Supporting Customer Service Through the Coronavirus Crisis
On June 12, 2020 the RemoteHQ team welcomed Zach Bouzan- Kaloustian to our Future of Work podcast to discuss customer support during COVID-19 in addition to his experience working remotely before the dress shirt and pj pants was a trending look for all of us.
🎧 Listen Here
To dive right in, click below to listen to the 20-minute podcast or view the longer interview on YouTube.
đź’¨ Quick Takeaways
Zach shared how customer support teams can adapt amidst the coronavirus from drawing on his years of experience as an operations and customer experience leader in building international, customer-centric services at growth startups such as Fab.com and Digital Ocean. If you have the following questions, Zach may have the answer!
My customers are churning, what should I do?!
Zach stresses the importance for customer support teams to think back to their operational processes pre-covid and strive to continue following and delivering those standards while acknowledging that some customers you won’t be able to save. Despite churn, the most important thing is to continue to rally together as a team behind your aligned company mission and ensure a continuation of an A+ experience to your customers while continuing to nurture them even when they’re gone.
To try to attract customers, should I offer discounts or extend a free trial?
Believing that anchoring a new customer at a discount may hurt your business and economics long term as well as makes it difficult to retain customers, Zach rather suggests extending free trials. This is because it provides teams the opportunities to engage with and see the benefit of your product without the financial commitment or burden, leading to a higher conversion rate and potentially lesser churn rate. Speaking from experience, Zach has tested out a few new SaaS products himself the teams he consults and while they do not fall within budget now, he has experienced the benefit and will keep it in mind when able to prioritize!
My team has never been remote before, how can I continue to keep morale?
Although he cannot take credit, Zach’s quick answer to this is to create a virtual bell so anytime a team member deserves a shoutout they are given a company-wide recognition for a job well done. Despite not being built yet, the idea of “celebrating like hell” when you win is needed now more than ever! Even if your team has only one remote employee, you need these tactics in place so there is the feeling of camaraderie.
How can I scale my team while remote?
Zach double-clicked on the importance of “thinking remote-first” in every decision that you make as a leader is really important, even if you only have one team member remote. Inevitably, it’ll be a dynamic environment and there is the necessity to figure out a communication strategy, what company culture works best your team, and the importance to still build career paths for your employees so they never feel forgotten despite not being physically near you.
Those are just a few pieces of advice that Zach has to share. To digest more, listen to the full podcast here and make sure to follow his blogs about CX at experiencehandbook.com as well as follow him on Twitter @ZacharyBK.
Thanks for tuning in,
Mia & the RemoteHQ team
