Teams - What are Teams?

Teams is our way of combining your company structure with user permissions and reporting. In Teams you can set up a tree structure similar to your internal company structure with any number of levels. Thanks to metadata, the scores and feedback are linked to the right level. 

IN THIS ARTICLE:

1. What does the team structure look like?
2. What can it be used for and what are the benefits?
3. How do I define what it is based on?

1. What does the team structure look like?

Your team looks like a tree structure, with a number of different levels. Each team you create needs a top level, which can be for example your entire company or just the department for which you have created a touchpoint. 

If you look at a basic retail example, where you create a touchpoint after a customer visited your store, the top level of the related team will be the brand name: "Happy Fashion". If you're creating a touchpoint related to customer service, it makes less sense to make that team's top level refer to the company or brand, but you could call it "Contact Center".

Below your top level, you can add as many sub levels as you like and create a type of folder structure. The easiest way to comprehend this would be to go back to our retail example and create a structure of stores or offices, with different regions and countries. In this example, our brand is called Happy Fashion and we have a number of stores spread around Europe, like this:

• Happy Fashion (Top Level)
  • Europe
    • Belgium
      • Antwerpen
    • France
      • Nice
      • Paris
    • Spain
      • Barcelona
      • Madrid
    • The Netherlands
      • Amsterdam
    • UK
      • London
      • Manchester

You can easily recreate this structure within Hello Customer, either by adding it manually or uploading a batch via excel:

As we said, this is just one example to understand what it would look like. If we would go back to our example of the contact centre, you could create another team with a similar structure that goes Contact Centre (Top level) > Team Lead > Sub team > Agent, which would look something like this:

Of course, we are aware that not every company has a team structure that is easy to define and recreate. On top of that, it might all depend on what type of touchpoint you have set up or which point in the customer journey you are surveying. But just to show you can do almost anything with our team structure, here are some less conventional examples:

• An overview of event organizers with their respective events
• A structure based on courses taught at your organization
• Different departments within a hospital
• ...

Remember, you can make this as simple or complex as you want. You can choose to create 10 different levels or even just one below Top Level. There are also some cases where you won't even need to create sublevels and a top-level will suffice. For example when you survey the customer about their experience on your webshop, there might not be a need to create sublevels, as the webshop is considered the only point of sale. Another example would be a relational survey, where your customers didn't just have an interaction and therefore don't need to be linked to a specific department or employee. 

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2. What can it be used for and what are the benefits?

Every touchpoint you create has to be linked to a team. This means that all the feedback that comes in for your touchpoint, is also linked to that team and more specifically, if you created a structure, it will be linked to the right level in your team. 

So if we go back to the Happy Fashion example, if a customer bought something in your store in Nice and they gave feedback, this feedback will be linked to the lowest level: the store Nice. Because of this, it will automatically also be visible for any levels above: France, Europe and Happy Fashion. Because of the data being linked, you can now do and see a number of things in the platform.

First of all, if you have the Analysis Pro license, you will be able to see a Team Ranking. In short, team ranking allows you to see the scores of the different levels in your structure and you get an overview of which levels are performing best. You can read all about team ranking in this article.

Another benefit of creating a team structure is that you can set up multi-level reporting. At Hello Customer, we are a firm believer of spreading feedback internally, and reports help you do just that. First of all, if you're not entirely sure what our reports are, have a look at this article.

Long story short, reports can be created at a set interval, such as weekly, bi-weekly, monthly,... to give you an overview of the scores and feedback that came in during that time. Because of Teams, you can make sure these reports are sent to the relevant people on each level. 

To come back to our Happy Fashion example, the report at top level can be sent to the CX Manager within the company, as they need to have an overview of what customers are talking about. The Country Manager can receive a report for their respective countries, this report will then only contain the information for their own stores. More specifically, the Country Manager for Spain will receive a report with information about the stores in Barcelona and Madrid. Finally, each Store Manager can receive a report with the information on their own stores.

