Hey, guess what? Getting the gang together for some fun team-building stuff is like the secret sauce to making your work vibe amazing! It’s all about shaking things up and getting everyone to mingle in a chill way, away from the usual grind. There exists a diverse range of team building activities and there’s something for everyone! Picture this: one day you’re untangling yourselves from a human pretzel, and the next you’re hunting for treasures like pirates. It’s not just fun and games though; it’s a real game-changer for team spirit.

Whether you’re a small squad or a big crowd, there’s a whole menu of cool activities to pick from. Feel like getting active? Tie yourselves in knots with the Human Knot or dash around on a Scavenger Hunt. More of a thinker? Mindfulness Bingo has got you covered, mixing in some zen with team time.

Sliding these playful breaks into the workday is like planting seeds for awesome teamwork. It’s all about building that trust and togetherness, you know? Plus, it’s a smart move because when folks get along, they can tackle big projects together like pros. So investing in team-building is pretty much a win-win for everyone. Cool, right?

Core Team Building Activities

Ready to ramp up the team vibes? Let’s dive into some top-notch team-building activities that are all about boosting that group mojo, sparking better chit-chat, and getting those collaboration muscles flexing.

Physical Team Building Exercises

Field Day: A classic out-of-door exertion, Field Day, engages crews in competitive games like relay races and haul- of- war. This event, generally 90 minutes, promotes cooperation and healthy competition.

Scavenger Hunt: Scavenger hunts encourage parties to work together in exploring their terrain, following suggestions, and achieving a common thing, thereby erecting cooperation and strategic thinking.

Problem-Solving and Creative Thinking

Escape Room: An escape room provides a thrilling problem- working experience. Crews must use critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative knowledge to decipher suggestions and escape within a set time limit.

Brainstorming Sessions: Structured creativity sessions can drive invention as teams engage in brainstorming to induce unique results to problems, promoting creative problem working and strategic thinking.

Communication and Collaboration Skills

Human Knot: This exertion requires platoon members to stand in a circle, snare someone’s hand across from them, and also work together to untangle the knot without releasing hands, thereby backing communication and trust.

Amazing Race: Ever seen The Amazing Race? Well, now your team is in it, tackling challenges and hustling through checkpoints. It’s the ultimate test of talk and teamwork.

So, there you have it – a mixtape of team-building hits that’ll have everyone high-fiving and working together like a well-oiled machine. Let’s get those team spirits soaring!

Looking to sprinkle a little pizzazz into your team’s work life? You’ve come to the right place! We’ve got the scoop on some of the most engaging team building exercises that’ll have your crew collaborating like best buddies and boosting morale sky-high. So, grab a cup of your favorite coffee, and let’s dive into some frequently asked questions about making work feel a lot less like, well, work!

FAQ

Why should we invest time in team building exercises?

Great question! Team building activities are the secret sauce to a zesty workplace. They’re just like the embrace your group needs to work way better together, understand each other’s qualities and characteristics, and, most critically, have an impact while doing it! It’s all about making a vibe that everybody needs to be a portion of.

Can you suggest a quick, no-prep activity to get us started?

Absolutely! Let’s kick things off with “Two Truths and a Lie.” Have each person share three facts about themselves—two true and one not so much. The rest of the group surmises which one is the lie. It’s a hoot, and you’ll learn a few captivating tidbits about your teammates!

Can you recommend a speedy, no-prep activity to get us started?

Completely! Let’s kick things off with “Two Truths and a Lie.” Have each share three realities approximately. Regularly remind your team to contribute. It’s like a perpetual team building exercise that keeps the positive vibes flowing!

Any quick team building exercises for those super busy days?

“Speed Storytelling” is your go-to. Each individual has one diminutive to tell a story about their most paramount work encounter. It’s quick, and fun, and you will be able to bring everybody together in a brief sum of time.

Do you have a team building exercise for remote teams?

For sure! “Virtual Office Show and Tell” works wonders. Each team member takes a turn showing something from their home workspace and sharing its story. It’s a personal and delightful way to create connections across the miles.

How can we celebrate our wins in a team building way?

Throw a “Success Party”! Whether it’s hitting a target or completing a venture, celebrate with themed enhancements, an extraordinary treat, or a fun action. It fortifies the team’s difficult work and shared accomplishments in a merry and important manner.

How often should we do team building exercises?

Consistency is key! Aim for at least once a month to keep the team spirit buoyant. But remember, even small daily interactions can be a form of team building, so encourage a friendly and open atmosphere every day.

Conclusion: Fostering Engagement and Culture

This section underscores the significance of integrating team building exercises into the workplace to bolster engagement and fortify company culture.

