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“For people in any role, join your customer service team. These people are more relevant to your company’s success than you may know”
On Thursday 12th November we launched the first episode of our brand new Support Heroes by Kaizo Podcast. For this installment, we sat down with Benedikt Dormann, Direct of Global Customer Service at N26.
In this episode, Benedikt shares his tips and best practices from a multidecade career of successfully managing multinational Support programs across Europe.
Key Takeaways
1. An international team is an asset if managed correctly
2. A high performing customer support department can be a key differentiator in company success
3. Companies can achieve customer-centricity by integrating customer experience (CX) management into every aspect of their business
An international team is an asset if managed correctly
- Managing an international team can be challenging because different cultures have different understandings of what is right, what is helpful, and what is appropriate. Essentially, what constitutes good customer support.
- However, these differences can become an asset if you learn from each other. As well as, enable you to serve different customers the way they want to be served.
- In order to create a cohesive international team, Benedikt advises managers to be open-minded, adaptive, take interest in different cultures, and actively learn from them.
“It’s like a marriage- it’s all about compromises. You can’t always be right”
A high performing customer support department can be a key differentiator in company success
- For N26, as well as a growing number of online companies, customer support can be the first and only human touchpoint a customer has with the organization. In order to form trust with that customer, Benedikt says it’s crucial that this first interaction is successful, efficient, and satisfying for the customer.
“Companies that have a greater NPS are faster growing than others”
- Doing right by your customers in their time of need can turn them into a brand advocate. How do you ensure a successful interaction that results in customer-to-advocate metamorphosis?
- The right balance between technical knowledge and soft skills that each and every agent must possess.
Achieve customer-centricity by integrating customer experience (CX) management into every aspect of your business
- Benedikt urges companies to adopt holistic CX management practices by having horizontal oversight of all departments and connecting managers with the frontline employees as much as possible.
“This entails C-levels regularly shadowing first-level employees and ensuring regular meetings between themselves and middle-managers”
- CX reporting must be done along all touchpoints, at every level across the company, and targets must be aligned across department lines. Feedback must flow from the departments that interact with customers the most and be communicated in such a way that departmental decisions keep the customer first.
“Listening to what customers tell you is key to success”