Customer service is a critical component of your organization’s success, and obviously, employee motivation is key to the success of any department. Customer service staff often face frustrating and emotionally draining customer encounters and a lack of support from within the organization, frequently leading to burnout. How can you ensure that your customer service professionals stay motivated?
A big part of keeping customer service staff motivated is to have motivated management. An unmotivated manager will not be able to motivate the team; unmotivated executives cannot motivate the management group. Motivation is a top-down proposition and integral to the company culture. Feigned enthusiasm won’t do the trick; people can spot a phony. However, a truly excited, motivated, driven manager can mobilize any team to move mountains.
Customer service managers need to be genuinely excited about the work the team does. Ensure that management is clear on the importance of their role to the organization’s success, and that they are recognized and rewarded for their team’s accomplishments.
Not everyone is cut out for customer service work. Trying to motivate individuals who have no appreciation for or enjoyment of serving customers is highly unlikely to work out well for anyone. Unmotivated customer service staff will not produce satisfied customers, and those who do not enjoy the work will quickly burn out and leave, resulting in high turnover and increased costs.
Use the hiring phase to identify candidates who are empathetic, interested in problem-solving, and passionate about helping customers. These are the customer service professionals that can be motivated to produce the best results and relied upon to stay with the department for the long haul.
Quantify and Measure Results
Customer service is a notoriously difficult job to quantify. Customer service professionals frequently feel unsupported and unappreciated, partly because it is difficult to demonstrate their value to the company.
How can you measure and quantify the contribution of your customer service professionals, so that they can be recognized for their contributions to the organization’s success? Some companies make the error of setting hourly quotas and recognizing CSR’s for keeping queues and service calls as short as possible. Is this a relevant measurement of their true value to the customer or to the company?
Find and establish measurements that reflect the customer service professionals’ actual contributions. Consider their value to the customer and their effect on the organization’s bottom line. You might find it useful to use end-of-call polling or follow-up calls to measure customer satisfaction, or monitor and record calls to ascertain whether company protocol is being adhered to. Quantify and measure the aspects of the work that are most important to the company, because this will establish priorities for your CSRs.
Reward Performance
When you are able to measure performance, reward those who perform well. Make the reward commensurate with the level of success. Appropriate compensation will result in improved performance. As German industrialist Robert Bosch once said, “I don’t pay good wages because I make a lot of money. I make a lot of money because I pay good wages.”
How can you reward quality performance in the customer service department? Profit sharing may be one option; if a CSR has clearly contributed to the company’s success it is appropriate for them to share in that success. Just as sales professionals often are paid commissions based on their closed sales, customer service professionals might receive bonuses based on their customer satisfaction ratings. After all, solving a customer’s problem and retaining their loyalty can be fully as valuable to the company as landing a new customer – often even more so.
When devising reward programs always remember that monetary rewards are not the only option available. Vacation and flex time reward programs, department parties or retreats, and employee-of-the-month awards are among many other recognition systems that can be highly motivational.
All of these points are part of demonstrating to your customer service professionals that the organization recognizes and values their contributions. Too often the customer service department is overlooked by executives and management, or regarded as a necessary inconvenience, rather than the critical pillar of success it actually is. Always remember that the company’s greatest asset is customers. With motivated, passionate customer service professionals to keep your customers satisfied, your organization’s future will be brighter.
Baker Communications offers leading edge Customer Service Training solutions that will help you address the goals and achieve the solutions addressed in this article. For more information about how your organization can achieve immediate and lasting behavior change that will increase
customer loyalty and boost customer retention, click here.
Re-Print Permission
This article may be reprinted in it's entirety if the following
conditions are met:
