Creative Ways To Reinforce Your Customer Service Culture
Organizations all over the world now realize the importance of having satisfied customers who can refer more people to them, this begins with having a strong customer service culture with ideals and values that are known and understood by all employees.
Training is a great method of communicating these values and ideals to the employees, this is typically done in a classroom setting or via e-learning. Sadly, in order for these ideals and values to stick, organizations must take extra steps to keep reinforcing them long after the trainings have been concluded.
Reinforcement of these culture values & ideals is necessary because the human brain is wired to store information in a way that frequent use and repetition makes it easily accessible (easy to remember), whereas infrequent use causes the information to slip farther and farther back down our memories (forgetting).
Thankfully, there are a number of ways to ensure that the knowledge shared during training is continually reinforced in the minds and consciousness of employees weeks & months after the training.
#1. Short Periodic Newsletters
Send employees short e-newsletters with content that promote the values that are being reinforced, this can be done weekly or monthly. The content of the newsletters can vary between any of these forms –
- Stories
- Articles
- Tips
- Quotes or expert opinion on the subject
The key here is to ensure great content each time and keeping it short, 500 words or less would work (the less time you ask readers to give you, the more likely they are to read through). Great content will keep employees engaged and make them look forward to getting the newsletters.
Getting senior leadership involved in creating such newsletter can go a long way in winning and keeping the attention of employees.
#2. Screensavers
Screensavers have evolved from simply being a tool designed to prevent phosphor burn-in on plasma computer monitors, to being a form of entertainment, info security or system information display. In a corporate setting, screensavers are also a great way to remind employees of culture values and ideas.
Configure company computers to display screensavers that are customized with text or images that reinforce these values in the minds of employees. The screensavers should be eye-catching and fun to look at, that way they’re more likely to get the attention needed.
#3. Rewards
Rewards are a great tool reinforce behavior, and thus they can be used to reinforce ideals and values of a customer focused culture in employees.
Rewarding employees for actions that promote the values and culture of the organization will make them more likely to repeat such actions in future, and the very fact that they got rewarded will encourage other employees to model the same actions in the hope of getting recognized themselves.
Rewarding and recognizing your employees doesn’t have to be expensive (Read: Reward and Recognize Excellent Service), you can turn such employees into company stars by writing a newsletter, telling other employees about them & why they are being recognized, this can do wonders in motivating staff to model the values being promoted.
#4. Exemplary Leadership
Leadership has an important role to play in the success of organizational culture, as their actions and behavior drives the effectiveness of the culture. What do they value? What do they punish? How do they treat customers, vendors, and employees? What are their actions (which speak louder than words)?
Leaders shape the way employees think and behave, they are viewed by others as role models, and employees look to see if their behavior is consistent with the organization values and philosophy. Company leaders set the culture, so they are expected to live it and consciously promote it every day.
Building a strong customer service culture begins with developing a clear customer service vision that is easily understood by ALL employees. Training is a great way to communicate the values & ideals of the culture, but it will not suffice on its own, the values and ideals have to reinforced and promoted every day starting with leadership and any of these methods outlined.
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Reblogged this on The Bird's Nest.
This is great to read!
Many times I have customers expressing their worry about how to stick what had been trained to their staffs.
Very informative piece right here.
I get this and have been saying the same all along! I am trying to figure out a way to teach this and develop a position or business to teach it to others.
That’s a great idea Suzan, I’d be happy to help in any way i can 🙂