Home   Management Excellence   Books   Motivating Customer Service Employees  

Motivating Customer Service Employees

If you want to improve service quality and productivity in your department, the single most effective thing you can do is to improve employee morale and motivation.

Fortunately there are many ways to do this — from the familiar recognition and reward programs to motivating with good management, teams, training, and more. And the really good news is that most of these programs don’t cost a lot of money.

Fully updated and expanded, Motivating Customer Service Employees provides details on the full range of approaches you can use to improve frontline motivation. Just look at the wealth of information below from page 37.

Chapter 6: Motivating through recognition

Closely tied to incentives and rewards is another powerful motivator — recognition. And recognizing reps’ accomplishments is one thing a customer service manager can do with virtually no budget. Recognition can be as elaborate as an award given out at a formal banquet, but it can also be as simple as a “thank you” or a personal note sent to an employee at home. In fact, studies regularly show that recognition is one of the top motivational tools available to managers.

For example, a study done at Santa Clara University sheds important light on this topic. A group of students were asked the following question: “Do you need to be thanked to do good work?”

Just 40 percent of the students answered in the affirmative. But when the same students were asked: “Do you do better work when you are thanked for your effort?” 98 percent of the students said “yes.”

Clearly, providing recognition for work done is an important managerial concept. Are you making the most of it?

 

Using recognition effectively

Why do some employee recognition programs inspire pride and loyalty, while others breed only cynicism and envy? Recognition programs that work are fair, inclusive, peer-driven, and performance based. They reward people for specific behaviors in a sincere and timely fashion. Quota-based programs like Employee of the Month, on the other hand, often lead to accusations of favoritism. Consider the following example.

A call center used a standard-issue recognition program that actually demotivated employees. Every year, managers selected employees, through a lengthy closed-door process, to receive small monetary awards. Winners were unimpressed and losers were envious. Recognizing the flaws, the organization undertook a three-year project to improve the recognition program and boost motivation.

In the first year, management trained supervisors and frontline reps to use day-to-day recognition. One of the tools in the program was a notepad in the shape of a rock. All employees were encouraged to give notepads to coworkers who demonstrated respect, integrity, or excellent customer service — the foundational “rocks” of the organization. When a rep gave a notepad to the CEO, the CEO “really got it,” and became an even more powerful champion of the program.

Continued ...

 

Back to Main Page

Order Now