September 4, 2024
8:02 AM
An organization’s structure is pivotal in driving its efficiency, collaboration, and communication – and for customer support and service teams that directly interact with customers, the customer service organizational structure can significantly impact the customer experience.
The selection of an organizational structure aligns with a company’s strategy, size, and operational complexity. HR plays a vital role in shaping, implementing, and refining these structures across the organization, and a well-planned customer divisional structure significantly enhances customer support and service teams’ performance. HR professionals should continuously assess the effectiveness of their customer service reporting structures and be willing to adapt them as the company grows and evolves.
This article presents a few types of organizational structures from the HR perspective, looking at why and how you may choose this sort of customer service reporting structure for your organization.
Customer support and service teams serve as the front line of any business, directly interfacing with customers and representing the company’s brand and values. Hence, the customer service hierarchy of these teams plays a pivotal role in determining their efficiency and effectiveness.
A customer service organizational structure is a framework of roles, teams and divisions designed to build a people-first approach to customer service. Having a strong customer divisional structure helps improve customer experiences; it creates a hierarchy that brings clarity to roles and responsibilities, helping employees understand their tasks as well as where to go for help. This clarity around points of contact and individual responsibilities is especially important from a customer service perspective as it helps to streamline the customer journey and enable clear communications.
A well-defined customer service organizational structure can bring:
The best way to get a sense of how OrgChart can help you more effectively monitor the performance and growth of your business is to see a live demo tailored to your organization’s specific needs.
Before we delve into the specific types of customer service organizational structures, it’s crucial to understand the primary function of a customer service org chart. This is the framework within which an organization arranges its reporting lines and customer service hierarchy, and communications and allocates rights and duties. An org chart visually represents this structure, depicting the roles, responsibilities, and relationships within that customer divisional structure, from top-level executives to lower-level employees. A well-defined customer service organizational structure is integral to successful operations for customer support and service teams.
In structuring customer support organizations, it’s essential to recognize the right time to expand and evolve. As the complexity of the queue grows, new roles or tiers may need to be introduced to the customer service org chart to ensure service quality and efficiency. It could be time to consider changes in your customer service organizational structure “when your support team is splitting their time between the easy half of their queue (tickets that can be solved quickly) and the difficult half of their queue (tickets that require much more time and effort or specialized tools or skills).”
A clear customer service org chart can assist in identifying these tipping points. By visually representing the current customer care department structure, the customer service org chart can reveal potential bottlenecks or areas where an additional role or tier could be beneficial.
The customer service org chart is not just useful for day-to-day operations, though. In today’s turbulent economic climate – marked by unprecedented turnover, rising unemployment, and ongoing economic headwinds – organizational resilience has never been more crucial. Succession planning, a strategic process to identify and develop potential leaders within a company, has emerged as a fundamental aspect of this resilience. This is especially critical for customer support and service teams, who are often at the frontline of addressing customer concerns.
Amid these challenges, org chart software can be an indispensable tool for effective succession planning. It offers a dynamic visualization of the customer service hierarchy, enabling HR professionals and managers to navigate staffing challenges and enhance team robustness strategically. This includes:
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to customer service department structure. Here are a few of the common structures in customer service and support teams.
A functional organizational structure is prevalent in businesses of all sizes. It separates companies into departments based on job functions, with a clear delineation of responsibilities helping to manage workload, promote expertise within specific job functions, and optimize resources. However, this structure can lead to silos if communication between departments isn’t encouraged and facilitated.
When a company has distinct product lines that require separate management, a product-based divisional structure may be the optimal choice for customer care department structures. This customer service hierarchy enhances product specialization and accountability. However, HR professionals must be vigilant about possible duplicate roles across divisions, which can lead to inefficiencies.
A market-based divisional structure allows a company to cater to specific customer segments effectively. It offers the advantage of tailoring services and products to different markets. HR teams play a critical role in identifying and nurturing the unique skills needed in each segment across the customer service reporting structure.
For companies with operations spread wide across regions and countries, the geographical divisional structure helps address local needs and navigate diverse market conditions. From an HR perspective, cultural intelligence and awareness become crucial in staffing and training decisions as needs may differ across the customer service hierarchy depending on where an individual or team is located.
In a process-based structure, companies center their organization around key processes to emphasize efficiency and process optimization. HR’s role includes ensuring smooth interdepartmental workflows and fostering an environment of continuous improvement both within the customer service department structure and beyond.