Virtual and Remote Team Integration

In an evolving work terrain, companies are frequently scuffling with how to maintain cohesion among remote and virtual brigades. Virtual team building—whether through Zoom or other platforms—serves as a bridge, connecting team members across geographies. Small groups can engage in online escape rooms or virtual games, promoting camaraderie and synchrony in pursuit of a common goal. For large organizations, coordinated virtual workshops can offer simultaneous engagement, aligning dispersed employees with the company’s vision.

Building Relationships and Morale

Team structure conditioning is necessary in nurturing particular connections between associates, irrespective of their places — be it directors, directors, or inferior staff. By sharing in conditioning like” Two trueness & A taradiddle,” workers step down from formal office places, allowing them to make connections in a more particular position. In turn, this strengthens team morale and employee satisfaction, laying the groundwork for increased productivity and commitment to shared goals.

Enhancing Company Culture and Values

The fabric of company culture is woven through participating guests and a collective understanding of company values. Cultivating a positive work terrain is consummate for long- term hand engagement. Whether fostering leadership skills within small teams or driving home the importance of alignment with the company culture in large groups, each activity should reflect and reinforce the company’s culture and values. Through consistent reinforcement of these principles in engaging and interactive settings, employees often find their job satisfaction and productivity inherently linked to their alignment with the culture.

By thoughtfully employing these team building exercises, companies can create a hybrid structure where both in-person and remote cultures thrive, relationships flourish, and employee engagement is significantly enhanced.

In today’s highly competitive corporate world, the kind of customer service a business offers plays a deciding role in determining its success.

To increase their reach and improve their customer retention rate, business owners are trying their best to provide better services to their customers.

Today, customer service is not what it used to be a few years ago. It is no longer only about answering customers’ questions or demonstrating to them how to use a product. Exceptional customer service is more about strengthening your customers’ trust in your business. It is about presenting a united and harmonious image of your business. And this is only possible when businesses promote a culture of strong team collaboration.

Strong team collaboration is essential to enhance the efficiency of the employees and provide a better experience to the customer. Here are the top five benefits of team collaboration for a business’ customer service:

1. Improved productivity

One of the biggest benefits of team collaboration is that it boosts the productivity of employees across different departments. Different employees are good at different things. By encouraging the employees to share their knowledge and expertise with each other, managers can help them in increasing their productivity.

Managers should promote seamless conversations across different departments and ensure that people can reach out to one another when they require assistance. For example, if a customer service executive is dealing with a billing issue, directly contacting a team member of the finance team can help them solve the problem more quickly. And when customers receive quick solutions to their issues, they tend to trust the organization more and stay loyal to it for longer. In addition to this, remote teams can use a virtual desktop to boost their productivity.

2. Removes duplication of efforts

Another benefit of effective team collaboration is that it ensures that everyone is on the same page. By sharing details about different projects, tasks, and roles between all the team members, managers can greatly reduce duplication of efforts. When everyone has a clear idea of what they’re supposed to do, it not only removes confusion but also increases their efficiency. And greater employee efficiency ultimately leads to better customer service.

3. Faster services

Effective team collaboration also goes a long way in providing faster services to the employees. Business owners can equip the customer service reps with advanced collaboration tools to help them communicate with each other effortlessly. Enabling them to share tickets, discuss progress on various projects, and have work-related discussions in a shared digital workspace will ensure that things are done at a much faster pace.

4. Improves knowledge

A major benefit of team collaboration is faster delivery of product information to the customers. When a business launches a new product service, it becomes essential for it to get the accurate words out as quickly as possible. With social media and digital mediums ruling the corporate landscape, providing the right information at the right time becomes all the more important.

Effective team collaboration facilitates the seamless sharing of skills and knowledge between team members. For example, the product team can share crucial details about the product that can help the social media marketing team in creating an engaging post for their company’s social media handles. The customer service can then use this information to pitch the new product to the in-store visitors. It ensures that customers are receiving the correct and updated information. It also goes a long way in saving the time of employees that they would have to otherwise spend doing needless research on their own.

5. Better handling of errors

Mistakes are a part of every business. How teams handle their errors makes all the difference in the world. Team collaboration is necessary for the effective handling of errors and customer issues. When members of different departments come together to solve a problem, the chances of it being resolved quickly increase several times.

Business owners must encourage employees from different departments to collaborate and discover the most common customer pain points and come up with guidelines to mitigate them efficiently. In this way, each team member will bring something valuable and unique to the table that might help in seeing the problems in a whole new light. It will not only boost harmony amongst employees but will also increase sales and customer satisfaction. And if the business is lucky, they can even gain excellent word-of-mouth advertising from it too!

Wrapping up

Employees are the face of every business. When they work together on resolving customers’ queries or managing tickets, it provides customers with faster and more efficient services. When it comes to providing excellent customer service, organizations need to ensure that all their team members are working towards a common goal. They must provide their customer support team with the right tools and techniques to handle the client’s needs in the right way has become imperative today.

