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Great customer service relies on motivated and compassionate workers who truly care about securing the best solution possible for their customers. Keeping your support team motivated and engaged is important if you want them to go the extra mile toward ensuring a positive customer experience.
Nurturing customer satisfaction can foster trust, increase brand loyalty, and improve customer retention, ultimately boosting companies’ bottom line. Conversely, poorly rated customer service inevitably means losing business. The following are ways to keep your customer service team happy, which will keep your customers happy, too.
1. Get team feedback to identify specific motivators
Take the guesswork out of figuring out how to motivate your customer service team and ask them directly. Keep in mind that the answer will likely vary depending on the person.
According to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s human hierarchy of needs, all people have five basic needs: physiological, safety, belonging, self-actualization, and esteem. Some workers may be more motivated by a need for esteem (e.g., respect for their teammates), while others may be more motivated by self-actualization (e.g., the ability to effectively put problem-solving skills to use).
Identifying what a team member needs to feel engaged and happy at work will help you develop ways to motivate them. For example, if someone is motivated by the chance to put their problem-solving skills to use, you might give them a side project to resolve a specific hurdle other customer service reps face.
Examples of how to identify team motivators
Providing professionals with a quick survey can help you gain deeper insights into each individual’s psyche. When drafting your survey, ask questions like:
- What motivates you at work?
- What can the company do to improve your performance (e.g., training, tools, etc.)?
- What incentives would you like to see to reward your hard work?
If you’re still not sure how to utilize surveys effectively, Upwork has the largest pool of proven survey design experts to help you.
Another option for gathering feedback is to hold a group brainstorming session. Ask open-ended questions like those above—not yes/no questions, which won’t result in sufficiently detailed responses. Keep the conversation casual, encouraging professionals to share their genuine thoughts, for example, over a team coffee break (whether in-person or via video call). You don’t want workers to feel like they’re being put on the spot.
2. Create an empowering work environment
Empowering your customer service team can encourage engagement and drive motivation. If workers feel they have to turn to senior-level management to approve every decision, they’re unlikely to proactively pursue positive customer service solutions. Why should they? Without personal agency, they essentially serve as little more than a go-between for management and the customer.
Nordstrom, a company renowned for its excellent customer service, serves as a great example. One reason for this is the fact that their representatives are empowered to make their own decisions when it comes to determining what will make a customer happy. They don’t have to verify every move they make—such as offering a discount or a free return—by upper-level management.
Steps you should take to build an empowering work environment
Asking your customer service team for input on what motivates them is the first step toward empowering them. You’re making it clear that you care about their opinions, wants, and needs. You can also solicit workers’ opinions in other areas. For example, if you’re facing a repeated customer service issue, host a brainstorming session to get ideas to fix it. Again, this shows your agents that their opinions matter.
You can also empower your agents by giving them the resources they need to make independent decisions and take action without managerial approval. Come up with a list of set steps customer service reps are permitted to take without a higher-up’s go-ahead (and clearly define the point at which they have to seek confirmation).
Providing constructive feedback is another way to affirm an individual’s actions, giving them the confidence they need to take proactive measures at work. If a customer service representative does something noteworthy, recognize their accomplishment. It’s a fast and easy step toward empowerment.,
3. Leverage customer feedback
You can put all kinds of metrics into place to measure a customer service team’s success, from calls answered to cases successfully resolved. However, the ultimate measure of success in customer service is customer feedback. Leverage customer feedback to your advantage, using it to affirm work well done, empower individuals, and provide inspiration to others on the team.
If possible, provide real-time customer feedback for learning purposes. This paves the way for immediate affirmation (and, if improvements are needed, on-the-spot coaching). Ask customers to provide feedback at the conclusion of their customer service experience. You can also incentivize feedback requests, such as with a prize-draw entry.
Gathering instantaneous feedback allows you to review a team member’s work while the customer interaction is still fresh in their minds. Be specific when pinpointing the steps taken to achieve the positive outcome. Whether the agent managed to keep their cool in the face of an irate customer or came up with an innovative solution to appease them, define the exceptional measures they took.
Example of how to leverage customer feedback
If one person handles a difficult customer query with particular grace and/or innovation, you might share the success story as a “case study” for the team. Framing the instance as a success for the team emphasizes the value of collaborative customer care. Meanwhile, you’re providing inspiration for others on how to successfully handle similar cases in the future.
