Especially in an era of remote work, it can be difficult to manage the morale of your customer support team. After all, a support agent isn’t a career choice for professionals who are afraid to talk to people. Support teams in the B2B (business-to-business) industry are often full of social personalities and employees who choose to work in an office environment where they can collaborate with colleagues to solve problems.

Creating a great support team isn’t something that happens in a day, a week, or even a month. It’s a long-term goal for many companies, and even when they get there, it’s important to sustain that excellence over time, particularly as the company grows. The pressure to maintain a high level of support exists because of the impact the support team has on their business’ reputation.

In an era where remote work has become commonplace, many customer success managers aren’t too happy. Why? Don’t the enjoy working from their home office? Sure, many professionals do, but their dissatisfaction is because the home office lifestyle inhibits their ability to meet face-to-face with customers. These in person interactions are the foundation of many excellent customer relationships, and it can sometimes be a challenge to build or sustain relationships without them.

For a variety of reasons, be it a cultural shift in the workplace or a major event like COVID-19, more companies have employees working remotely with little to no in-person interaction. And, for every time there's a remote employee, there's also someone who's tasked with managing a remote team. So, how can you keep a support team happy and working together when they are 10, 100, or even 1,000 miles apart? Here are 7 tips for managing a remote customer support team…

Everything is moving along nicely with your company and then – out of nowhere – an emergency pops up. For some companies it could be their software is having login issues, but one emergency many companies are working through currently is the emerging concern and uncertainty created by the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Events around the world are being postponed or cancelled, and it’s fundamentally changing the way people work and interact with each other.

As a customer, hearing the answer “go read this self-service article” from a support agent can be a frustrating experience. So many companies do self-service poorly that this type of response can feel like the agent is brushing the customer aside to focus on another issue. However, a great self-service experience can change this feeling of being ignored to one of feeling satisfied and empowered.

Everyone in the business world has had an experience where it didn’t feel like they mattered to a vendor or business. It’s a difficult feeling knowing your voice isn’t being heard, or even worse ignored by someone you’re trusting to meet your business needs. However, these situations can be avoided with your own customers by hiring support team members who legitimately care about them AND know how to properly display this care in conversations.

All companies strive towards having a strong corporate culture. People make a business what it is, so keeping them happy, motivated, and positive has an impact on operations that is difficult to measure and describe. A great culture fuels a level of growth and productivity that all businesses want to achieve. When it comes to customer support, a corporate culture can have a wide array of impacts. Here are some ways good and bad corporate cultures impact customer support operations.