Need to inspire your team? Here’s some ideas for motivating your customer service team
In the highly competitive world of Customer Service, creating and maintaining high levels of employee motivation is critical to organisational success. In an industry that is heavily reliant on people, highly motivated, loyal staff that consistently produce excellent quality work, overcome challenges and go the extra mile are extremely valuable if difficult to find!
This level of contribution coupled with the additional benefits of low staff turnover, positive morale and minimal absenteeism mean that the advantages of a motivated team are numerous and compelling.
So, how do you improve motivation? Many companies focus on incentives and reward systems. Whilst these are of course useful, the most important thing which often gets forgotten is to find out what actually motivates individuals.
Very often, if they consider it at all, managers make assumptions that all employees are motivated by the same thing. As totally unique individuals it is likely that there are many different motivating factors within every team.
To establish these and therefore work out how to motivate each person, you just need to ask good open questions and listen to the answers. All kinds of factors come into play from the more obvious things such as money, security and training through to personal pride in what you do and feeling valued and part of something.
Once the manager clearly understands what motivates each employee there is a much better chance of maximising their contribution and achieving great results. Understanding the motivations behind your teams is incredibly important in getting the motivation and dedication needed to manage a customer service team – this is a core part of our Customer Service Coaching Skills Training Course.
Another important element in motivating people is for the leader to provide clear, regular and compelling communication to engage employees. Giving a simple and powerful vision enables everyone to understand the direction of the company and the importance of their role to achieve organisational goals. This helps individuals to have a sense of purpose and feel valued.