How can you assess customer service skills for cross-functional teams in retail?

The one truism is open communication for excellent customer/client service is a must. This is doubly important when for cross functional teams. 1. Consistent and excellent service across all customer facing interactions. 2. Post sale follow up by other teams being at the same level of support. 3. Handle any issues with clients/customers with same level of customer service.

1. Sharing and Caring information teamwide is a driver for customer to make a decision. 2. We are where we are cause of a customer, so it is a responsibility for each of the team members to provide a complete and positive experience. 3. Automation helps repeat customers, if done well!

Customer service skills matter for cross functional teams because communication is the life line in this process. When working across different teams the communication need to be on one accord in order to complete a project. Having great customer service skills can help smooth this process out .

For existing organizations, the following 2 exercises have been incredibly eye opening. 1) very simply ask potential team members their opinion of your customer service. You will quickly be able to separate the team into the “haves” and the “have nots” with respect to customer service attitude. 2) whatever method of customer service you provide, have prospective team members observe/shadow/sidejack etc. the service and support group for a day. Then, have either a group or 1x1 sessions to evaluate the observations and feedback. Secondarily - and important - have similar discussion with service employees who were shadowed for feedback on the prospects.

How efficiently cross functions work together being internal customers for each other, is the first thing to/can be assessed. Internal alignment, positiveness and cohesiveness truly reflects external customers. People adopt from existing ones and it becomes culture.

In my experience, ask for stories where customer service skills are demonstrated. Typically candidates will give philosophical responses to question. This means they will tickle your ears with the “right” answer. It’s much more difficult to fake a story. Ask situational questions and you may get better results.

Most people can access “good answers” for various stages of the hiring process through various channels of technology. Therefore I’ve found having potential team members interact freely with a couple of specially selected existing team members for a few minutes provides another window into what the actual dynamic may look like should the potential get hired. Assessing skills for customer service will be helped tremendously by focusing on the values the potential hire lives everyday as this will allow you to see if the person is mentally and emotionally able to be trained to be a part of your culture. Have them provide real life examples of values they live by. Either those answers will be real or made up. You can decide.

You can assess customer service skills for cross-functional teams by seeing how their completion rate is on their projects. You also can check their lines of communication to see if they have or use the proper resources.

Great cross functional customer service by definition requires people from different areas to be on the same page. So it must be treated internally with the importance it brings to the bottom line. Therefore look for some of these traits: 1. To what extent does that person believe they can add to the customer experience? 2. To what extent does that same person believe a customers experience is vital to the success of the company and its offerings? 3. Does this person embrace the attitude that it is best to have other teams with similar attitudes and beliefs.? 4. And is open communication between each team member based solely on improving the customer experience or does it look like territorial ego will be involved?

My experience with this is not as a traditional training exercise, but to make them part of the process - supporting or providing input on escalations specific to their area. Again - have them shadow your top service/support employees and follow up with the discussion. I. Observations etc.