Motivate
Your Team For Outstanding Customer Service
Providing outstanding customer service is one of the most rewarding yet challenging activities..
Exceptional organizations that provide outstanding
customer service will experience the following benefits:
* Increased customer satisfaction
* Increased revenues
* Increased repeat and referral customer traffic
* Less employee turnover
* Increased profits
So how do we support and motivate our customer service team to give
outstanding customer service? The following are five secrets to motivate
your customer service team to give exceptional customer service to your
customers:
1. Provide Ongoing Learning
– It’s important that you not only provide
training on organizational policies and technology, but also how to handle
customers. Create an ongoing system for training and feedback. Request
continuous feedback and have the “courage to listen” to your customer
service team’s responses. Your customer service team members, because they
are on the frontline, can provide you with excellent information on how to
service your customer. Market conditions are changing all the time and the
one piece of information your customer service team can share with you can
make the difference between success and failure. After receiving the
information from your customer service rep, if necessary, provide the
training to your customer service team so that they can provide outstanding
customer service.
2. Adjust the Attitude
– Constantly work on your own attitude and your
team’s attitude to providing outstanding customer service. As a customer
service leader, always be aware of the tone you set and how your customer
service team will be motivated by your attitude. If you are upbeat, your
team will follow the lead and provide outstanding customer service. If you
have a negative attitude, your customer service team will follow your lead
and communicate this negative attitude to the customers they serve.
Work with your customer service team members to create a positive attitude
in the following ways:
* Look at every customer service experience as a learning experience that is
preparing them for future opportunities.
* Put your team in the customer’s shoes to understand the customer’s “pain”
and create empathy for outstanding customer service solutions
* Have your customer service team take on the persona of a positive
individual they admire to help them through a difficult customer service
situation.
* Create “positive triggers” to remind your customer service team why it is
important to give outstanding service. Your trigger could be as simple as a
family picture or a picture of an item (new car, home, etc.) that is
important to you.
3. Give Incentives
– Motivate your customer service team by giving
incentives based on meeting your organization’s mission, goals, and values.
Be timely, fair, and public with your incentives. Also, when putting
together an incentive program, ask your customer service team what they
would like as incentives. Many times organizations will invest thousands of
dollars on incentives which are not the ones their customer service team
wants. Just ask!
4. Show Appreciation
– Appreciate to motivate your customer service team as
much as possible. Remember, many times they are facing very challenging
customer service situations everyday. Keep them motivated by sharing your
appreciation in a timely, sincere, fair, and encouraging way. For more
detail on this, go to my article, Appreciate to Motivate, on my website. By
consistently showing appreciation, you will motivate your customer service
team to excel when it is most difficult for them to do so.
5. Support Outstanding Customer Service
– Support and motivate your customer
service team in a number of ways. You can support and motivate your customer
service team by making sure the technology supports them and the customers.
For example, I recently called my internet broadband company about a mistake
on a bill. The automated system disconnected my call five times before I
finally spoke with a customer service representative; and I told him that he
must experience many upset customers if they experience the same. The
customer service representative agreed and said it made his job very
difficult.
Support your customer service team by “cheer leading” their concerns to
upper management. Champion their concerns to upper management and let your
customer service team know the progress of each concern.
Support and motivate your customer service team by keeping standards high
for customer service. When your organization is facing challenging times, it
is very tempting to lower standards. That’s the last action you should take.
By lowering standards, you decrease customer satisfaction, increase customer
service turnover, and muddy your organization’s name in the marketplace.
Apply these customer service motivation secrets with your customer service
team and you will have highly motivated customer service teams and happy
customers, and your organization’s bottom line will increase.
