Case Study: KeepSafe

Transcription

Make Them Love You: Smart, Strategic Support
Your Big Chance
Support in the Cloud
Define Your Delight
Case Study: KeepSafe
First Steps: Build Your Team
Attract Top Talent
Narrow Down the Field
Conduct Insightful Interviews
Customer Support Rep Focus: Michelle Decker
Case Study: CustomMade
Ramp Up: Get Your Reps Up to Speed
Effective Onboarding & Training
Pave a Clear Career Path
Case Study: Tango.me
Ready, Set, Grow: Scale Up Your Support
Find the Right Structure
Wrangle Your Social Media
Safeguard Your Support Coverage
The Distributed Toolbox: Cloud-Based
& Cost Effective
Tools to Consider
Case Study: Visual.ly
Team Culture: The Key to Success at Any Size
Foster a Sense of Appreciation
Use the Right Metrics
Reward Outstanding Performance
Case Study: Thumbtack
The Takeaway: Final Thoughts on Support Done Right
Tips for Distributed Support Success
Fish Where the Fish Are
Appendix: Build Your Team Using Upwork
1
Inside This Chapter:
• Your Big Chance
• Support in the Cloud
• Define Your Delight
• Case Study: KeepSafe
Make Them Love You:
Smart, Strategic Support
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably
come to realize that great customer
service can make or break your bottom
line. And in this age of real-time tweets
and Facebook rants, delivering a stellar
experience might be the most important
thing you do to build your business,
burnish your brand, and inspire lifelong
customer loyalty.
HAPPY CUSTOMERS, SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES
3
When a customer contacts your support team, chances
are they do not want to love you. Something has
gone wrong, it is all your fault (whether it is or not),
and the customer is vulnerable and frustrated.
It’s your job to make them love you, even if you can’t
give them the resolution they want. Not only is this
interaction your big chance to convert anger into
adoration, loathing into loyalty—it’s often your only
chance. Thought about this way, you really can’t
afford not to offer your customers a world-class support
experience as part of your overall service strategy.
Your first line of defense is to build a team of passionate
support professionals, which is why businesses of all
sizes are turning to distributed teams as a viable solution.
Your
Big
Chance
4
This book is for any company—from
bootstrapped startup to established
enterprise—ready to assemble its first
support team, augment an existing team
with distributed talent, or transition their
entire support operation to the cloud.
You’ll learn how to find, hire, and work
with a team of passionate service
professionals from around the world.
You’ll read case studies that examine
how and why other companies built
distributed support teams of their own.
Basically, it’s a crash course in creating
a distributed customer success team
that works for your business.
We hope you enjoy it.
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Support in the Cloud
Talent knows no boundaries. And with the power of
today’s cloud-based customer service solutions, every
business has the ability to connect with the world’s
best support professionals to deliver world-class,
enterprise-level customer service, regardless of its size.
Let’s look at the remarkable
advantages of using a distributed
customer service team:
1. Access a world of talent.
By considering remote candidates, you can expand
your search beyond your local talent pool to find
support experts with the channel-specific skills
you need.
2. Make hires lightning fast.
Hiring online takes an average of 2.7 days. 1
Compare that to the 43 days it takes to make a
traditional hire,2 and you can see how much more
agile and flexible distributed teams are.
3. Reduce team member turnover.
Online reps are dedicated support professionals who
value the flexibility and opportunity of working from
home. Because of this, remote teams are often less
prone to turnover than traditional call centers.
4. Achieve follow-the-sun support.
Any size business—from startups to enterprise—can
achieve 24/7/365 coverage across multiple time
zones and multiple channels.
5. Speak your customers’ languages.
Going global translates into multilingual, multicultural
support. By hiring people in the same locations as
your customers, you can demonstrate local knowledge
and connect in a more meaningful way.
6. Reduce overhead costs.
Say goodbye to the high rent, facilities costs, and
other overhead that comes with supporting an
in-house service team. You’ll also pay your team
rates that are in line with local expectations.
1 Online Global Work Report
http://www.elance-odesk.com/online-work-report-global
2 SHRM Benchmarking Database
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Define Your Delight
Before you do anything else, you need to decide
what customer delight looks like for your organization.
Just what does a perfect support experience
entail? What is your idea of a satisfied customer?
By answering these questions, you can begin
to build a philosophy and team structure that
will lead to consistent client satisfaction.
Take a look at your company’s mission and values
to better understand the support you want to provide.
Your mission and values will also provide clues on
the kind of team you’ll need, and on how that team
will deliver upon your values with every interaction.
By establishing value-based guideposts, you can
create consistency in your decision-making processes
and act with transparency when faced with customer
support challenges.
7
Then ask yourself a few questions to
guide the development of your team
makeup and channel management
strategy, such as:
What service channels do I want
to provide to my customers?
Email only, chat, phone, social?