In any business, customer service is the key element. It can make or break a company. And when it comes to customer service, the pressure is on the team members responsible for providing it.

Unfortunately, this pressure can make team members feel overwhelmed and stressed out. This can result in poor customer service, making customers dissatisfied with the company. You can implement several things as a business owner or manager to help reduce the pressure on your customer service team and ensure that they can provide quality service to your customers.

By reducing the pressure on your customer service team, you’re making their job more accessible and improving the quality of customer service that your company provides. Here are a few tips to help reduce the pressure on your customer service team:

1. Improve your product shipping process

Make sure your products are shipped correctly and on time. This will reduce the number of customer service inquiries related to shipping issues. The benefits are twofold: your customers will be happy to receive their products on time, and your customer service team won’t have to deal with as many shipping-related inquiries.

Many companies offer these types of services. For example, kitting services by Rakuten work by physically bundling products. By selecting one kitted SKU rather than several individual SKUs, fulfillment expenses may be reduced, and efficiency improved. This can also help eliminate human error in choosing the products because a kit with many components is already prepackaged, making it less likely for workers to pick the wrong thing.

2. Have a clear returns policy

Make sure your return policy is concise, clear, and easy to understand. This will reduce the number of customer service inquiries related to returns. Customers should be able to find all the information they need quickly on your website or in your store. If your return policy is unclear, customers will be more likely to contact customer service with questions, which can lead to frustration.

Hire a lawyer or returns specialist to help develop a clear and concise returns policy. You can also use a service like Shipstation to automate your returns process. This can help you save time and money by reducing the manual steps involved in processing a return.

Invest in a quality returns management system to automate the process and make it easier for your customers and customer service team. A sound returns management system will streamline the process and make it easier for everyone involved.

3. Use the live chat

Offer live chat on your website or in your store. This will allow customers to get their questions answered quickly and easily, without waiting for a customer service representative to become available. Live chat can reduce the number of customer service inquiries and the time spent on each query.

Many live chat software options are available, such as Zopim and SnapEngage. Some platforms, like Shopify, even offer live chat as a built-in feature.

Live chat may seem unnecessary, but it can make a big difference for your customer service team. It can reduce the number of inquiries they have to deal with and the amount of time spent on each question.

4. Set up an FAQ page

An FAQ page can be an excellent resource for your customers and customer service team. It can answer common customer questions, reducing the number of customer service inquiries overall. An FAQ page can also save your customer service team time by providing them with a resource to refer to when answering questions.

When setting up an FAQ page, cover all the basics. Include information on your product, shipping, returns, and anything else that might be relevant to your customers. You can even include a visible link button to your FAQ page in your live chat software so customers can easily find the answers they need.

The bigger your FAQ page is, the more helpful it will be for your customers and customer service team. But don’t forget that you should always add to it over time. Start with the basics, and then add more as you go.

5. Offer self-service options

Self-service options have a few great options, such as a knowledge base or online chatbot, which can significantly reduce the number of customer service inquiries. These options allow customers to find answers to their questions independently without waiting for a customer service representative to become available. This can save a lot of your customer service team time and frustration and make your customers happy by providing them with a quick and easy way to get the information they need.

Many different self-service options are available, such as Zendesk’s knowledge base and chatbot. You can also use a service like Shipstation to automate your returns process. This can help you save time and money by reducing the manual steps involved in processing a return.

6. Train your employees

Ensure all your employees are adequately trained on your products and services. This will reduce the number of customer service inquiries overall and make it easier for your customer service team to answer questions when they come in. Proper training can also help you avoid negative reviews and social media posts by ensuring that your employees provide excellent customer service.

There are many different approaches to employee training, such as online courses, in-person training, and even video tutorials. You can also create a training manual or FAQ page for your employees to reference when they have questions.

Proper employee training is essential for providing excellent customer service. It can reduce the number of customer service inquiries overall and make it easier for your customer service team to answer questions when they come in.

There you have it! These are just a few ways to reduce the number of customer service inquiries you receive. Implementing these tips can improve your customer service process and make your customers happy.

Customer service can make or break a business’s reputation. In fact, more than 95% of customers will never purchase from a company that provided poor customer service.

As recurring customers are the cheapest to acquire and maintain, having a strong customer service team is essential for your business’s bottom line.

Skilled and engaged agents bring a lot to a company. Excellent customer service increases sales, benefits word-of-mouth marketing, and boosts customer loyalty.

Despite the important role they play, customer service agents report low levels of satisfaction in the industry. Turnover rates average more than 30% and burnout is unfortunately commonplace.

Many of the strategies that improve customer service retention also create more skilled and engaged agents. As a result, investing in your customer service team is a win-win opportunity for agents, managers, business owners, and customers.

Structured Onboarding Process

According to a Gallup poll, less than 15% of companies follow an adequate onboarding process. In far too many businesses, new hires are “thrown into the deep end” without proper training or resources.

