Customer Service Week Recap — Recognizing the Critical Role of Customer Service Agents

Customer Service Week took place October 3-7 of this year. During Customer Service Week, this year and every year, organizations take the time to recognize all the hard work of customer service agents and the impact it has on brand success.

As Shep Hyken notes, the occasion has been celebrated for over 30 years, since George H W Bush signed a presidential proclamation in 1984 that declared the first week of October Customer Service Week.

And as Hyken also pointed out, customer service is important not just because of presidential proclamations, but because it has an outsized effect on the bottom line of a company. People don’t base purchase decisions solely on product considerations, they also care a great deal about how they will be treated from a customer service perspective. Customer service is the number one factor in terms of how much consumers trust a company, 55% of consumers would pay more for excellent service, and 63% of consumers say it’s the most important factor in their choice of brand.

Though company leaders may talk a great deal about their customer service, they often don’t take the time to recognize the important role played by their customer service agents. This is a mistake, not only because customer service jobs can be highly challenging, and employees deserve kudos for doing them well day in and day out, but also because recognizing those employees’ contribution can help create more loyal customers and drive revenue. Employees who feel that their contributions are recognized are much more likely to be engaged, and engaged employees lead to greater customer satisfaction and greater company performance.

Creating engagement in a customer service workforce is not something to limit to one week a year — it should be ongoing, on a whole team and individual employee basis, starting with onboarding. And it involves more than just telling employees that you appreciate their work; it can encompass everything from proper training to incentivizing, to improving processes in a way that empowers them to solve more problems.

Celebrating employee contributions during Customer Service Week may not be the only element in building employee engagement, but it can be a powerful one.

CS Week Celebrations

CGS marked Customer Service Week with events and theme days for customer service agents across our global contact centers. There were parties, food and more for customer service agents in the US, Chile, Israel and Romania. In Chile, agents wore slippers to work, and had fun in a photo booth. Romania had costume contests and more, Tampa got a pizza party, Atlanta had cotton candy and a twin day, and even more festivities took place at all the centers.

Celebrating CS Week with cotton candy in Atlanta

On top of all of this, all agents were invited to nominate their coworkers for special recognition awards. The awards included “Best listener,” “Goes the extra mile,” “Excellence in humor,” “Best phone voice” and “Calm in the eye of the storm.” And they could submit their own stories for the funniest customer service interaction they’d had, or the most challenging one that they’d been able to resolve. Prizes went to all the winners. 

Great agents=Great customer experience

The statistics show that customer service agents have a major impact on how customers perceive a brand and how loyal they are to it. Reading the responses to the customer service week contest makes it crystal clear how exactly skilled, front-line customer service agents play such a major role in a brand’s overall value.

Agents, for example, talked about customers needing help with technical queries. It’s difficult in its own right to understand complex technology well enough to diagnose and solve issues at a distance. What’s even harder? To be able to do that with people who might have zero technical ability or inclination, who might be older or get frustrated easily, and to do it all with a positive demeanor. Outstanding customer service agents have a real ability to do so, and it’s clear that this has a huge impact on customer experience with a brand. The same goes for the customer service agents who are able to not only resolve client needs, but to entertain them or make them laugh in the process.

Customer Service Week has concluded for this year. But one week in October it isn’t the only time that companies need to be paying attention to and rewarding the huge contributions made by their customer service agents — that’s a year-round job. As is continuously looking for ways to help agents do even more to help customers. Do that, and there will be plenty to celebrate next Customer Service week — October 2-6, 2017.