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Mark your calendars for the first week of October to celebrate your contact center employees!
The International Customer Service Association (ICSA) started customer service week in 1984. To make it official, on October 8, 1992, President George H. Bush gave his stamp of approval and signed a Presidential Proclamation (No. 6485) that proclaimed the first week of October every year as National Customer Service Week.
What is Customer Service Week? According to Bill Gessert, President of the ICSA, “As much as customer service is about the customer, there should be special focus on the employee too. As a matter of fact, the proclamation that President Bush signed has a statement that reads as follows:
Business will do a better job of providing high quality goods and services by listening to its employees and by empowering them with opportunities to make a difference.
In other words, the emphasis is on the employees – listening to them and empowering them to take care of the customer.
Over recent years, Gessert had a number of suggestions to celebrate and shared a suggested five-day schedule:
Monday – Kickoff Rally. The leadership team in the call center can talk about Customer Service Week and what it means to the organization.
Tuesday – Trading Places. The leadership takes over, or at least shadows, someone working on the front line. It could be on the sales floor or in the support center. The idea is that leadership can experience firsthand what customers are saying and see what a typical day is like for frontline staff.
Wednesday – Meal Time. The executive and management teams serve the employees a meal.
Thursday – “Dress Up” or “Dress Down” Day. If your organization’s dress code is typically business casual, have everyone dress up as if they are going to a very important event. And, if you are typically business attire, give the employees a casual day.
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[one_half_last]Friday – Award Day. With Friday as the last day of National Customer Service Week, it is common to use this time for awards and recognition. The week-long celebration culminates with recognition for employees and their efforts to deliver good customer service all year long.
Here are a few other ideas to celebrate National Customer Service Week:
Write thank-you notes to fellow employees. Each employee has an opportunity to write a note to another employee. It could be a coworker or maybe even someone they don’t know.
Have a customer service training session. As customer service is in the spotlight during the week, make time for some customer service training. Sure, you can hire a speaker or trainer, but you don’t have to spend any money on an outside resource. There is plenty of free content on the web.
Fill out a “Moment of Magic” card. This is my favorite exercise. Give everyone a postcard (it could even be themed for National Customer Service Week) and have frontline staff write an example of a positive customer service experience they created for either an internal customer (someone they work with) or an outside customer. Compile these “stories” into a nice format that can be emailed as a PDF. Or, if you want to take it to another level, put them into a book that is actually printed and distributed to the employees.
Call centers around the globe have been very creative with their Customer Service Week ideas. Check online for dozens of ways to celebrate with your staff. And, while the special attention National Customer Service Week brings each year, is nice, it’s important to remember it shouldn’t be just a week-long effort. It should be a continuous effort – day after day, year after year.
Happy National Customer Service Week!
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, keynote speaker and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author.[/one_half_last]