A structured onboarding process sets the tone for the workplace and helps empower employees as they grow into their positions. Successful onboarding processes cover all aspects of the company, from policies and procedures to core values.

Onboarding should also incorporate human elements, such as opportunities to bond with other agents, managers, and employees in other departments. This fosters a cohesive company culture and builds the foundation for trust and collaboration.

If your company already enacts an onboarding process, it is important to collect constant feedback from team members to ensure that the material is still relevant. New employee surveys and “360 reviews,” which collect information from all levels of an organization, are effective ways to assess your onboarding process.

Continuous Professional Development

Companies that provide in-house professional development opportunities benefit in several ways. Outlined career paths make employees more engaged and productive. Likewise, companies can upskill and promote internally, which is more economical than hiring new employees.

In customer service, professional development can involve technical and soft skills. For example, customer service agents can take courses to learn how to use new customer management software or best practices in customer interactions. Courses focusing on emerging areas in customer service, such as cultural sensitivity and conflict resolution can put your agents ahead of the competition.

Open Communication Mediums

Even the hardest-working employee cannot improve without constant constructive feedback. Without an established process for reviewing agent performance, employees can have difficulty assessing their work. This uncertainty can eventually lead to self-doubt and disengagement.

The key to creating valuable communication channels between managers and agents is to implement a predictable, data-based evaluation process. For example, managers can be trained to pull feedback from concrete measurements, such as customer satisfaction responses, and standardized metrics, such as call length or hold times.

Feedback should be given in a timely manner so that the agent has the opportunity to improve. Further, feedback should focus equally, or more so, on what agents do correctly. Employees should also feel empowered to assess their own performance through self-evaluations. Companies should also create coaching plans for agents who need support to improve their skills.

Employee-centric Values

As with any other industry, good benefits correlate with higher rates of employee satisfaction, reduced turnover, and productivity. In practice, employee-centric firms implement policies that help their employees maintain a healthy work-life balance, including flexible scheduling, generous paid time off, and remote work options.

The company culture must also center around mutual respect and communication. For example, agents should play an important role in developing customer service procedures, as their first-hand experience is a valuable source of information. Recognition programs and promotion opportunities also demonstrate to agents that they are a respected and vital segment of the company.

Collaboration Across Departments

Many companies have separate teams dedicated to sales, marketing, and customer service. If you are not careful, this can result in compartmentalization, a phenomenon in which each department focuses on its own goals.

In the worst-case scenario, these goals may clash and cause competition and distrust between departments. As each department is essential for creating the customer journey, companies should make it easier for customer service agents to collaborate with employees in other positions.

One of the easiest ways to promote cross-department collaboration is with an integrated project management solution. Tools like Asana or Slack allow employees to collaborate and share information in real-time.  Building strong, collaborative relationships between departments also improves agents’ understanding of the sales and marketing process, which enables them to deliver more tailored customer service experiences.

Voice from the past

While we are happy to chat to friends and colleagues using messaging, text, social media and email, when it comes to contacting our bank, insurance company or healthcare provider, we’re often sent to the back of the phone queue. Customer service departments are still rooted in voice-centric service infrastructure, but this is about to change.

The advance of AI

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), spurred on by technology giants such as Alphabet, Amazon and IBM, are making AI-based technology much more accessible to customer service departments in every sector.

A Gartner report, sponsored by Tealium: ‘100 data and analytics predictions for 2021‘ forecasts that ‘By 2019 more than 10% of IT hires in customer service will mostly write scripts for bot interactions’ and ‘By 2020, AI will disrupt the jobs of 1,000,000 phone-based customer support agents.’

Weathering the storm

Any organization with a large customer base can immediately benefit from employing AI to help their customer service departments to cope with large volumes of day-to-day enquiries. The technology can also assist with managing seasonal spikes, such as the UCAS Clearing system on A-level results day, or to support an insurance company’s customer service team following an extreme weather event.

However, while disruption is certainly on the way, it’s important to recognize that AI will supplement and complement customer support agents’ roles rather than replacing them entirely.

A more recent report, ‘AI Is Ready For Employees, Not Just Customers’ by Forrester analyst, Craig Le Clair, advocates using AI to automate repetitive tasks, but argues that certain services demand human skills, such as the ability to detect a customers’ emotional state and respond appropriately.

Le Clair writes, “Machines excel at background tasks such as navigation and search, not human tasks such as conversations. That’s why today’s AI is best directed at internal employee support rather than customer-facing bots.”

AI with a human touch

People increasingly crave personalized service and have less tolerance for repeating information when dealing with providers. Because of this, an AI system that can pull together information from previous interactions and respond accordingly can greatly assist organizations in retaining loyal customers.

When viewed in this context, AI becomes part of the team effort to support customers. Customer service agents are able to handle multiple queries simultaneously, while the automation of routine enquiries frees them to focus on more unusual, high value, or critical enquiries which require human creativity, empathy and expertise.

