Customer Satisfaction? Start By Making Your Team Happy 

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Guest facing roles are part of the job categories with the highest turnover. And 2 times out of 3, it is due to poor customer service resources. And guess what? High staff turnover and unhappy employees are also amongst the top 3 reasons to poor customer service. So yes indeed, one of the best way to make your clients happy is to provide your team with great customer service resources while monitoring their satisfaction as often as you would do it for clients. And the best way to make your team happy is by never overlooking the below. ​

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Now going on the “how”, a great way to understand your team’s level of satisfaction while getting valuable insights on the challenges they are facing is regular “stop, start and continue” activities. These activities consist of gathering your team in a room with 3 flipcharts and get them to share in group what they would like the company/team to stop, start and continue doing moving forward (a flipchart for each point). The goal is to get each team to share their answers all together in an open discussion and then rotate so every group does each point.

I actually do this a lot when delivering training, mainly on the second session delivered which will be more about continuous improvement and internal issues which can stop the application of what I train. It is something I also do with managers so they are doing it themselves moving forward with their team.

Once it is done, you can turn the meeting into an open discussion and agree actions to implement accordingly. But also spend time explaining why specific actions cannot be implemented in order to show transparency and bring clarity as to why some things cannot go the way they want. Doing such will not only improve their satisfaction (as they have been given the opportunity to speak their minds) but also make the working environment better for them which will improve their performance and overall happiness at work.​​​

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Another great way is to apply directly on your team the methods you use to check on your customers’ satisfaction. For instance, taking any opportunity you have of talking to your team to ask them questions on how they are doing is as simple as it is efficient. Doing confidential polls, feedback forms or surveys are also great ways to get insights on how happy your people are in their jobs while targeting opportunities of improvement.

And it doesn’t stop with your team’s satisfaction, it needs to also be about your approach to mistakes, issues and complaints. As managers, it is easy sometimes to see only the emerged part of the iceberg in these situations which will very often be “the team member made a mistake / didn’t perform”. But the real question to ask is “what led to that?”. When I train managers on keeping an exceptional level of customer service within the team, we do indeed spend a lot of time on that. And the reason why we do so is because you can have the best methods and the most motivated team when it comes to customer service, if you are not having the correct approach in these situations, you can really impact both their performance and their motivation.​​

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I could talk for hours about this topic, as it is all about what I love doing. I could also highlight the importance of training in order to elevate your team's Customer Service to new heights. But you will only be willing to train your team and apply the above if you understand one simple mindset: customer service can only be exceptional if consistent, and consistency can only be achieved by focusing on your People.​​

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Need more support in order to bring your People's performance to the next level? Feel free to reach out and book your free discovery call right below.​