What do you want from your CS Team?

Let me ask you something. What do you actually want from your customer service team?

Is it speed?
Cheaper costs?
More automation?
Less noise?
High NPS?
Low complaints?

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most businesses say they want one thing - customer-first service, strategic insight, loyalty-building experiences —
but their actions ask for something entirely different.

Be Honest: What Are You Really Optimising For?

If you’re pushing for:

• Lower average handle times

• Lower headcount

• Lower spend

• Fewer escalations

• Fewer “unnecessary” tickets

Then ask yourself: is that about improving the customer experience, or just the reporting deck?

Are you building a better service function - or a leaner one?

And if you’re expecting your CS team to deliver brilliant outcomes while cost-cutting, firefighting, and mopping up issues caused by other departments - is that right?

Misalignment Happens Quietly

Here’s how it often plays out:

You hire a Head of CS and tell them:
“We want to be customer-centric. Transform the experience. Drive loyalty.”

But then:

• You set KPIs based only on cost and efficiency

• You don’t give them the tools or data they need

• You cut resource before peak

• You don’t involve them in upstream product or marketing decisions

• You reward them for firefighting, not fixing

• You isolate them from strategy

Then you wonder why the customer experience isn’t getting better.

CS Can’t Be All Things to All People

Your CS team can be:

• A source of strategic insight

• A loyalty driver

• A brand ambassador

• A revenue enabler

• A trust builder

• A safety net

But they cannot do that  in a vacuum. And they cannot do it if the business keeps asking them to do less with less.

If all they’re doing is plugging gaps created elsewhere - you’re not running a customer service function.
You’re running a human shield.

So Ask Yourself:

🧩 Do you want a team that  deflects contact - or one that understands it?

🧩 Do you want to reduce complaints - or fix what causes them?

🧩 Do you want better sentiment scores - or deeper customer relationships?

🧩 Do you want a quiet contact centre - or one that’s solving real business problems?

And most importantly:

🧩 Are your goals, systems, tools, partners and leadership aligned to those answers?

Because if not, you're going to keep hiring the wrong people, implementing the wrong tools, and wondering why your customer service never quite feels right.

Final Thought

Your CS team will rise to the challenge - if you give them the right one.

They’re not there to make bad processes bearable.
They’re there to make your business better.

So next time you think about what you want from CS, ask:

“Are we setting them up to succeed?
Or just survive?”

It’s a big difference.
And your customers will feel it either way.

💬 At The Customer Practice, I work with businesses who are ready to stop treating customer service like a band-aid — and start using it as a strategic advantage.

[Let’s talk →]

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