Matrix structures allow employees to report to multiple managers, enhancing communication and collaboration. It combines different functional and divisional directives, offering a balanced decision-making process. However, this structure may confuse roles and responsibilities within the customer service reporting structure. HR must ensure clear role descriptions and nurture a collaborative environment.
In the circular organizational structure, decision-making and communication flow from the center to the outer layers. This structure encourages transparency and open communication, reducing hierarchy. HR’s role is pivotal in cultivating a company culture where ideas and feedback flow freely.
Flat structures are common in startups and small businesses, fostering faster decision-making, innovation, and a high degree of interactivity between management and staff. HR must develop employees’ self-management skills and promote a strong sense of accountability throughout the customer divisional structure.
A network structure is ideal for companies operating in a highly networked environment or engaged in outsourcing. It promotes a collaborative environment among different entities. HR must work closely with all network partners to ensure alignment in goals, values, and standards.
Within these customer service organizational structures, you’ll find many different roles with various responsibilities. The exact roles will vary depending on the purpose of the company, especially how public-facing it is, but consider the following roles in your customer service org chart.
You may also find back office support staff as part of the customer service org chart, such as:
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Step by step, here’s how to design your organizational structure for efficiency and effectiveness.
Start with a strong foundation: what does your company need in terms of customer support? How do you want customer support to interact with the rest of the company? How big does the department need to be? These questions will help you at the next step.
How detailed and skilled do support workers need to be? For example, a software company will have support requests ranging from very basic to highly technical, and each will need a different level of skills. As such, having specialised tiers or divisions to take care of the various levels of support requests can help to improve efficiency as well as issue resolution and customer satisfaction.
Each of the organizational structure types outlined above will have pros and cons for your company’s customer support needs. Assess the different types of structure against general practices and processes within your organization to find the right fit for your needs. Each division or tier should consist of teams headed by team leaders or managers with expertise in that product or area. As the service need gets more complex, it can be pushed up the chain of command.
Given the customer service organization is at the frontline of keeping your customers happy, it’s important to have strong and clear communication channels. Your customer service organizational structure implements that customer service hierarchy necessary to enable easy flows of information up and down the chain, as well as across and within teams. Make sure you consider the chain of command, and implement a clear customer service reporting structure at the same time. Organizational culture can be heavily influenced by choosing the right organizational structure and the ensuing communication flows.
With needs assessed, communication flows developed, and a customer service hierarchy chosen, your customer service organizational structure is ready for implementation. Use those communication channels to make expectations clear, and keep them open for feedback from employees and service users.
The job doesn’t end there, though. Your customer service org chart needs to maintain flexibility to ensure it remains fit for purpose, so embed metrics to help you monitor performance and schedule regular reviews of the customer divisional structure to keep it running smoothly.
How you create your customer divisional structure, and the roles and responsibilities within it, will be impacted by a number of factors. For example, the size of the company will influence the customer service hierarchy – larger companies will need more teams of support staff, which will necessitate larger customer service reporting structures.
The industry you’re operating in, too, will have an impact, as will the needs of your customers. For example, a business-to-business SaaS company will have very different structuring needs to a consumer-facing retail empire. The former will need highly specialized support staff and a team of account managers to keep customers informed and happy, while the retail empire will have much more need for the lower-level frontline support staff to answer questions about returns and deliveries, and so on.
Finally, consider the technological capabilities of the wider organization. More tech means more that could go wrong, and that means a greater need for customer support both internally for employees, and externally for customers.
So the customer service org chart is imperative to effective and efficient operations – but creating and maintaining org charts has traditionally been a time-consuming and manual process. However, advancements in HR automation and org chart software mean HR professionals can now easily create, update, and maintain these charts with the help of technology.
OrgChart, for example, provides:
Org chart software can provide a clear and updated visualization of customer service organizational structure, aiding succession planning, and ultimately driving HR efficiency. If you’re considering investing in org chart software, take the next step today and see how this solution can empower your customer support and service teams.
The best way to get a sense of how OrgChart can help you more effectively monitor the performance and growth of your business is to see a live demo tailored to your organization’s specific needs.
Jennifer Taylor is the Director of Client Success with sixteen years of experience in sales and client success. For the past eleven years, Jennifer has been a pivotal part of OrgChart, where she has consistently demonstrated her expertise in building and maintaining strong client relationships.
In her writing, Jennifer leans into her deep understanding of customers and the industry to offer valuable insights to readers.
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