Customer service activities are one of the simple yet effective solutions both to increase the educational background for employees and to keep them positive at work.
Customer service always faces many challenges from customers. This position requires customer service representatives to have the skills to handle the most difficult situations while ensuring patience and ingenuity. Not to mention, the heavy work pressure from meetings and training always make the representatives sometimes want to give up.
If you are the leader, how will you be able to both maintain good relationships with customers while keeping your employees inspired?
It’s a tough question…
But it is not impossible to find the answer.
- Firstly, to meet the increasingly demanding need of customers, companies should focus on training their employees so that they are equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
Any industry should prioritize customer service because it can increase up to 60% of business profits. If you invest enough in customer service representatives through a solid educational background, they will provide you with a source of happy customers who are willing to spend money on your products and services.
- Secondly, to solve the problem of unhappy staff, we recommend you use customer service activities during training sessions or team meetings. You might think they’re outdated, but they’re more interesting and effective than that.
If you are still unsure, scroll down to read more!
Table of Contents
What are customer service activities?
Customer service activities include ideas about games, exercises, activities, and icebreakers related to positions and duties of customer service. Therefore, the content surrounding these activities will be about the expertise of customer service representatives at work, in particular skills, attitudes, and knowledge.
Here are some examples of customer service duties and responsibilities in different areas:
- Guide customers to use the service.
- Manage incoming calls.
- Create, upgrade or cancel a customer account.
- Create a list of loyal customers, etc.
- Handle complaints and provide reasonable solutions.
- Place or cancel orders.
They can be applied during employee training courses of a company or sometimes become a section of that training. At the same time, there are also some ideas about customer service activities in team meetings to serve a number of different purposes. To learn more about the benefits of building customer service activities, read the following section.
Benefits of customer service activities
Fun
The first and most obvious benefit is a cheerful attitude. After hours of intense training and meetings, customer service activities will give everyone a chance to take a break while not wasting this time but continue to educate and train them.
Better communication
This is an opportunity for everyone on the team to improve communication, have an open conversation with each other and with instructors, leaders, managers, and even other teams who join with the customer service department to come up with customer-caring solutions. This is really useful when people get back to work that the workflow will be smoother and easier.
Better organization
Through these activities, employees in the company will clearly understand their roles and responsibilities in the organization. At the same time, it is an opportunity for them to learn new skills to improve themselves better, obtain more achievements, and contribute to a better organization in the company.
Greater employee motivation
When customer service representatives are engaged in a team environment and fun educational activities, they will feel more confident in their roles, thereby gaining more motivation to work more efficiently and effectively. At a more beneficial level, you will increase the employee retention rate as well as the customer service culture for the business.
Greater profits
When employees are motivated to work and build a strong customer service culture, productivity will increase rapidly, and your customers will become happy also. The next benefit is an improvement in sales.
Richer customer experiences
Keeping employees happy is one of the most effective ways for them to serve customers well, be customer-centric, and drive richer experiences. This will lead to building a loyal customer base that will support your brand in the long run.
Exciting customer service activities for training
True or False
Divide your team into smaller groups of 2-4 people and have them say 3 things about themselves one by one. One of what they say will be a lie. The rest of the group will argue and guess which is the lie.
This activity aims at helping everyone in the group talk to and get to know each other better, is a useful way for them to participate in training sessions for the first time.
The best thing
Ask everyone in the group to introduce themselves within 2 minutes by answering at least one of the questions of “What is the best thing (about):
- My job?”
- My company?”
- Working with customers?”
- That happened to me in the last week?”
In order for it to create a more positive mental state for the group, let’s explore more good points about each person about his or her role in the organization and in life.
Which do you prefer?
With this game, everyone in a small group of about 6-7 people will stand together in front of two gaps marked A and B. On the screen, the projector will project 2 choices A – B in turn for everyone to choose and stand in the gap corresponding to their answer. The choices you make will be of different preferences, for example, “A: Summer – B: Winter,” “A: Outdoor – B: Indoor,” “A: Mountain travel – B: Beach travel,” etc.
Through it, you will have a more effective way of dividing your subgroup based on people with similar interests.
Quick thinking
In this activity, all people in the group will talk to each other but in order and it also doesn’t require them to talk about the same related topic. The rule is that the next speaker must start using the last letter of the previous person immediately. After that, those who delay talking or break the rules will be gradually eliminated.
It is one of the customer service activities for training, helping people train their quick thinking to use in chat as well as difficult problem solving for customers.
Phonetic alphabet
Like a spelling course, ask people to spell out their name, home address, city of origin, or anywhere they want to get to with blazing speed without any mistakes.
It is best to use the phonetic alphabet in order for you to test people’s accuracy at writing and speaking. These minor errors can lead to misinformation being sent to your customers, prevent them from receiving the message, and increase cost and time waste for both parties.
Fruit salad
During this activity, people will stand around chairs arranged in a circle. Each person in the group will then be named one of three different fruits, e.g., oranges, apples, and mangos. Initially, you say aloud, “Fruit salad”, and everyone will move around the chairs. Then, you suddenly shout out one of the three fruits above, and the people with the corresponding name will have to quickly run to the nearest chair to sit. Note that the number of seats will be less than the number of people called so that one latest person will be left.
This game will help everyone warm-up or have more positive energy after a tough training session.
How about customer service activities for meetings?
Customer focus
For customer service activities for meetings, give specific cases or assumptions about your customers, and the participants will play the role of no one else but the customer who experiences it. In this role, they will think and call the organization to answer the question: “How do you feel?”
This is a great way for them to change their role from problem solver to the problem experienced. From that, they will better know how to listen to their customers in real life.
Finding common ground
During the meeting, draw on the board a huge circle in the center. Around it, draw smaller circles corresponding to the number of people in the meeting. Then ask each person to write 3 things about themselves in their small circle. Next, give them a moment to think about what everyone has in common and write them in the large circle in the middle.
As you can see, the big circle in the middle represents the collective. Each person may differ in name, age, appearance, and interests, but they can still have similarities in many points. This game is a way for team members to learn how to bond and be more united.
To sum up
Customer service education and training are essential for customers to always be satisfied and become a solid customer base for enterprises. Meanwhile, they also need to keep the people who act on your behalf for customers happy and positive. As you can see, customer service activities are one of the most efficient and simple ways you can make use of them right away. Also, if you have any further ideas to build customer service activities, don’t hesitate to let us know. Finally, don’t forget to like and share our guide if you find it useful for your business operation. Thank you.
