Here’s how you can celebrate National Customer Service Week.
National Customer Service Week is held the first full work week of October. The most recent official theme: Every Experience Counts.
If it’s caught you off-guard, that’s OK. You might not have time to go all out with celebrations every day this year (but for next year, here are lots of ideas). But you have time to do something to congratulate, reward and motivate everyone who’s involved the customer experience.
Congratulate, reward, motivate
Here are five ideas to celebrate – one for each day this week:
- Kick it off, set a goal, give a quick prize. Send an email to the customer service/experience staff wishing them a Happy National Customer Service Week. Then offer a prize (maybe a coffee shop gift card or an extra 15-minute break) to the first person to reach a short-sighted goal (maybe number of compliments or calls taken) for each hour or the whole morning. And while you’re at the gift cards, stock up on them for the rest of the week.
- Take a three-pronged approach to rewards. One manager hands out Spot Rewards to service pros when she sees them doing something above and beyond the call of duty (or if a co-worker reports seeing someone do it). She gives Points Rewards throughout the day when service pros hit a milestone. And she creates a Kudos Wall where anyone can post positive comments from colleagues and customers. Then she puts the names of those who were mentioned on the wall in a hat for regular prize raffles.
- Teach a new skill. In a morning meeting, teach a new skill (perhaps a seldom-used, but efficient tool on your software) and reward each person who can prove he or she mastered it that day.
- Have a group party. Whether it’s a company picnic, post-work happy hour or morning bagels and coffee to celebrate, people love camaraderie. It’s up to you if you want to invite colleagues or departments who support your work.
- Post it everywhere. Share all the customer experience accomplishments everywhere possible so others can see and hear what they’ve done in the past year. Than colleagues outside of the experience, can join in celebrating and congratulating great work. Post stories online and in-house of extraordinary care, extra efforts and hard work that have affected individual customers and customer satisfaction/loyalty levels.
Bonus idea
Take the pressure off yourself. Let your customer experience employees have some fun with impromptu planning.
Give them a budget on Monday, and invite them to plan the end-of-week celebration, awards, food, accolades – whatever they choose.
