#CSWeek Is About Caring

Customer service week was so fantastic, we figure it would ok to let it spill over into a second week.  What do you think?  Thursday of customer service week was all about caring.  Caring is about connecting with each customer on a human level, taking complete ownership of every opportunity to serve.  The challenge to care is really twofold.  We need to show our internal AND external customers that we care.  Here are some things we did last week.

How did you care for internal customers?

Jeremy: Thank you notes are so powerful.  I took part in an exercise where we wrote thank you notes to our internal customer service staff to simply thank them for their work toward our AWESOME vision.  As leaders of a team, it’s often easy to go to a negative place.  This is dangerous!  It sounds cliche but a constant “attitude of gratitude” toward your colleagues is critical to success.  It’s a mentality and a lifestyle.  Let your decision to be grateful lead your heart and all of the feelings will follow! 

Jenny: Thank you notes are powerful–well said, Jeremy! I definitely don’t show my gratitude enough (lame of me, I know). I find I get caught up in the whirlwind of work to be done and need to step away to show how much I really do care about the team (because well, I do more than they even know). I did bring in sunflowers for each customer service representative on Thursday and filled a Phone.com mug with water and placed one flower on each rep’s desk.

How did you care for external customers?

Jeremy: I focused much more on our internal team during the week and owe a handful of our customers notes of gratitude.  I did call Verizon to install a network extender in our office.  Andrea in Tier2 was amazing and I told her so.  I also got to be the first to wish her a happy Customer Service Week!

Jenny: Besides saying thank you and expressing my gratitude with words, sending a card or a funny picture in an email, I’m always looking for more ways to care and show gratitude for external customers. It’s an ongoing process!

What was your most significant takeaway?

Jeremy: By far, my most significant takeaway was how many times I was on the receiving end of the gratitude last week.  I am not on the front lines but got treated like that by members of my team and others in the organization.  It was especially awesome to see people from other departments write kind notes and emails to our customer service team.  That sort of thing makes me very proud!

Jenny: The most significant take away was that it is really easy to show you care–that you can do little things, like random cards, drawings or flowers or Starbucks–and people appreciate it so much and it totally makes their day.

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