Roughly two weeks ago the world celebrated Customer Service Week and we would like to give you a few tips on how you can appreciate your staff so as to keep them motivated.
Your customer service staff work very hard to ensure that your customers get quality service and to establish good working relationships with them. It is very important to ensure that they are comfortable at work by creating an enabling environment for them to thrive and to give their best.
Nobody likes to work in an environment whereby you feel like you are taken for granted. Eventually it leads to lack of motivation that directly affects the quality of production. Whenever a person feels unappreciated he/she tends to do shoddy work because they assume that either way they have never been good enough. You can call them to your office one by one as you thank them for the good job they are doing. Another way of doing this is to call out their strengths, telling them the things they are good at so that they can keep doing more of that. This can be accompanied with a token of appreciation for example a shopping voucher.
You can give bonuses to the employees of the month that will be voted for by everyone in the company. Be sure to communicate that you are doing this to appreciate them for the good job they are doing. Customer Service staff should be very presentable because they are usually the point of contact with the clients, as part of the benefits you can offer them dressing allowances to easen that financial strain off them.
Plan a retreat for your customer service department, where they get away from the normal working environment just to relax and unwind. During this time staff get to let their guard down and have fun together which increases their working bond. Ensure that as the boss you accompany them so that they can feel like they are part of the family.
We cannot ignore the fact that money is a huge motivator. Whenever the salaries are raised, staff understand that you acknowledge that they are of value to your company. People can get easily discouraged if they are getting meagre salaries and it is worsened by the fact that the workload is massive and the paycheck does not match that intensity. It is usually hard for them to actually speak up as money is such a sensitive issue.
Training is a great way of empowering your employees to be better. Whenever people go for training they come back with more enthusiasm for the job and ideas for ensuring that there is maximum productivity. It is a way to let your people know that you are genuinely concerned about their career growth. People will only be concerned about you once they know how much you care about them.
Employers sometimes have favourites that they treat better than others. It is important to treat everyone with equal respect to encourage unity in the company. At times it is very subconscious and other times intentional. For those employees that are sidelined, it eventually affects their self-esteem as they tend to feel like they are not good enough. As a result it could lead to strife amongst themselves and development of envy.
A little effort from you will go a long way in appreciating your Customer Service staff as they play a major role in establishing and maintaining relationships with your clients.