One last thing you can use teams for, is to give the right people access to the right information. Reports are one way to spread feedback, but within the Hello Customer platform, there is more information to be discovered. By setting up a team structure, you can give certain people access to the right level and set permissions to limit what they can do and see.

The information someone would see, is built up similarly to the reports: at top level you see everything, a country manager sees everything of all their different stores and a store manager only sees the information about their store. However, you can set different permissions on each individual level. You can read more about setting permissions in this article.

As was mentioned in the beginning of this section, your touchpoint has to be linked to a team. The good news is that you do not need to create a new team for each touchpoint. If you are surveying different moments in the customer journey that are related to the same internal structure, you can link multiple touchpoints to this team. 

For example, imagine you're a bank and you've set up a team structure based on all the offices in a country. When you first start out with Hello Customer, you survey your customers after they have opened a bank account. Now, after a couple of months, you also want to know what the customers who just closed a loan. Both actions take place in your office so all of the feedback can be linked to those offices you created in teams. Well, you just link that new touchpoint to the existing team structure and you're good to go. No need to recreate it and link it again. You can reuse the existing structure and set up any reporting and permissions for your new touchpoint. You can read all about linking touchpoints to teams in this article.

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3. How do I define what it is based on?

Now we know what teams are and what they can be used for, the final question is: how do you decide what would be a good team structure? Of course this depends on your business and the context around the touchpoint, but there are a number of technical criteria that will help you make the right decision.

First of all, consider whether you can use the structure for relevant reporting. You can set up the structure on almost anything if you can send it along with metadata, but if it ends up being useless when it comes to reporting and spreading feedback internally, it might miss its purpose.

Next, think about what the lowest level should be and make sure you can send this along in metadata. This requires some thinking ahead. When you first start out with Hello Customer, you might not think your customer care agents will need to see the feedback written about them, but maybe there will be a point in the future where this information is relevant. 

So if you're creating a structure, try to see what the deepest level will be and consider whether there might be a point in the future when you might make use of them. On the other hand, if your lowest level is very variable and changes every other month, it might take too much effort to make sure it's up to date and it will make more sense to keep it more simple. 

Let's make this more concrete with another example. Imagine you want to set up a touchpoint after your sales reps had a meeting with a customer. You are of course curious to see your customer's opinion about this meeting and this is the internal structure of your sales team:

• Sales Team (Top Level)
  • Senior Manager 1
    • Sales Manager 1
      • Sales Rep 1
      • Sales Rep 2
    • Sales Manager 2
      • Sales Rep 3
      • Sales Rep 4

Now, if this team is relatively set in stone and doesn't change too often, it's probably the best idea to go all the way down to the Sales Reps, even if you don't think it will be necessary at first. Once the programme gets rolled out more within your organisation, there might come a time when feedback for each sales rep and reporting on that level will come in handy.

However, if your sales reps switch teams and positions very often, it might be too much of a hassle to go that deep into the structure and you can have the structure end at the Sales Managers. If you then send the Sales Rep along in the metadata, you still have all the information that is necessary, but it won't be included in reporting or the team ranking.

Something that has come up a couple of times already is that you should be able to send the lowest level along in the metadata. If you're not entirely sure what metadata is, check out this article. 

Coming back to the Happy Fashion example: let's assume a customer visited our store in Nice. When we upload this customer to the Hello Customer platform, we can send along any metadata, but if want the customer to be linked to the Nice level in the structure, it's important that we tell the system that the store was Nice in the metadata. Any other level of the structure is completely optional in your metadata, but can be useful if you want it as a filter.

The final thing to keep in mind when creating a structure is that each name has to be unique. For example, if your sales teams are split up based on regions, but some of the sales reps cover multiple regions, you will only be able to add them to one. If you manage to update their name depending on the region (e.g. Sales Rep 1 East & Sales Rep 1 West), you can add them to both teams, but if that's not possible, you might need to reconsider how you will structure your team.

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