What service hours do I want to
provide to my customers? 24/7
coverage? Work hours only?
The answers to these questions will give you a
deeper understanding of the person you want
acting as a voice for your company as well as the
types of channels you’ll need to cover. If you’re still
unsure of the talent and skills optimal for successful
support, know that you’ll have the flexibility to
experiment with your team size and skill sets as you
go. One of the best things about working with a
distributed workforce is that you can scale quickly,
whereas scaling with a traditional contact center or
a BPO takes much longer.
Whom do I want representing
my company?
What do I want my reps to say?
What is the best method for
them to say it?
For more tips on finding the
right customer service channels
for your business read our
article on Upwork’s Hiring Hub
What tools do I need in order to
provide ideal support? Do I have
the right tools now?
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Case Study:
KeepSafe
“Without Upwork,
we probably would
have tried to hire
people on local
job marketplaces.
The process would
have been tiring and
time consuming.”
– Philipp Berner, Co-founder & CTO, KeepSafe
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Case Study:
KeepSafe
KeepSafe is a cloud-based digital platform
that allows users to keep their personal files
secure, making digital privacy as easy as
closing a door.
KeepSafe at a Glance
Founded: 2012
Industry: Consumer security
Team Size: 17
Support Team: 7 remote
Location: San Francisco, CA
getkeepsafe.com
The Situation:
To address rapid growth, the majority of KeepSafe’s
full-time employees were devoted to product
development and engineering, while customer
service was falling short. They needed a way to quickly
and cost-consciously implement quality customer
support for a global base of 30M existing users.
The Result:
KeepSafe gained access to a vast pool of quality
multilingual talent located in multiple time zones,
providing a growing user base with fast and
customized customer service. Two and a half years
later, Nicoletta continues to run the KeepSafe
customer service team.
The Solution:
KeepSafe’s co-founder, Philipp Berner, registered
on Upwork and posted a job describing the skills
and experience he was seeking. Within hours, he
received and began reviewing proposals, eventually
finding Nicoleta Olteanu, a customer success
specialist from Romania. She was hired to build what
would become a seven-member support team located
in seven countries and speaking four languages.
Next Steps:
As KeepSafe continues to grow, they plan to add more
team members who speak different languages and
who can provide coverage to expanded time zones.
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2
• Attract Top Talent
• Narrow Down the Field
• Conduct Insightful
Interviews
• Customer Support
Rep Focus: Michelle Decker
• Case Study: CustomMade
First Steps:
Build Your Team
It’s never been easier to build a wildly
effective distributed customer experience
team. The internet, the tools, the talent—
they’re all there just waiting to be tapped.
And if you’re just getting started, you’ll
have the distinct advantage of being
distributed from day one.
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Building a distributed team can happen in
a flash—on average, it takes 2.7 days to hire
someone online. But just as with hiring offline,
the more you put into it, the better the result.
Attract
Top
Talent
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To find the best customer
support professionals,
be sure to write a job
description that paints a
compelling picture of your
company. Tell a little bit
about your business,
and include reasons why
a potential candidate
would be interested in
working with you.
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Next, describe the type of candidate you’re
looking for and your approach to customer support.
This will help establish an understanding of your
expectations for resolving customer issues from
the get-go. Then add the more straightforward
qualities you’re searching for, such as:
Skills and experience based on
the channel(s) you need covered
Availability based on the time
zones you need covered
Speed of internet connection and
appropriate hardware
Knowledge of required technology
and tools
Access to a quiet, productive
place to work
Recruiting Tip:
Keep an updated, ongoing list
of candidates for quick hiring.
And remember—the best reps
often provide the best referrals.
Use trusted top agents to help
find qualified talent.
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Sample Job Description
Customer Support Professional
XYZ Furniture sells handmade sofas online at
accessible prices because we believe everyone
should have well-crafted furniture in their homes.
We are a homegrown, family-run business, and
we treat our employees as if they are part of the
family. Our clients come first, and we are searching
for a customer-oriented support professional
to join our growing customer experience team.
This support position is responsible for creating
customer delight through thoughtful, compassionate,
and efficient communication.
Responsibilities
• Deliver high-quality interactions through live chat and email
• Work cross-functionally to resolve client issues
• Do whatever it takes to solve client problems and give the best possible experience
• Be available to work during U.S. business hours
Requirements
• Two or more years experience in customer support
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Demonstrated skill in addressing sensitive customer issues
• Ability to pass a background check
Workplace Requirements
• Reliable computer hardware and software
• Reliable internet connection and power
• A workplace conducive to productivity
• Current antivirus software
Please reply to this job post with a resume, a short description of your
support experience, and why you would like to work for XYZ Furniture.
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Narrow Down the Field
Once the responses roll in and you’ve weeded out
any unqualified applicants, the next step is to create
a short list of your top candidates. To narrow the
field further so that only your strongest applicants
remain—the ones you will want to interview in
person—reply to each with a request for additional
information.
