Working remotely in a customer-centric team is not for everyone.
But if you’re working on remote customer success, support, or management position and want to know how to work successfully with your teammates who are working from different locations, this article will be helpful.
Here’s everything you need to know about working in a fully remote development team: the good, the bad, and what it takes in order to be successful.
We’ll cover things from personality skills and traits of working remotely, communication tactics that work best when working with people from all over the world, ways of connecting with your teammates without being face-to-face every day at work – even though they may live just next door! – as well as tips for
History of remote work
The history of working remotely is a long one, dating back to the 19th century. In 1872, a correspondent for The New York Times, Edward Bellamy, published a utopian novel called “Looking Backward” in which the protagonist falls into a deep sleep and wakes up in the year 2000. In this future, Bellamy predicted that most work would be done remotely, with people working from their homes.
While this prediction didn’t come true in the year 2000, remote work has seen a resurgence in recent years as technology has made working from anywhere easier than ever before. With tools like Slack, Zoom, and Google Docs, it’s now easier than ever for remote teams to stay connected and productive.
How has customer service and customer success changed since 2020?
Working remotely in customer support is far different than working on a fully-distributed team. There are still many people working in the customer of today who aren’t working remotely and for whom working alone means working from home, while working remotely means working from a coworking space or coffee shop near your house.
Since the pandemic, many people in customer-centric roles have become fully remote or hybrid workers. Working remotely in customer success and service in a fully remote customer team is becoming more and more popular as it provides many benefits for both the company and the employee: working from home allows employees to save money on commuting costs, saving them time every day while providing a good work-life balance.
Since becoming remote, customer success has changed in a few ways. First, working remotely has allowed us to build a more global team, which has led to new and innovative ways of thinking about customer success. Second, working remotely has allowed us to be more flexible with our working hours, which has led to increased productivity and creativity. And finally, working remotely has allowed us to connect with customers in new and innovative ways, deepening our relationships with them.
On the customer side, the demands of the customers have changed wildly since the pandemic. For example, customers now expect instant responses, 24/7 availability, and they want to be working with real people rather than working through automated systems. This has forced customer success teams to rethink their strategy when working with customers, leading us towards working on more high-touch accounts where personal relationships are the most important part of working together.
Personality traits needed for successful remote work
You may be wondering, “What personality traits do I need to be a successful remote customer service or customer success agent?” The answer is – all of them! Well, maybe not all of them, but working remotely requires a unique set of personality traits. Let’s take a look at some of the most desirable characteristics for working in a fully remote customer-centric team:
1) Self-starter
Working remotely may require you to work independently for much of the time. After all, your teammates might be working from their respective homes in different locations around the world. This means that working hard and working well when no one is watching becomes very important. In fact, it’s an essential characteristic if you want to build a successful remote career.
2) Strong communicator/listener
Staying connected with people from various zones can be difficult at times. It’s important to be a good communicator and listener when working remotely, especially if you have teammates working from different timezones.
3) Trustworthy
Another key trait needed for working in a remote team is trustworthiness. Your teammates will need to know that they can rely on you to get your work done even though they aren’t there watching over your shoulder.
4) Passion for the job you’re doing
Working remotely requires working independently most of the time, which means that passion and a love for what you do become very important. Otherwise, it’s easy to lose motivation and focus working alone all day long without anyone checking in with how you’re doing along the way.
5) Flexible schedule
Many remote working positions will give you some flexibility when it comes to scheduling your workdays, which is great if you want or need that extra bit of control over what days and hours you work every week. However, remote working does require a level of flexibility since many companies may ask that customer success managers be open to working with customers on their timezone.
6) Organized
Remote work can require working independently for much of the time, which means being organized goes a long way when working from home. This includes keeping track of your daily tasks, maintaining good records on how you’re progressing with projects, and generally being able to manage your time well while working remotely.
How to connect with your customers remotely?
How to build genuine relationships with your customers remotely? How to answer their question efficiently? How to understand their needs? How to make them feel safe and comfort working with your company?
We will try to cover here the main ways you can work with your customers remotely:
Personalize your communication: Try to use their name, be human. If you’re working in a support team this could be challenging, but if you’re working in customer success/engagement/consulting it’s doable because you contacts are highly valued and thus they get higher priority than normal users. Sometimes, mentioning some personal information about them (family, hobbies…etc.) is helpful too, for example, if they mention their dog in a post-mortem call.
Make yourself available for your customers: working from home opens a whole new world of flexibility in managing how much time you spend working each day. However, working remotely also requires being proactive about making yourself available for questions from customers at any given time. Of course, it goes without saying that there are certain hours/days when you will be allowed to focus on projects or tasks that require more attention as opposed to working with users at all times. But generally speaking – working remotely does not mean working behind closed doors with no contact whatsoever with your customers.
Timely responses: working remote requires being good at managing your working time so it’s important to be on top of what needs to be done and when to do it. This means making sure that timely responses are given even if the customer is working remotely as well so long as they have a clear understanding of all the issues/requests they need to be addressed. If working remotely from different areas around the world is something you face every day then having a phone or video call
Best collaborate tools for remote customer teams
Being a successful customer success agent or manager is one thing, but how about working well with the rest of your customer team and collaborating? Here are some of the best customer success collaboration tools from the web!
Loom: A video recording and screen sharing app. Using Loom on a Mac allows you to record up to 2 hours of your screen, have unlimited recordings, and also has the option to upload from iMovie or other video processing tools that actually work very well. There is a 30 minute free trial period for this tool which is plenty of time to test if it’ll work for working with remote customer teams!
WizIQ: WizIQ is an online collaboration platform designed with education in mind but works really well with customer success teams working remotely. It’s pretty easy to use and has a chat feature as well as a simple interface – both features your team needs so no complaints there! The only downside might be the price, but depending on how many team members you have working remotely it might be worth the cost.
TeamViewer: This tool is really simple to use and allows for screen sharing as well as file transfer if needed. It’s free for personal use, but if you’re working with a large amount of customers consider the paid version which offers unlimited number of licenses! There are plenty of other features too so this is one collaboration tool that your remote customer success team should try out ASAP.
Zoom: Zoom is another video chat platform that works really well for working remotely. It’s very easy to use and has minimal lag when working with remote users which is perfect – however there are some downsides such as being unable to have multiple callers unless these users are working together on the same project. But overall, it’s an excellent screen sharing tool that is definitely worth checking out!
Cisco WebEx: This collaboration tool works really well for working remotely with different customers. The best part? It’s free to use! However, do keep in mind that this platform has a limit of how many people can be working at once so your team might need to work with larger teams via Slack – but this isn’t necessary as everyone working on customer-facing projects needs to be working collaboratively anyways so 10 or 20 people shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
All of these tools are great choices for remote customer support and engagement teams so give them a try before settling down with one – after all, working with the right tools to help your CS team work remotely is what you should be striving for!
Final thoughts about remote working for customer success professionals
Working remotely is a great option for customer success professionals that want to work in an environment where they’re working with other people who are remote. However, working remotely does come with its own set of challenges and skills you’ll need to master if you want to be successful working this way. An important one: the ability to communicate effectively, both through written and verbal means (including video chats).
If your company offers any tools specifically designed for working on projects collaboratively while working from different locations around the world – use them! There’s nothing worse than trying to do everything by yourself when there’s so many resources available just waiting for you take advantage of these apps or programs. It could save your team hours upon hours of time spent trying unsuccessfully get everyone up