Escape from routine

We are starting to see good examples of AI being used in this way in customer service departments in the insurance, charity and public sector, where high volumes of incoming enquiries can be handled more productively by arming customer support specialists with AI.

A recent case study from Aylesbury Valley District Council describes this scenario perfectly. One customer support agent describes how she is able to use a chatbot template to answer planning queries, even though this falls outside of her specialism. Using AI allows her to be more productive and also helps customers because they don’t need to be passed from pillar to post to get the answers that they need.  A customer support officer reports that, despite being initially sceptical, he has been won over by the AI system, which allows him to handle multiple enquiries simultaneously.

The Digital Programme Director at Aylesbury Valley District Council comments that the AI system is continually improving as more people interact with it and responses are refined. “AI enables us to automate some of the basic standard responses, to free up our staff’s time, so they can focus on the areas where they need to spend more time helping our customers: our residents”.

Going beyond chat

Due to the open-sourcing of machine learning and natural language processing technology, AI has advanced to the point where bots can be implemented in a matter of days and improved over time. My own view is that current enterprise AI strategies need to rapidly evolve beyond chatbots handling inbound queries, to harnessing AI in the form of service bots, that perform specific tasks to support customer service teams across a whole range of inbound and proactive outbound processes, such as on-boarding new customers; completing claims forms; managing complaints; handling renewals and reducing churn.

ServisBOT’s mission is to make AI easy, continuously smarter and more humanlike, so that organizations can automate routine interactions and improve customer service experience through greater availability and more convenient problem resolution, making use of the same channels their customers use to communicate with their friends and family. However, skilled customer service professionals will be needed to handle sensitive interactions.  By releasing them from repetitive tasks, talented customer service people are freed up to deal with unique enquiries, where they can really add value.

While Gartner predicts that customer service departments are currently hiring people to write scripts for bots, it is impossible to foresee every scenario, so for now at least, skilled customer service professionals will always be required. To avoid frustrating customers and preserve brand, it’s important to ensure that bots are able to escalate enquiries to a human if AI is unable to satisfactorily answer a customer’s query. The subsequent response can then be used to further personalize and improve the AI system for future customers.

About the author

Cathal McGloin is an entrepreneur and engineer with a passion for developing software that solves business problems. McGloin originally hails from Southern Ireland and is now based in Boston Massachusetts. Prior to founding ServisBOT in 2016, his earlier ventures include founding Performix, which was acquired by Nice Systems in 2006; Arantech, which was acquired by Tektronix in 2009 and FeedHenry, which was acquired by Red Hat for 63.5 million Euros in 2014. His earlier enterprise IT career includes senior roles working for Siemens, Germany and Cap Gemini, UK.

About ServisBOT

ServisBOT was founded to help customer service organizations to harness AI to personalise customer service and boost loyalty, using an AI-based platform that allows companies to provide a better, quicker and more cost effective way of answering customers’ queries. ServisBOT has developed an ‘army’ of service bots that learn from interactions so that subsequent exchanges become more personalised.

Using serverless AI technology, organizations can quickly set up ServisBOT’s WinBack bots, Chat bots, Renewal bots, Reception bots, Twitter bots, Facebook bots, Compliance bots, Audit bots or Refund bots.

A company that values its customer’s business may set up a designated customer support team for complaints and feedback, but a customer centric company will put the needs of customers at the forefront of operations and ensure that all members of the team are on the same page.

By re-evaluating the role of all team members in regard to customer service, it is possible to completely change the relationship that your brand has with its customer base and to achieve greater results in customers satisfaction and sales.

It may sound like a massive upheaval to completely change the way that a company deals with its clients – one of those “if it ain’t broke” moments – but some simple changes in the approaches of staff and the presentation of policies can make a big difference. The following points are all important questions to ask yourself about your own company’s approach to customer service.

1) What is your brand philosophy and is it clear to customers and staff?

All companies have an ethos, a simple philosophy that they want to express to their customers and employees about the way they do business. In a customer centric team, the focus has to be on clear, concise values, ideally ones that involve putting customers and their needs first. The shorter the slogan, the easier it is to reinforce to employees through visual cues and repetition.

The same goes for a list of vital policies. Create a simple list that can be reinforced on a regular basis through meetings and make sure that staff can memorize it well enough to repeat it back to the client. You don’t need to drill it into them like an army officer, but it should be reinforced.

2) Are you providing the optimal level of customer interaction?

This is the primary focus of most customer-focused services – companies need to be able to listen to their customers and deal with complaints in an effective manner. Sending out a great message through these slogans along with clever branding is a great start, but companies also need to be able to listen to feedback and amend policies where necessary.