Suggested Prescreen Items:
Ask for additional information to assess support
skills, experience, remote work match, technical
capabilities, and email writing skills, such as:
Describe your customer service
experience (offline and online).
Give an example of a customer
whose unhappiness you turned
into sheer joy.
What organizational and CS tools
have you used before?
How would you respond to this
client’s helpdesk complaint?
ABC Company sells clothes online and
delivers within two working days guaranteed
or the customer gets their money back.
One of its customers received a package
after three working days.
Hello ABC Company,
My package arrived in 3 working days! I thought
What is your contingency plan
in case of power and internet
outages?
your company was competent enough to deliver on
time! Now I missed wearing the dress for my cousin’s
wedding! What are you going to do about this?
I am very angry!
Katrina
What are your computer specs?
What is your upload and
download speed? Please send
a www.speedtest.net result.
How your applicant answers these questions
will go a long way toward creating your final short
list. Those who don’t reply at all will obviously
be out of the running, and those who do will
quickly reveal their experience, personality, and
commitment to customer success.
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Conduct Insightful Interviews
As part of the vetting process, the importance
of an interview can’t be stressed enough.
Remember—this person you hire will represent
you and your business. You’re going to want
to interact with them directly before you allow
them to do the same with your customers.
The interview is a fantastic opportunity to assess
your candidates’ communication skills over multiple
channels. Begin with a one-on-one conversation via
Skype, Google Hangouts, or a similar technology.
If you’re impressed, then migrate the remainder of
the interview to phone, chat, email, or whichever
channel they’ll use as part of your team.
Communication Skills
Because communication is at the core of good
customer service, pay attention to the quality of
their conversation, their ability to articulate ideas
in a professional manner, and overall their grammar
and language skills. This will give you insight as to
which channel they are best suited for.
When talking or chatting with your
top candidates, be on the lookout
for these important traits:
Technical and Process Skills
While passion comes first, you’ll want to know that
the potential rep has a good handle on your technical
and process-based demands. That said, if someone
has the potential to be a superstar rep, a little extra
time spent training is well worth the effort.
Passion
The best reps are genuinely passionate about providing
an astonishingly good customer service experience—
every time, all the time. Ask them for examples of
their best and worst support experiences, how they
dealt with those experiences, and what they learned
from them. By understanding how they solved
difficult customer situations in the past, you can see
how committed they are to customer delight.
Hardware and Connectivity
The interview will give you a chance to double-check
that they have reliable access to a good computer
with the proper updates, as well as a sound internet
connection. (One perk of a video interview is that
you can quickly tell if their connection is acceptable
and if they have access to a quiet workspace.)
After the interview, if you feel the candidate has
the passion and potential to be a truly outstanding
customer service representative, invite them onto
the team and the onboarding will begin.
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Interview Content and
Structure Suggestions
1. Begin by learning more about the candidate’s
experience and overall approach to support. Ask the
candidate a few or all of the following questions:
Tell me about some problems with the products or services
you previously supported.
What have you done recently to improve your customer
service skills?
Define great support. What personal examples do you
have of great support?
2. Conduct a mock support call using a situation
applicable to your business.
3. If you are hiring for a leadership position:
Give an example of how you dealt with an underperforming
team member in the past.
Can you tell me about a time when you had to motivate and
develop a team in a challenging work environment?
Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems
and developed preventive measures.
Describe a situation in which you found a creative way to
overcome an obstacle.
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Customer Support Rep Focus:
Michelle Decker
Michelle Decker has worn many customer support
hats—representative, client account manager,
community manager, client success scheduling
manager. Whatever her title, she has created a very
successful career as an online support professional.
She got her start by hiring support reps for her
mother’s business. Being between full-time jobs,
she decided to give it a try herself. Four years later,
she is ecstatic about her career as a customer
support expert.
What kinds of responsibilities have you had as
an online support rep?
I’ve worked in various capacities of support, including
email and phone inquiries regarding orders,
account questions, and billing inquiries, to moderated
forums and followed up with existing clients to
ensure satisfaction and make account changes
as needed based on our interactions.
What sorts of support tools do you use?
I use the Upwork Team App for time tracking.
Zendesk is my primary support tool. It seems to have
answered the question of how to take a traditional
“physical” customer service model and make it
virtual. Zendesk has created a virtual equivalent
of a traditional customer service setting, which
is invaluable to a distributed CSR team.
Why do you think you’ve been so successful?
I have a natural entrepreneurial awareness that
allows me a unique perspective in my approach to
business. I’m also constantly seeking to improve
and finding ways to turn unpleasant situations into
opportunities for growth, and I think that comes
through in the way I work.
What are the best aspects of working online?
