Customer Service Week - Management

It is that time of year. The week set-aside to honor and recognize some of the most important people in the company. While I love the idea - and love the positive things that occur during this week, I do have to take issue with the concept that there should be a "customer service week". Aren't all weeks customer service weeks?

In call centers that I have lead in the past we have always celebrated this week with a huge blowout! We have put together some really fun events for the agents. I hope that you have done the same in your company this week! In fact, we share some great ideas in our book "Ideas At Work" - which you can buy at http://www.callcenterideas.com. Yes - it is too late for this year but the ideas are relevant all year long.

But, getting back to my rant about the week - perhaps we should also have a Customer Service Supervisor's Week that focuses on training and equiping frontline managers with the tools they need to be successful. When I became a supervisor in a call center 20 years ago, I was NOT given many tools to allow me to succeed. In many centers that I visit today, the same can be said about their supervisor promotion track.

If you manage call centers, ask yourself this question, "what training is available for your frontline supervisors to help them cope with the issues of managing 15 to 30 customer service reps?" If you trained them on HR policies and call center metrics, did you also train them how to coach their team to greatness?

We have a simple yet effective concept that share in conferences across America - it is called CalibrationCoaching and it provides a simple yet effective acronym to help the supervisor share information with their team members in a way that will create action, not just direction.

I will share the YMCA method tomorrow...

Happy Customer Service Manager Week!