The first approach here is to use a strong customer centric team of support staff that can deal with calls and complaints and take surveys to determine customer satisfaction. Live chats with online advisers and support tickets on websites are the best way to deal with customers one-on-one for a meaningful conversation, but responsibilities have to go beyond the front line of customer service advisers.

It is also important to listen to what the customer is not saying. How many times have we experienced poor service and when asked “How was your experience?” (meal, shopping or any other experience) said “fine” or “good” knowing that complaining will not help or there just isn’t enough time in the schedule to complain. By giving a one-word response, you can bet the customer experience failed. Rest assured, a one-word response is a customer complaint.

3) Are you making sure that everyone is involved?

It used to be enough to let the customer service department deal with any personal interactions and complaints, but this approach can cause a divide in the company where staff members are no longer on the same page. If tech staff, management and customer complaint handlers all have the same information, they can all make informed customer service decisions that really help consumers – instead of passing the buck by saying “this has nothing to do with my department.”

Also, if high-level employees have to take customer support tickets once in a while, they can better appreciate the work of their staff and perhaps make the process easier if they find a fault with the system.

4) Are you empowering your employees?

Getting employees of all levels involved with a customer centric team is just the start. These employees – whether high-level management or low-level customer service staff – need to feel as though they have the power to deal with customer complaints in order to make positive changes.

Too often a customer can feel as though they are not being listened to on a personal level because customer service employees freeze up at that crucial moment. They are too used to following strict policies and are unable deviate from the script – an approach that can lead to poor results and a potential loss of business. The best alternative is to give employees room to breathe and to make personal judgement calls that are based on that particular situation.

5) Do your staff members have enough accountability?

This level of empowerment and control over customer interactions can make a big difference in the overall result of the phone call or query as it gives the employee greater ownership of both the situation and the client. Providing staff with a personal stake in the outcome drives them to succeed and to implement all those mantras and customer-focused codes that have become such an important part of the company ethos.

It also gives them accountability for the results of that customer interaction, which should offer that extra incentive to provide great service. All accountable employees want to be seen to be doing their best and in a customer-facing role, and this means providing the very best service until a personal problem is resolved.

6) Are your staff members rewarded for their customer service?

There is one last tool for creating a customer centric team that should not be overlooked and that is the employee reward program. It is easy to think that by focusing on customers and customer service, employee satisfaction takes a bit of a back seat, but under appreciating staff members can be dangerous.

By highlighting a particularly impressive customer service call or singling out a staff member with a great customer satisfaction record for the month, businesses can show employees that customer centric work doesn’t go unrewarded.This will provide that final incentive for employees to continue their good work. It doesn’t have to be a bottle of champagne, a simple certificate or social media mention will do.

7) Building a customer centric team is as much about the employees and their role within the business as it is about the customer.

When building a business on customer service and customer-friendly values, it is natural to take the approach of “the customer is always right” while forgetting about the needs of employees. Building communication between staff and customers is vital. Ensure that your philosophy is clear and make sure that all employees have some customer-facing experience. Remember to empower staff and make them accountable. Finally, reward and celebrate their successes.

About the Author

Ronald E. Foster is a results-focused executive leader with extensive experience driving sales, margin growth, and overall profitability by leveraging customer service and support as a core profit center. Highly skilled at creating market differentiation and building value through the development of dynamic, customer centric service organizations, Ronald is a long-term, strategic visionary with a proven record of improving bottom line returns by continually improving upon customer success and the total customer experience.

But a good customer experience isn’t as simple as it often seems. As we celebrate those who work hard to serve and support us, we’ll take a look at what it really takes to deliver incredible service and what we can do to support those who support us.

Importance of Customer Service on your Bottom Line

In 2016, 2.7 million Americans were working as customer service representatives and that number is only expected to rise, increasing the priority businesses are putting on their customer service teams. This is a smart move by businesses since a survey by Dimensional Research found that 95% of customers share bad service experiences, while only 87% of good experiences are shared. This means that bad experiences can spread like wildfire among your customers and seriously impact your bottom line. Dimensional Research also found that bad experiences impacted buying behavior for over two years after the experience.

What’s more, 62% of B2B customers increased their spend with a company based on good customer service experiences and 42% of B2C customers increased their spend with good customer service. This means your customer service representatives, who are often your frontline staff, are crucial to protecting your brand and ensuring your customers continue to seek your business for their needs. Especially as Gartner has found that it costs five times as much to attract new customers than to retain current customers. Additionally, 89% of companies see that customer experience is a key factor for driving loyalty and retention.

Share Knowledge Up, Down and Across Your Organization

First impressions are extremely powerful and can make or break a customer’s experience. And as support has moved to more automated and self-service methods, engagements and personal interactions are now more valuable than ever. Consumers often expect and demand immediate resolutions when talking with customer service representatives, and this puts a lot of pressure on frontline service providers and requires more knowledge and specialized training than even five years ago.