I’m making a great living, earning more now than I
did doing insurance billing and working at medical
practices. My rate to begin with was around $10 an
hour, but once I had a good amount of hours under
my belt, I was able to raise it significantly. Today,
my rate is at least $20 an hour. Also, I’m about to
have my second child, so the flexibility of the work
is a huge bonus.
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Case Study:
CustomMade
“We found great
people who knew
how to do the job,
have done it before,
had great reviews,
and wanted to work.”
– Michael Salguero, Co-founder & CEO of CustomMade
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Case Study:
CustomMade
CustomMade is an online marketplace connecting
makers across the United States and Canada
with customers. Users can go to CustomMade.com,
describe what they are looking for, and transact
with the maker as their piece comes to life.
CustomMade at a Glance
Founded: 1996
Industry: Consumer goods
Team Size: 35
Location: Cambridge, MA
custommade.com
The Situation:
CustomMade’s first foray into Upwork was strictly
on the supply side—they used online professionals
as researchers in various major metropolitan areas
to find and vet local makers for their platform.
But as demand for their products grew, so did their
need for client-facing customer support.
The Solution:
After trying local job boards, marketplaces, and other
traditional support solutions, they were unable to
find skilled talent on a startup budget. Once again
they turned to Upwork, where they were able to
strike the right balance between cost and quality.
The Result:
CustomMade quickly assembled a team of six in the
Philippines to help both customers and makers during
business and off-hours, establishing 24/7 coverage.
Mike notes that managing a distributed team is not an
easy task. “You need to make sure they understand the
job,” he said. “Build an environment that is safe so they
feel comfortable speaking up. Thank them for bringing
issues to your attention so they feel encouraged.”
Next Steps:
As CustomMade grows, they plan to hire additional
customer support reps with an eye on supporting
additional languages as they expand into international markets.
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3
• Effective Onboarding
& Training
• Pave a Clear Career Path
• Case Study: Tango.me
Ramp Up:
Get Your Reps
Up to Speed
A well-constructed onboarding process
will lead to a high-functioning team with
a low attrition rate. Having these plans
in place from the beginning will help your
reps’ success from day one.
22
Providing new reps with a comprehensive
training program is critical to their success
and to your customers’ happiness. Consider
implementing an initial onboarding program
that covers everything from company
core values to product details.
Effective
Onboarding
& Training
23
CORE TRAINING
Business Basics
• Company Mission and Vision
• Company Organization
• Organization of
Customer-Facing Departments
Support Team Overview
• Mission
• Values
• Expectations
Support Team Policies
• Organization of the Support Groups
• Support Group Policies and Processes
Product Basics
• Tools Overview & Training
• Performance Indicators
Next consider implementing a “shadowing” period
in which new reps learn the ropes, are carefully
monitored, and are given frequent feedback to
ensure they’re performing according to expectations.
With a team leader closely involved to provide
guidance and act as an escalation point, the
representative will answer tickets and become
more familiar with your product.
At the end of 90 days, look at the reps’ stats to see how
many tickets were answered, their Customer Service
Score (CSAT), and their mean time to resolution.
By comparing these metrics, you can quickly identify
your top performers.
(Read more about metrics on page 43.)
Pro Tip: Invest in KnowledgeBased Support.
One support methodology centers
around a searchable, in-house
knowledge base for reps to reference. By providing the support
team with answers to frequently
(and not so frequently) asked questions, they can address customer
questions more quickly and take the
guesswork out of their responses.
Companies like Zendesk can
provide the backend technology
to set up a knowledge base—you’ll
be responsible for populating
the content, beginning with the
most common support questions
first and adding more as your team
encounters additional support
situations. Combine this with a
robust training program and you’ll
have a very effective and efficient
support team.
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Pave a Clear Career Path
Distributed team members, just like on-site
employees, want to know there is room to grow
within an organization. Having a clear path for
advancement will inspire higher performance and
lower attrition in your service team. Here’s an
example of how you could build a team structure
to encourage and engage superstar reps, from
training all the way up to leadership:
Level One: Tickets
It typically takes at least six months for support reps
to become proficient in all aspects of a business.
The first six months (including the 90-day onboarding
period) can be spent answering tickets, which allows
them to learn the product and how to address
customer issues and escalations.
Level Two: Chat
Chat reps need every bit of knowledge they
acquired during their time as ticket reps. They
may be asked to handle two chats concurrently,
sometimes dealing with very complex issues.
Occasionally you’ll have a rockstar chat rep with
great stats—those high performers may be ready
to jump straight from chat to team lead.
Level Three: Phone & Chat
A breeding ground for future team leaders, this
level can be made up of phone reps as well as very
experienced chat reps. Representatives at this level
are given additional permissions, like the authority
to run credit card transactions.
Level Four: Team Leaders
Team leaders are responsible for the care and success
of their teams, as well as for addressing the more
complex client issues. They should have no more
than eight to 10 representatives reporting to them.
This is the “golden ratio,” and it has become a go-to rule
of thumb for structuring efficient, effective teams.
