Ask HN: Does delegating well make your team suck at customer service?

I think micro-managing often implies a lack of trust where you're not sure an employee will 'do the right thing' to resolve a customer issue.

Really with a team you should be constantly letting them take more responsibility & resolving unusual instances together, this means you never have to repeat instructions for the same task twice. Continue long enough & you are only pulled into the loop for the odd anomaly.

I think this way of working builds great morale within a customer service team. The best managers remove obstacles for their team which enables them to provide awesome service.

Sometimes, simply asking your team "what common tasks are we're duplicating brain power on?" "where can I give you more responsibility?"

You may find the answers you get are really simple to implement, like "allow me to issue refunds under $10 as I ask you 10x per week for this"

Sure, maybe you get them to keep a refund log & you review it weekly but it shows that with good performance they'll create a role where they are free to use their initiative without fear of being punished.

If you create a culture where they continually look to you for instruction they are never going to step outside of that. An efficient support team needs to be lead by example.

Example: http://vimeo.com/43676958 (Github)

There are many others. It all depends on the type of company and culture. The exact things that work for Github may not work for other companies in that exact form but there are obviously ways to do so in different fields, etc...

A successful manager must delegate. But "delegation well" does not just mean you explain the goal, the why etc. A good manager knows who to delegate to, when to delegate and when not to delegate.