Customer service motivation is paramount to keeping your employees engaged and productive at work. Let’s face it, without an effective customer service team, a business would fall apart. They’re on the frontline of a company, dealing with customer enquiries, selling products and services and giving out general information. Customer service is paramount to your business because it helps retain customers and helps keep them happy when purchasing a product/service. It’s also proven that customer retention is key for increasing revenue, a 5% increase in customer retention can result in an overall 25% increase in revenue.
Although our customer-facing employees get to experience a lot of the achievements and successes of a business, they also have to deal with the part which isn’t so celebratory; resolving issues and dealing with customer complaints.
And while there are hundreds of resources about why customer service is integral to your business and how you can deliver the best customer service, we want to emphasise on supporting and ways to motivate employees who strive to keep our customers happy. Remember if our customer service team is happy, they’re more likely going to be motivated and more proactive in their job.
With this week being National Customer Service Week, we wanted to highlight ways to maximise customer service motivation.
Create awareness
First things first, you need to make sure your team is aware of National Customer Service Week and why it’s so important. The event is designed to highlight the importance of customer service in your business and is a perfect way to maximise customer service motivation.
Create awareness of the event by posting information in your employee engagement app to give a basic outline about the event and a timetable of activities that will be happening in your company to celebrate. Oak enables you to create ‘Events’ that you can post straight to your employee engagement app for all to see, there’s also a countdown to the event, so your team has no excuse to forget.
Appreciation
Yes, saying thank you can go a long way and can turn out to be a great motivator for your customer service employees. In fact, a study conducted by online job site Glassdoor found that 80% of employees have more motivation in the workplace when they get appreciation from their boss. So, next time you see an employee go above and beyond to help a client, remember to say thank you. A simple but very effective way of maximising customer service motivation.
Trading places
Being on the frontline of a company can be tough. Our customer service employees have a lot to deal with and when you’re not experiencing that it can be difficult to understand how challenging their job can be.
Realistically, not everyone in your organisation will be trained and have the right resources to carry out a customer-facing role, but in order to maximise customer service motivation encourage other members of your team to step into their shoes. Whether they listen in on some phone calls or they have a go at serving customers face to face; it’s a good way for everyone in the company to get a perspective of what your front-line staff go through daily and an innovative way to motivate employees.
External recognition
While it’s important to ensure that everyone in your company knows about the hard work and successes from your customer service team, you should also consider letting those outside your company know such as stakeholders and most importantly, your customers.
A unique way to maximise customer service motivation is dedicating a space to your customer service team in any communications you send out to your customers. Whether it’s in an update email or a company newsletter, this is a chance to show your customers who will deal with their enquiries and it will also highlight the work they do to provide an amazing service.
Talk to your customers
Make an effort to talk to your customers and get as much feedback from them as possible. Talking to your customers will benefit your company in the long run. It will give you more of an insight into how your customer feels about your product/service and you’ll be able to touch upon some areas that may need development. Gaining positive feedback from customers about your employees will also increase motivation in the workplace.
An easy way to gain quick feedback from your customers would be to send out a satisfaction survey. You could do this on your website or you could send out an email campaign. Ask specific questions about how they feel about the customer service they receive and if they are satisfied with your product/service. It’s also worth getting some background information on your customers including how they heard about your company and some general demographic questions. Knowing the demographics of your customers and having an idea where they have come from will help you in your future marketing campaigns.
Also, if you’re sending out a customer survey make sure you remember to follow-up with your customers. You might receive some feedback from the survey that isn’t particularly positive, so approaching that customer and giving them a follow-up will show that you’ve acknowledged their feedback and you can gain more information. This will also increase the likelihood of that particular customer returning.
Although this point is focused more on improving your customer service, don’t forget to highlight the positive feedback you receive from your customers to increase motivation in the workplace. National Customer Service Week is all about coming together to celebrate the successes and hard work of your customer service team. Therefore, if you do get positive responses (which there’s no doubt you will), make sure it’s known to the rest of the company by posting in your engagement app or giving a shout-out during a team meeting to maximise customer service motivation.
Summary
Putting time and effort into your employees is essential to maximising customer service motivation and inspiring them to carry out their role to their full potential. Remember, these are the people that your customers interact with the most and they’re pretty much the face of your company. So, follow these tips to maximise customer service motivation and you’ll see happier customers and most importantly, happier employees.