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Case Study:
Tango.me
“Hiring online allows
me to locate the
people that I need
and hire them quickly.
That’s huge for us!”
–Art Grigorian, Marketing Manager, Tango
26
Case Study:
Tango.me
Tango is a leading all-in-one mobile messaging
service with 300M+ registered users who can
play games, connect, and interact with with
friends and family in meaningful ways.
Tango at a Glance
Founded: 2009
Industry: Communications
Team Size: 200+
Support Team: 3 onsite and
10 remote
Location: Mountain View, CA
tango.me
The Situation:
After raising $369M in venture capital and experiencing rapid growth, Tango was looking to expand
its customer support team to handle both customer
service requests and simultaneously address
high-priority strategic projects. Art Grigorian, who
is now the marketing manager but was head of
support at the time, needed to hire fast.
The Result:
After screening a number of candidates, Art
augmented his existing in-house team with eight
online customer success agents. Tango is now
delivering top-notch customer service with the
help of distributed talent, while their in-house
team has doubled their bandwidth to work on
high-impact projects.
The Solution:
Art learned about Upwork and online support reps
from friends in the startup scene. He signed up and
conducted thorough profile reviews and interviews
before bringing new reps onto the team.
Next Steps:
Tango plans on hiring more customer success agents to
support its U.S. users. They’ve also expanded beyond
the customer service category, hiring a 10-person
distributed team to help with technical support,
marketing, business development, and engineering.
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4
• Find the Right Structure
• Wrangle Your Social Media
• Safeguard Your Support
Coverage
Ready, Set, Grow:
Scale Your Team
Providing quality service as your business
grows is as important as delivering a great
product. Luckily, distributed teams are the
most flexible option for businesses that
need to ramp their support up (or down).
28
Handling growth can be a bit of a roller coaster
ride—lots of ups and occasional hair-raising
downs. Here are a few options for managing
an expanding structure over the years.
Find the
Right
Structure
29
1. Divide your support into channels.
4. Concentrate on chat.
Consider structuring your team first by function—
phone, chat, ticket, or social—according to your
business needs and their skill levels. Then assign
each rep a secondary channel. This provides a little
wriggle room to stay efficient. For instance, if chat
is slow, those reps can address the ticket queue
instead. Or if chat is hopping and a rep needs to
destress, they can move to email to take a breather
and unwind.
If your business caters to relatively tech-savvy
customers as ours does, consider making chat
your channel of choice. We’ve found that live chat
has the highest customer satisfaction, better first
contact resolution, and lowest associated cost.
By emphasizing our chat support capabilities, about
50% of our contacts now come from live chat, 25%
from tickets, and 25% from phone.
2. Embrace the golden rep-toleadership ratio.
Building in an internal leadership structure as you
grow is critical to giving the best support possible.
As mentioned before, a ratio of one team leader per
eight to 10 reps is efficient and effective, and the
team leader is responsible for addressing escalations,
answering the team’s questions and concerns, and
motivating them.
5. Keep experimenting!
Always search for ways to improve your support.
For example, we are in the process of restructuring
the team to focus on certain types of issues:
disputes, payments, suspensions, and general
concerns. This will allow each rep to become a
category specialist, and we think it will lead to greater
customer satisfaction. The point is to continually
check in on your processes to be sure they’re keeping
up with your evolving support demands.
3. Establish an operations team.
As you expand, you’ll need to establish an operations
team responsible for the infrastructure that keeps
the support team running—the ticketing systems,
metrics reports, QA, training, documentation, and
project management.
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Wrangle Your Social Media
As you grow, your social presence will
no doubt grow with you. Put a plan in
place to address the inevitable online
conversations (and complaints).
You should have at least one qualified social support
rep, and because social media is both highly reactive
and highly visible, that person’s communication skills
must be impeccable. All social reps must be articulate
and mature enough to exercise good judgment in
their responses. It is also a very privacy-sensitive
channel—your social reps must be extremely aware
that private information should never be shared via
social media.
Take advantage of social media monitoring tools such
as Hootsuite, Trackur, or Mention. Whatever monitoring
solution you use should allow your social media
professionals to assign and stream social messages to
the proper support services should the occasion call
for it. (And most of them do much more, like monitor
brand sentiment and engagement levels.) For example,
Hootsuite has integrated with Zendesk, allowing
agents to create tickets directly from tweets.
To help address issues quickly
and consistently, you may want
to consider creating the following
content libraries for your social
agents to tap into:
A library of responses to frequently asked
questions, which they are encouraged to
customize to better help the customer
Pre-written responses that address
anticipated customer questions in advance
of any product launch or policy change
An internal knowledge base to help reps
Work with your social support rep to define what
types of posts should be funnelled to a standard
support ticket and which should be escalated.
troubleshoot problems via social media
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And last but definitely not least—
A great social support rep will also
know an opportunity when he or
she sees it.