However, you can empower your customer service teams to meet these high expectations by providing them with necessary and updated knowledge and ongoing trainings that keep them prepared and ready to handle any service request, as the customer experience continually evolves.

Every customer or product support interaction can be a source of new knowledge and information. By capturing insights from across your organization —from your call center, to your retail stores, online activity, and product engineers and repair depots—and sharing them at all levels and in every channel, your teams will be sure to stay ahead of potential service questions and customer needs.

Additionally, as products and devices continue to become more and more complex, the service experience to support these products is also becoming more complex. What’s more, 72% of customers cite explaining issues to multiple people as a reason for a bad experience. Avoiding silos with connected and integrated support systems across business units enables service teams to be better prepared to resolve issues quickly and accurately without giving your customers the runaround.

Share Common Goals and Values

Every company has overarching business goals that may or may not be actively shared with all employees or frontline staff. Clearly sharing your business goals with your teams ensures that everyone knows what they’re working toward and further unites your teams to a common goal.

Also, setting core company values, such as accountability, integrity and customer dedication, will help frame how your customer service teams engage with each request and represent your company. This not only helps protect your brand, but gives meaning to the work your employees are doing. This is profoundly important to the ever-growing millennial workforce, with 71% of millennials who strongly agree that they know what their organization stands for, plan to stay with that company for at least another year.

Customer experience is impacting our brands now more than ever, and no stat can truly capture the effect it has on a business. A customer service team is often the first, and last, impression consumers have with your company, and their role is invaluable.

Take a moment during Customer Service Week to celebrate and thank your dedicated customer service teams, but allocate time to invest in, celebrate and thank your customer service professionals year-round because the success of your brand depends on them.

About the Author

Gary Praznik is COO of Retail and Consumer Services at iQor. Gary joined iQor in 2000 as an industry veteran with over 20 years experience in customer interaction outsourcing. During his time with iQor, he has held various executive roles in Operations and new business development, with a demonstrated track record of superior leadership, operational excellence and significant revenue growth. His overall track record has made a significant contribution in positioning the company as one of the largest BPO solution providers and has led to his current role as COO, Retail and Consumer Services. Prior to joining iQor, Gary held several positions with OSI, including SVP/General Manager of its Teleservices division and SVP of Sales/Marketing. Gary began his career in 1984 with Payco American Corporation.

The Sum is Greater Than the Parts

If the team has a common objective, everyone should be working to achieve it. In a supportive team environment, everyone makes contributions based on their unique skills. They don’t measure how much each has done to help the common goal.

The team is stronger than the sum of its members because there are more skills available, so weaknesses can be counterbalanced resulting in the team accomplishing more than any individual could achieve on their own. There’s no room for individual egos because everyone has an unselfish, common goal. When the team succeeds—everyone in the team shares the glory.

You Only Fail If You Stop Trying

A team can support each other through the failures and disappointments as well as the successes. Failures are only reasons why things didn’t work. An
individual may find it hard to try again but the team morale and support will enable anyone who stumbles to carry on and try, try, try again. Without failure, there would be no way to measure success.

It’s important to recognize and admit mistakes because only then can you move past them and improve your learning curve. As your team celebrates accomplishments, pride builds up and the team grows even stronger.

Eventually, there won’t be any stress if mistakes or failures do occur because the team recognizes that a failure simply demonstrates what doesn’t work — so they can continue to narrow the options until finding something that does work.

Recognize Your Full Potential

As individuals; people have a lot of limitations. Each person is good at some things and bad at others. However, when you’re part of a team, it becomes easier to recognize people’s full potential because one person’s weakness is someone else’s strength. It’s the combination of these strengths that sees teams make powerful, forward progress towards reaching all objectives.

Being part of a supportive team gives everyone the ability to manage their weaknesses by learning from each other to mutual benefit. One team member may be an excellent administrator but a lousy salesperson. Another may be great in sales but struggles with balancing financial records. By supporting each other, the team gets much stronger as a result. “Use not only all the brains you have but also all the brains that you can borrow.”

Leaders Are Just Part of the Team

Regardless of whether the leader is a team leader, a junior manager, a senior manager or the CEO of the organization; you’re just another team member. Of course, your role could be considered as different to the rest of the team, but each team member has their area of responsibility and so it really isn’t that different. If you don’t do your job well, that lets the team down in the same way as if another team member lets the rest down.

A true leader carries the attitude that says “I’m part of the team. I just happen to be the one in charge.” It doesn’t mean the leader can accomplish the goals on their own. That’s why teams are created in the first place.

Of course, the leader has to exercise a certain level of authority at times to ensure the team is functioning correctly and at peak efficiency. But the rest of the time you’re just “one of the team.”

Are You a Leader or a Manager?

Leaders and managers must work together because they’re like the two hemispheres of the human brain.

