Here's how you can effectively prioritize and meet deadlines as a customer service manager.

Impact and urgency are top of mind when the topic of prioritization pops up. Fires come first. Some things are urgent (time-sensitive), and not addressing them will result in a bigger issue. * How severe is the impact? Will we lose money directly? How much? * If it`s urgent but the impact is low, this is a high priority but not a TOP priority. Impact is king. What generates the highest impact? * Does this affect our company goals? * Does this affect your main clients? * Is it a small impact or a game changer? Organization - pick a method. You can use tickets, kanban cards, whatever you will, but you need structure and a way to observe what`s in progress, what's complete, the deadlines, and the owners of each step.

From my perspective, the foundation for time management with customers is expectation management from the start. Ideally your team has Service Level Agreements in place with your customers, may that be in form of response times in Support or as cadences in Customer Success. Those should obviously be designed in accordance with the business objectives you want to achieve for your customers. At the same time they should be designed with profitability and scalability in mind. There is little value and great risk in running blindly for all the objectives a customers throws at you. SLA's and cadence agreements protect your capacities, processes and expectations all at once.

As an experienced Customer Service Manager, TL, and Representative. Planning and prioritizing are most important. Make a list of your tasks identifying them by importance and urgency. Block off your calendar to complete these tasks, note the due date, and give yourself enough time for interruptions. Ask for help and delegate tasks. Make time to take care of the urgent tasks once you step in the door, if you leave them for later you may be busy and it will complicate things.

To meet deadlines, start by planning well, detailing the stages and deadlines. Maintain transparent communication with your team and monitor progress regularly to identify and resolve obstacles quickly. 1,Company reputation 2,Link projects to results. 3,Give extremely clear instructions. 4,Lead by example. 5,Communicate constantly to ensure deadlines are met. 6,Ask rather than demand.

Can't overstate the importance of a well-defined prioritisation scale for customer requests. Could be the one's suggested here, could also be numeric from "0 - systems down" to "5 - fully functioning" as it focuses on the customer's capability to use your solution. Whatever scale you define, it is crucial though to share a common understanding across all cross-functional teams, namely Support, Customer Success and Product. If a ticket is rated as a "Sev 0 - Highest Priority" there won't be room for internal discussion on the actual priority! Make sure to maintain this alignment, to eventually be prepared for fire fighting.

A great way to be a role model as a CS Leader is to document best pratices for a well-structured working day with your team. In form of a team charter or CS playbook, this helps to create a common understanding for efficient time management strategies. This has the nice side effect, that you'll be able to plan internal meetings according to those agendas and everybody speaks a common language around time management.

Is everyone aware of their role? What is the scope of the requirement? When is the deadline? So many open ended questions allows for collaboration and creativity Stay on task and if you hit a speed bump be sure to communicate quickly and effectively, maybe brining solutions with you if any come to mind My customers appreciate open honest communication so they, in turn do not need damage control on their end - if I know something so should my team and customer