Consider how Lululemon reacted when a
customer was accidentally sent an entire bag
of running caps when he had only ordered one.
He tweeted to Lululemon about the mistake—
and they tweeted back to keep them and share
them with his friends. Lululemon might have
lost a few bucks in merchandise that day, but
they gained a lifelong customer who was
thrilled with their generosity and will share
his love of the brand whenever he can.
Empower your social reps to look for opportunities
like this, and you will win at social media.
For more social best practices
check out our post on Upwork’s
Hiring Hub
32
Safeguard Your Support
Coverage
Power outages and rolling blackouts are
a part of life in many countries around
the world. Be sure your reps have a simple
backup plan in place to account for
unreliable infrastructures.
Wireless data cards hooked up
to reps’ laptops will allow them
to carry on working.
If power is lost, work can continue
using the charge on their laptop
batteries.
If power doesn’t return, a nearby
coffee shop will often be wired—
be sure they have an alternate
location where they can finish
their work.
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5
• Tools to Consider
• Case Study: Visual.ly
The Distributed
Toolbox: Cloud-Based
& Cost-Effective
Access to a new generation of cloud-based
technology tools has made transitioning
from a traditional to a distributed support
model amazingly easy, cost-effective,
and viable regardless of company size.
34
Cloud-based customer support tools
have come a long way. Here are a few
services to help you provide world-class
support, every day in every way.
Tools to
Consider
35
Customer Service Platforms
Communication
Zendesk
With its case deflection tools, multichannel support,
and extensive content infrastructure, Zendesk is an
excellent choice for scaling gracefully from startup
to large-scale support.
Slack
This highly searchable communication tool and
easy-to-manage company directory lets you give
someone complete access when added and
withdraw access when removed.
OTHERS: DESK.COM, SERVICE CLOUD, FRESHDESK, KAYAKO
Skype
This is a standard tool for video interviews, external
communication, and phone calls.
OTHERS: HIPCHAT, GOOGLE HANGOUTS
Live Chat
Cloud-Base IVR/Call Routing
Zopim
Zopim is a live chat tool and includes a powerful
dashboard that allows you to track and monitor
visitors as well as group them in different categories.
Talkdesk
This all-in-one cloud-based call center software
integrates seamlessly with many business tools,
including Zendesk, Desk.com, Salesforce.com,
Freshdesk, LiveChat, and more.
OTHERS: LIVECHAT, OLARK, VELARO, FIVE9
OTHERS: DIALOGTECH, INCONTACT, RINGCENTRAL, TWILIO
Reporting and Productivity
Social Media Monitoring
Zendesk Insights
This is Zendesk’s dashboard and reporting analytics
tool (previously known as Good Data) for tracking
performance and productivity.
Hootsuite
This social media management dashboard helps
you wrangle social networks, identify issues, and
track audience engagement.
OTHERS: TRACKUR, MENTION
36
Case Study:
Visual.ly
“There’s no better way to
coordinate a distributed team.
The Team App and payment
system ensures accountability
on both sides—they get paid
on time, and I get the work I
need. It takes the risk out of a
remote working relationship
for both parties and makes
working with a remote team
much easier.”
– Matt Cooper, CEO, Visual.ly
37
Case Study:
Visual.ly
Visual.ly is an on-demand creative services
company that uses top freelance talent and
online project management to deliver highend visual content faster and more affordably
than traditional design agencies.
Visual.ly at a Glance
Founded: 2011
Industry: On-demand creative
services
Team Size: 32 total
Location: San Francisco, CA
visual.ly
The Situation:
New CEO Matt Cooper—who joined Visual.ly after
years on the Upwork leadership team—needed to
grow the company’s customer success capabilities.
The solution had to be scalable and cost effective, so
he turned to the distributed model he knows so well.
The Solution:
Because Visual.ly had been working directly with a
group of support agents, he chose Upwork’s BYOT
(Bring Your Own Team) option. This allowed him to
consolidate a previously fractured team of remote
workers by bringing all of their time tracking and
billing under one roof.
The Result:
Upon bringing the team onto the Upwork platform,
Visual.ly saw a 25% cost savings and the heightened
flexibility of hiring fractional headcount.
Next Steps:
As Visual.ly’s business expands, their Upwork team
will expand with it. They are hiring sales, research,
admin, development, and support professionals
from Upwork’s platform.
38
6
• Foster a Sense of
Appreciation
• Use the Right Metrics
• Reward Outstanding
Performance
• Case Study: Thumbtack
Team Culture:
The Key to Success
at Any Size
We saved the best for last, as culture-building
is one of the most effective—and one of the
most overlooked—aspects of maintaining a
high-functioning distributed team. And the
larger you get, the more important it is to have
a vibrant culture in place.
This section covers ways to create a
distributed team that feels appreciated
and is consistently motivated to provide
the best support experience possible.