4. Try a team-building activity
Customer service isn’t an easy job. Team members invariably have to face frustrated and, sometimes, rude customers. Meanwhile, they have to remain calm and polite. Nobody understands the challenges of a customer service agent better than another customer service agent. That’s why it’s so important to foster a supportive team atmosphere in customer service departments.
A team-building activity can help foster that collaborative spirit.
Examples of activities
Hosting a team-building activity doesn’t mean you have to spring for an elaborate all-day event. It’s all about breaking down barriers and encouraging all team members to get involved. Something as simple as a group lunch or after-work drink can help people connect. You can also engage in volunteer activities together.
If your team is fully remote or distributed (part in-house, part remote), look for digital ways to build a sense of camaraderie among team members. Virtual social events like Zoom drinks, office bingo, ice breaker questions, book clubs, and virtual fitness or crafting sessions are all options.
For example, something as simple as hosting an all-hands brainstorming session on how to handle a particular recurring issue can encourage your team to work together and pool their mental resources and experiences to find a common solution. This also builds trust. Get more tips on fostering trust among your teams.
5. Use continuous training sessions
Continuous training helps customer service agents hone their skills and can improve your company’s customer experience outcomes. This is another means of empowering your workers and showing them that you’re invested in their personal success. In short, you want your representatives to feel they aren’t just a cog in the corporate machine.
For example, let’s say you ask a customer service agent what their goals are and what skills they’d like to develop to meet those goals. They tell you that they’d like to lead their own team and feel their leadership abilities could use improvement. Your company subsequently provides the worker the opportunity to take part in a leadership training session.
Everybody benefits. The company gets a more adept worker (who may rise to a team lead role, allowing for internal hiring and reducing the burden on human resources). The worker gets the skills they need to achieve their goals. Further, the worker will feel seen, valued, and empowered—all motivating elements.
How to develop productive training sessions
When it comes to ensuring productive training sessions, turn to your team. Ask them what skills they want to develop—be it within the department or beyond. For example, allowing customer service reps to learn about the inner workings of other departments can give them valuable insights into the company as a whole.
In fact, some companies will have their customer service agents cycle through all relevant departments so that they know what happens at every stage (e.g., product development, production, order fulfillment). This level of expertise via cross-training allows individuals to make smarter, more informed customer service decisions.
6. Establish performance metrics
Choosing appropriate metrics to assess your customer service team’s success can also help motivate them. Diversifying metrics is a smart way to keep all customer service agents engaged. Don’t rely solely on qualitative or quantitative metrics. Instead, opt for a mix of the two.
To develop encouraging performance metrics, consider consulting your team. How do they think their success should be measured? Encourage collaborative brainstorming, which simultaneously fosters both their personal agency and the team dynamic.
Examples of metrics to track
Again, emphasize the need for diversification. Qualitative and quantitative measures are just one point. You might want to adapt metrics depending on a customer service representative’s experience, for example. You can also encourage customer service reps by providing rewards for hitting certain metrics.
A quantitative metric could include something like the number of cases resolved per day. Experienced, skilled agents may be able to effectively resolve numerous complaints per hour. However, you don’t want to discount the efforts of newer agents who are learning the ropes—and may need more time per case. Thus, you’ll also want to consider qualitative stats, such as customer-reported feedback.
7. Try an incentive program or gamification
Once you’ve identified key customer service metrics to measure customer agents’ performance, look at ways to incentivize those metrics. Gamifying can foster friendly competition and bring some valuable fun to the workplace, for example.
As always, the answer to how to successfully incentivize and/or gamify your customer service department lies with the workers themselves. Ask them what incentives they’d like to see.
Examples of incentives
Examples can be as diverse as gift cards to participation in a stock ownership program. You might even offer a prize to individuals for reaching certain goals. There are also different ways to gamify incentives, such as using a leaderboard or setting up a scoring system in line with the metrics. Just make sure the measurement criteria for the “winner” are clearly defined and transparent (or you risk dissatisfaction).
Motivated teams support business success
Without customers, your business wouldn’t exist. Keeping your clientele happy requires a great service team. Nurturing engaged and satisfied customer service workers who are willing to go the extra mile is critical to your overall business success. The above guide provides some simple ideas you can implement to motivate your team and help them thrive.
