5 Remote Support Team Pitfalls
We know what’s eating Gilbert Grape…but what about your remote support team? Weird vibes, passive aggressive comments, and general disregard for the customer experience aren’t just bad form – they can absolutely tank your company’s reputation.
So, what do you do? First – you have to identify the problem, or in this case, problems. According to Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, they are:
- Inattention to details
- Avoidance of accountability
- Lack of commitment
- Fear of conflict
- Absence of trust
Let’s dive deeper into these remote support team pitfalls.
1. Absence of Trust
This is the base layer of Lencioni’s dysfunction pyramid (yes, that’s a real thing) because without trust, any team is doomed to fail. Think of it this way: have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you couldn’t trust your colleague to carry out a task, or give you accurate information? How did it make you feel?
If you work on, or manage, a remote support team with people you can’t trust, then you know how difficult it is to ask for help, express vulnerabilities, and bond with them. That makes it much harder to excel at your job, which is to deliver an awesome customer service experience.
2. Fear of Conflict
A wise, pointy-eared Jedi Master once said: “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Maybe fear of conflict with your remote support teammates isn’t that dramatic, but when you break it down (like I’m about to) you’ll see that a fear of conflict is a real threat to a healthy, high-functioning team.
Looking closer, remote support team members need to feel comfortable talking through issues and disagreements with one another. Great ideas for process improvement, service delivery, and more can come out of conflict when other teammates feel safe to express their opinions and perspectives.
Members of high-performing remote support teams are eager to learn and take pride in being the one to solve an issue, and then share how they succeeded with the rest of the team.
What you can do about it: High-performance teams stay in constant communication with their peers. So, create an environment at work where people don’t feel intimidated to speak up, even on sensitive work-related topics. Hosting daily standups can help with this, and is an effective practice of Agile Methodology.
Encourage everyone to participate so no one gets overlooked and everyone’s opinions can be observed. Make it part of their daily tasks to document their notes, and make those notes accessible to the rest of the team for reference when they need it.
3. Lack of Commitment
Ambiguous priorities…missed direction…these are the contributors that breed lack of commitment in remote support teams. When it’s not clear who’s supposed to be doing what and when they’re supposed to be doing it, it’s easy for team members to bow out of their daily responsibilities
What you can do about it: Remote support teams need to be in alignment when it comes to goals and objectives. Provide clear direction and help other team members move forward together without confusion or hesitation.
4. Avoidance of Accountability
We’ve all worked with that one person that can’t be depended on to uphold their end of shared responsibilities, and even refuses to admit fault when doing so. And one person’s poor performance on a remote support team can quickly spread if it’s allowed to go on for too long.
What you can do about it: Encourage accountability between teammates, set goals, and hold regular performance evaluations on those KPIs. Make it known that poor performance won’t be tolerated, and then stick to your guns.
5. Inattention to Results
So, you’ve checked the boxes on dysfunctions 1-4, but you’re not out of the woods yet. Members of remote support teams whose performance is measured solely on their individual performance will always fall short of their growth potential, and here’s why:
Great teams grow together. Remote support teams who are tied to mutual goals are more likely to work together to ensure commitment, good communication, and accountability to reach that shared goal. Teams that reach their goals can enjoy success together, which is a fantastic motivator to get stronger, better, and faster.
This article was provided by ConnectWise Inc.