39
When you’re working with a remote team, it is of
critical importance to treat every representative
as an important contributor. How can you do this?
By communicating early, communicating often—
and did we mention that you’ll really need to work
on communicating?
Foster a
Sense of
Appreciation
40
“Keeping a remote team
informed of everything
is super critical. It is
harder, but the benefits
are worth it.”
– Elizabeth Tse, SVP Operations, Upwork
41
This is easier said than done. The most successful
remote teams are those in companies that have a
team communication strategy in place and that go
the extra mile to make each rep feel appreciated.
Here are a few things you can do to
be sure all of your reps—both far and
near—feel appreciated and engaged:
Have one-on-one meetings.
One-on-one meetings foster closeness, help the
team troubleshoot issues, and keep the wheels
going in general.
Share goals using quarterly OKRs
(Objectives and Key Results).
By sharing your OKRs—the ambitious goals you
want to achieve and the measurable results you
anticipate—your team will be invested in the
process and will share in your success.
Hold quarterly town hall meetings.
Be sure they’re set up so that all distributed
workers can listen, watch, and ask questions of
their own. Talk about the team’s achievements,
the company’s goals, and have a member or two
of the executive team present on the state
of the business and their vision for the future.
Send a monthly newsletter.
Use some virtual ink to highlight new team reps
and praise top contributors. Recap any changes
that happened in terms of new product releases.
And have a little fun! Birthdays, anniversaries,
and individual accomplishments (Who ran a
marathon? Who had a baby?) are always welcome.
Get your chat on.
Have a constant professional chat covering any
and all issues—requesting assistance, sharing
customer concerns—that flows between anyone
working. While a team leader should always be
involved to answer higher-level questions or
make quick approvals, let the reps jump in and
answer questions when they can. More informally,
use chat for quick peer communication. This can
be a powerful bonding tool, creating a virtual
water cooler where people’s personalities are
learned and lives are shared.
Stay social.
Create a dedicated Facebook group for your
distributed team to share their lives outside of
work. They can post pictures of kids, what they
did over the weekend—the kinds of things you
would chat about with your colleagues if you were
sitting in a traditional call center environment.
This also might be where they organize a group
outing or some other off-hours social function.
A little investment in culture translates
into happy reps, even happier clients, and
a better bottom line for your business.
Consider this a huge benefit as you build
and grow your support team.
42
Use the Right Metrics
If your goal is to live and breathe customer
delight, you’ll want your primary metrics to
revolve around providing absolute client
satisfaction. Not only will this help ensure a
great client experience, but it will create a
team culture centered around your customers.
Consider these customer-centric performance
metrics and goals:
End-of-Ticket Rating or Customer Satisfaction
Score (CSAT)
Run a survey that shows how the customer rates a
particular interaction, either positive or negative.
Review productivity metrics, such as tickets per
hour, but don’t get too hung up on making your
reps accountable to them so long as they are
delivering within the standard margins. This will
emphasize that everything they do should drive
toward helping the customer on the other end of
the communication—not just getting them off the
line quickly.
First Contact Resolution
Determines if the customer’s issue was resolved
on the first try.
Mean Time to Resolution
The MTTR shows the average ticket-processing
time. If a customer files a ticket, track how many
hours it takes until the issue is 100% resolved.
Average Time to Answer (Service Level)
Set a goal for how long it should take to handle
a ticket, chat, or phone call. At Upwork, we shoot
for a ticket to be handled within four hours, a
chat or phone call within one minute.
43
Reward Outstanding Work
Consider giving rate increases to remote team
members on at least an annual basis. Look at
the rates of each rep and consider cost of living
and quality of work. Allowing them to keep
progressing up in terms of hourly rate should
help with retention.
Promote those who are ready and want to
move up into leadership. Keep in mind that not
everyone is cut out to be a leader. Don’t push
your reps into promotions if they’re not
interested—many will happily remain support
agents for years.
44
Case Study:
Thumbtack
“Having the combination of
an in-house phone support
team and a remote email
team does allow us to handle
less complex tickets offshore
and then seamlessly funnel
very complex tickets to an
expert email team in Utah,
or the phone team there
when it makes sense.”
–Jodie Auster, Director of Customer Operations, Thumbtack
45
Case Study:
Thumbtack
Thumbtack is a marketplace that introduces
customers to the right professional to help
accomplish their personal projects, from
language tutors to home repair to party planners.
Thumbtack at a Glance
Founded: 2009
Industry: Consumer services
Team Size: 300 full-time employees in
San Francisco and Salt Lake City
Support Team: ~150 agents in the U.S.,
~100 remote
Location: San Francisco, Salt Lake City,
Philippines
thumbtack.com
The Situation:
An early adopter of online work, Thumbtack was
familiar with the benefits of hiring remote service
professionals. And as inbound email volume grew
steadily along with business growth, they effectively
scaled their remote email support team on Upwork.
