal, creative and give feedback.

Failure to do so can lead to a disengaged team with disgruntled workers, which kills synergy. 

To create a synergistic team:

1. Take an inclusive approach.
2. Allow agents to present any creative ideas and problem-solving solutions they may have.
3. More importantly, create a culture where they’re comfortable voicing their opinions. 

Having daily meetings. Creating anonymous feedback portals are some common ways to do so.

3. Empower your team through training 

Training is an important aspect to create a highly efficient workforce with synergy.  

Support agents should have easy access to customer historical data and information on products and services so that they can quickly solve customers’ queries.

They should also have the knowledge of their power for them to have some leeway when handling tricky customers. For instance, they can offer a replacement product, discount, or refunds according to the situation at hand.

Referral training at frequent time intervals is also necessary. 

4. Enable agents with technological prowess

A help desk ticketing system is an absolute necessity for business today, considering round-the-clock customer footfall online. 

Help desk ticketing software makes your team more productive with less effort. It can also automate high-frequency tasks and allow agents to work on other complex ones. It also reduces the first response time FTRs by automatically sending a ticket when a customer reaches out with a query. 

Overall, IT ticketing system software is a necessary technology to empower agents and create synergies.

Here are some key features a help desk ticketing software: 

• Automation of tasks like answering FAQs.
• Vital data to improve customer service like call time, customer feedback, frequently asked queries, etc. 
• Real-time customer updates. 
• Internal chat feature so
• Tagging other team members for better collaboration.
• Easily routing queries to the right agent.
• Integration to other technology like chatbots, live chat software, knowledge base software, etc.

5. Recognize and reward success

It is psychology 101 that rewards and punishment reinforce behaviors. This may sound basic, but it is a necessary reminder, nonetheless. 

Help desk agents don’t know the kind of customer they’re going to face in a day. They are often subjected to rude behavior, to say the least. It is of utmost importance to recognize their efforts.  

Create an incentive and rewards program that encourages excellent customer service and rewards, high-performing agents. Also, ensure to make this rewarding activity fun to create synergy rather than creating tense competition.

Not a buzzword anymore

We hope this article allows you to look past the buzzword-tag of “synergy” into the value it can drive to your help desk teams. A synergistic customer support team can function better and create happy and loyal customers for you. For more such content, stay tuned to coworkingmag.com.