The left hemisphere is the management department and looks after logic and rational thinking. It deals with tangibles, order and control in daily life.

The right hemisphere is the leadership department where creative, emotional thinking happens. It can see the bigger picture; it focuses on imagination,
intuition, possibilities and other soft skills.

Together these two segments make up a whole and when they work together, there are no boundaries to the available possibilities.

About the Author

Bill Hogg is widely recognized as the Performance Excelerator. This is due to his ability to create profound change and deliver extraordinary results within the most demanding organizations. He works with senior leadership teams to navigate change and transform organizations into high performance, customer-focused cultures that create long-term, profitable relationships with your customers and ‘excelerate’ performance and productivity with leaders and employees.

1. Tell Them Why

It’s not good enough to order people to work just “because you told them to.” A smart leader tells them the objectives because he knows that knowledge will make them work harder to achieve them. They may not like the work but they’ll do it because you’re open with them and they understand the purpose. Their eyes will be focused on the goal. Open communications achieves far more than proceeding on a “need to know” basis.

2. Lead from the Front

Instead of hiding in an office, a true leader stands on the front line with his team and holds the light to shine the way. A great leader is supercharged with an enthusiastic energy that’s highly contagious and lasts for a very long time. People will follow leaders voluntarily because they’re inspirational and empowering. Leaders are trustworthy, supportive and deserve the respect of those who follow them, although they do nothing with that in mind.

3. Open Communication

The bond between a true leader and your team is very much a supportive give and take relationship. You’re always open to new ideas and feedback and are prepared to try new things if they seem appropriate, regardless of where the idea originated. Credit is always given where due. Everyone is treated equally. Firm but fair is the leader’s policy. So, wherever the bar is set, at least everyone knows where they stand. This is very important because, in a team environment, favoritism can be the cause of major strife.

4. Leaders Create Leaders

Leaders transform current followers into new leaders. If you believe that you’re a future leader, then that’s the type of person to emulate. Leaders don’t merely “talk the talk”, they “walk the walk.” Your actions and passionate attitude clearly show people what to expect and how to achieve the objectives. Leaders are focused on transforming the team and individual visions into reality.

Leaders don’t merely “talk the talk”, they “walk the walk.”

5. Put People First

A wise leader knows that anybody can learn the physical skills necessary for their work. But people matter most and an innate understanding of what makes people tick is vital to the cohesiveness and growth of any team. Demonstrate that you genuinely care about your people openly and honestly. Develop an attitude of gratitude for workplace accomplishments and you raise people’s self-esteem. A simple thank you can make the world of difference in an office environment and every time you boost their self-esteem, yours gets a lift as well. Never underestimate the power of morale.

Transforming individuals into a strong, cohesive team with common goals isn’t easy but it’s vital to the overall success of any organization. Only leaders with strong self-confidence and a passionate determination will succeed in this endeavour.

About the Author

Bill Hogg is widely recognized as the Performance Excelerator. This is due to his ability to create profound change and deliver extraordinary results within the most demanding organizations. He works with senior leadership teams to navigate change and transform organizations into high performance, customer-focused cultures that create long-term, profitable relationships with your customers and ‘excelerate’ performance and productivity with leaders and employees.

Many articles and books written on the subject describe how a particular team’s game strategy can be applied to business to help team members achieve greater performance and effectiveness.

Bill Russell, Boston Celtics

In team sports, no one exemplified this approach to teamwork better than the Boston Celtics great, Bill Russell. A recent issue of Sports Illustrated called Russell “the greatest team player on the greatest team ever.”

The Celtics dynasty, which lasted from 1957 to 1969 and comprised 11 championships in 13 years, stands as a definitive example of how one team can completely dominate a sport.

Bill Russell was the driving force behind his team’s success. His goal for the team was to be the best in the world…not next year or the year after, but right then. And his game approach to defense would often paralyze an opponent’s offense. He commented, “You don’t have to block every shot; you just need to make your opponent think you’re going to block every shot!”

It was this attitude about teamwork that exemplified his brilliant career. He felt that an individual can attempt to be their very best, but it’s far more satisfying when you can help your team be its very best, which is a much more difficult task. “If I play well, that’s one thing. But to make other people play better is great.”

To Russell, successful team play involved encouraging each individual to do what he does best. “Remember, each of us has a finite amount of energy, and things that you don’t do well take more concentration. If you’re fatigued by that, then the things you do best are going to be adversely affected”.

This same approach to teamwork can be applied to the workplace. Try to ensure that members of your team spend the majority of their time on what they do best. All employees bring to the team a unique set of skills and abilities. Channelling their efforts in these areas will allow them to make their best contribution to the team.

By focusing the efforts of your team in their specific areas of expertise, you not only give your team a winning approach, but also a greater opportunity for success.

About the Author

Ron Rosenberg teaches people how to get the service they deserve and shows companies how to provide it.