However, the demand for inbound phone support
also grew rapidly, and their high-touch service model
made it more and more necessary to expand phone
support capacity.
The Solution:
To maintain their high-quality customer service
standard in a way that was effective and affordable,
Thumbtack created a hybrid team of online email
support reps and an in-house phone support
team based in Salt Lake City, Utah. To improve the
consistency of the customer experience, the
Philippines email support team reports into the
U.S.-based support leadership, and training
materials are shared where possible. Onboarding has
evolved to include a mix of virtual group check-ins
and self-paced learning using a strong library of
Lesson.ly training modules.
The Result:
Building a remote operations and support workforce
allowed Thumbtack to scale at great speed and to
test new ideas quickly and effectively. By specializing
the email support team to handle tickets based on
complexity and potential to anger users, and by
creating a dedicated team of categorizers who funnel
email tickets to the correct tier for a response,
Thumbtack raised their email CSAT from 67% to 92%.
Next Steps:
Thumbtack will continue to scale its team in both
places (online for email, in the office for phone) to
keep up with continued growth.
46
7
• Tips for Distributed
Support Success
• Fish Where the Fish Are
The Takeaway:
Final Thoughts on
Distributed Support
Done Right
We hope this book has provided you with
straightforward guidance for building your
very own distributed customer support team.
Here are a few final thoughts about hiring a
distributed team right from the start.
47
Tips for
Distributed
Support
Success
48
1. Decide what customer satisfaction
looks like for your business.
Paint a clear picture of a successful support experience,
from establishing time-to-response goals to having your
CEO personally contact five customers per week.
2. Pinpoint your most powerful channels.
Carefully consider which channels will best serve your
customer base and use this information to guide your
hiring and infrastructure building.
3. Establish a rigorous hiring process.
Hire the right person from the start. Write a thoughtful
job description, filter candidates with care, and
always do a video interview.
4. Onboard and train your team.
By laying out a cohesive onboarding program, your reps
will be more successful and your clients well served.
5. Implement a smart team structure.
By establishing an eight to 10 reps per team leader ratio,
you can efficiently manage escalations, provide mentorship,
and foster professional growth.
6. Pave a career path.
Motivate and retain your best support reps by offering
opportunities for advancement, such as regular rate
increases.
7. Treat your team with care
and respect.
Go the extra mile to make your remote reps feel that
they are appreciated—communicate regularly, include
them in your success, and help them
connect with each other.
Keep Your Org Compliant
As you build your distributed team,
consider consulting legal counsel
to ensure compliance with local
legal requirements.
49
Fish Where the Fish Are
Upwork™ has a deep pool of customer
service professionals and agencies.
Peruse our database and invite a
few promising professionals to
apply to your job. With a little effort,
you can build a distributed team
that will help your business thrive.
Upwork™ has a deep pool of customer
service professionals and agencies.
Peruse our database and invite a
few promising professionals to
apply to your job. With a little effort,
you can build a distributed team
that will help your business thrive.
Tackle any job from live
chat to tech support
Deliver world-class
multi-channel service, 24/7.
Track hours. Review time
sheets. Pay with a click.
Build your customer support
team on Upwork
50
8
Appendix: Build Your
Team Using Upwork
Upwork has helped both entrepreneurs and
enterprises strengthen their businesses
by transitioning to distributed support. And
with customer service work growing on our
platform by 92% in 2014, the distributed
support trend will only continue to grow.
51
Post your job.
Create and post a thorough job description,
and we’ll instantly connect you with available
talent. Invite the best candidates and start
receiving applications within minutes.
52
Hire with confidence.
Compare applicants’ portfolios, work histories,
and ratings in one convenient place. Interview
your favorites and hire with a click of a button.
53
Work effortlessly.
Upwork has a built-in messaging platform that
lets you communicate with your team at
your desk or on the go. Chat instantly, send
messages, and attach files securely.
54
Pay safely.
We provide tools to make invoicing and
payment easy for you and your distributed
team. And with our Payment Protection,
you only pay for work you approve.
55
Credits
Content
Laura LeBleu
Freelance Senior Copywriter
Ryan Johnson
Categories Director,
Upwork
Aleksandra Sasha Markova
Partnerships Marketing Manager,
Upwork
Design
Jonathan Cofer
Creative Director,
Upwork
Andrew Johnson
Creative Director— Partner,
Un-Studio.com
Kathrin Blatter
Creative Director— Partner,
Un-Studio.com
Special Thanks
Elizabeth Tse
Senior Vice President, Operations,
Upwork
Morris Wong
Director of Marketplace Operations,
Upwork
Mike Barnett
Director of Correspondence Support,
Thumbtack
56
© 2015 Upwork, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Upwork is the trademark of Upwork, Inc.
All other trademarks are the property of
their respective owners.

Case Study: KeepSafe

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