4 Causes of Conflicts Between Your Customer Support Teams

As much as you would like to run your organization of customer support teams like a well-oiled machine, you cannot avoid conflicts to arise among your employees.

This is because your business is made up of people. No matter how great your organizational culture is, misunderstanding and unclear communication are inevitable.

Your role as a business owner is more than just a peacemaker, mediating between two parties that are odds with each other.

For one thing, you need to make sure that you can identify sources of conflicts so you can prevent frictions from happening in the first place.

Here are four causes of conflicts between your customer support teams.

Unhealthy competition

When there is simply an unhealthy dose of competition, your workplace will always be rife with conflicts.

An unhealthy competition between customer support team means that your agents believe that winning is a zero-sum game: a team only wins at the expense of another.

The situation can lead to a toxic atmosphere where your agents no longer value mutual respect and instead are focused on grabbing whatever rewards being promised at all costs.

Lack of team spirit

Another source of possible conflicts between customer support teams is the lack of team spirit.

When your agents are not encouraged to work together or even reach out to other people outside of their teams, they are more likely to form into and stay loyal to their small factions.

They are more likely to misinterpret communication or may distrust the intentions of agents from another customer support team.

Vague instructions

Giving unclear communication is also another kindling point between customer support teams. Usually, conflicts occur when there are institutional changes that are happening or when roles and responsibilities are not well-defined.

Your employees will have a harder time understanding not only the instructions but also about how to deal with the change or the evolving roles of their colleagues.

A clear example is creating a new customer support team that can handle not only billing concerns but also do basic technical troubleshooting.  

Without any clear set of rules that define the extent of the troubleshooting required of them, the agents in the team may face challenges when their colleagues do not completely understand their new job and have unfair expectations about them.

Leadership conflicts

Another cause of conflict is when the people in leadership position have unresolved bickering.

Their conflict can spread to the rest of the organization when it is not given resolution immediately, as the parties involved may not be able to control their words or actions to each other.

Eventually, members of customer support team may pick up on the simmering tension and maybe, in the process, pushed unwillingly to pick sides.

Harmonious workplace

There is no doubt that a harmonious workplace makes your customer support team more productive and engaged.

Do everything you can to prevent conflicts from happening by maintaining great communication, resolving misunderstanding in a timely manner, building healthy competition, and urging your employees to collaborate.