How to Celebrate Customer Service Week

Customer service is a core means of building brand loyalty and encouraging customer satisfaction—and your customer service team plays the leading role. In fact, around 70% of American customers report they’re willing to spend more money with companies that provide excellent service. In other words, your customer service team can be one of the most powerful customer retention tools you have.

Given the importance of the customer experience, it makes sense that businesses have celebrated Customer Service Week for around 30 years. If you haven’t celebrated CS Week in the past, this article will explain:  

• What is Customer Service Week?
• 7 ways to celebrate Customer Service Week
  

Your customer service representatives serve on the frontline and provide a face and name to your brand when interacting with customers. So, Customer Service Week is a great way to let your staff know you appreciate their effort.

What is Customer Service Week?

The U.S. Congress signed a proclamation in 1992 that established Customer Service Week as a nationally recognized event. The goal of the event is to emphasize the importance of customer satisfaction and listening to customers as critical components of building a business.

Since then, the commemoration has spread across the United States and internationally to more than 60 countries.

During this week, it’s important to emphasize the values of customer service and satisfaction with your team. Taking the time to reward your staff in some way throughout a Customer Service Week celebration will let them know you value the work they do.

When is Customer Service Week?

Customer Service Week is celebrated during the first full week of October. You can mark the occasion from Oct. 4 to 8, 2021, and from Oct. 3 to 7, 2022.

The Customer Service Group sponsors CS Week, offering materials businesses can use to enhance their own celebrations and training kits.

Why celebrate Customer Service Week?

Your customer service team has the critical job of representing your brand to customers. When a customer has a question or complaint, it’s the customer service team they’ll reach out to. Whether from a call center, in your office, or from a remote location, your team interacts with the general public on a daily basis. That can be rewarding but also very challenging.

Customers demand more than ever before from the businesses they buy from. They expect immediate responses to their inquiries, the ability to reach out to a company in a manner of their choosing, and superior service every step of the way.

The pressure that customer service teams feel has only increased since the pandemic. Businesses have had to maintain customer satisfaction as they respond to disruptions to their operations and workforce, supply chain issues, and changing requirements from health authorities.

Recognizing Customer Service Week can provide your organization with a wide range of benefits, including:

• Helping your customer service team feel appreciated and rewarding them for the work they do
• Calling to mind the importance of customer service for the entire organization
• Boosting morale for your customer service team, especially after a challenging year
• Showing customers your commitment to providing excellent service

7 ways to celebrate Customer Service Week

Use Customer Service Week to let your customer service representatives know how much you appreciate their efforts. The occasion lasts a full week, though, so make sure you celebrate them across that entire period.

Below are some great ideas that you can incorporate, regardless of whether your team works in-office or remotely. ‍

Reward excellent customer service

No doubt you can easily find instances of great customer service that your team has provided. Think back for the full year. You might have had a representative who went above and beyond their obligations to help a customer, and the customer’s appreciation helped the business win a contract renewal. Or perhaps you saw representatives manage a particularly disgruntled customer with poise and were able to save the relationship.

Take a moment to bring these special moments to light. Consider selecting a few instances to spotlight, such as the top 10 customer service moments.

You also can create certificates to highlight particular examples or people on the team who have gone the extra mile—for instance, the “Top Customer Turnaround Award” to mark a time when a dissatisfied customer’s concerns were handled well, or the “Always Has a Smile on Their Face Award” for the person on the team who’s consistently optimistic.

Another idea for rewarding your team is to offer workers a bonus of some type, such as a cash award or gift card.

Celebrating customer service wins can be as simple as hosting a virtual or in-person coffee hour where you draw attention to these success stories.

To the extent you can, share the news with the broader organization or even externally. Public recognition is often the most appreciated type or recognition. With that in mind, you might use a company newsletter to highlight the team’s achievements or publish it on social media, such as LinkedIn. ‍

Cover a meal

Covering lunch or another meal for your customer service team is another excellent way to say thank you. If your team is remote, consider offering team members a delivery voucher so they can choose their own restaurant. Then, you can eat together over video conferencing.

If your customer service team is in-house, think about catering lunch or taking them out to lunch.

Plan a team-building activity

You also can take time during Customer Service Week for team-building activities to help strengthen the bonds among customer service team members.  

Excellent team-building activities can take a variety of forms, and can take place remotely, in-person, or in a hybrid fashion. For example:

• Take an hour at the end of the workday to relax and play games that encourage them to get to know each other on a personal level, such as team trivia.
• Host a business retreat to reinvigorate your team and encourage them to engage with each other. There are also virtual retreats if your customer service team is remote.
• Come up with business-themed activities, such as a boardroom escape room to encourage people to problem-solve together. There are even virtual experiences for distributed or remote teams.
• Have your team participate in a volunteer activity to benefit a local charity.

Offer time off

Customer service representatives often have a challenging role. They are essentially the face of your company. And people often contact customer service reps when they feel frustrated, annoyed, or angry about something. That can be very draining for your team.

Giving your customer service team a day off during this week can help boost morale and prevent burnout. A great way to wrap up the week might be to give them Friday off so that they can enjoy a three-day weekend.

Introduce a new tool

Use Customer Service Week as an opportunity to think about what you can do to make things easier for your customer service team.

Speak with your team to learn what aspects of their job create the biggest challenges, and then see if you can find a tool or resource to remove the friction. For example, you might look into customer relationship management (CRM) software that tracks customer interactions, activities, and other pertinent information. Or your team may appreciate updated helpdesk software to streamline their workflows. ‍

Provide professional development opportunities

Customer service reps appreciate working for a company that supports their professional growth and development. Investing in your team also ensures they have the skills to meet changing customer expectations and demands.

Consider offering your customer service team resources to grow professionally and opportunities to engage in learning initiatives. Doing so will help reinforce the idea that you value their contributions and view the work they do as critical to the mission of the business. You can offer opportunities like:

• Tuition reimbursement for employees who want to take courses or seminars
• Budget to attend workshops or earn certificates and certifications
• A reference library of resources for team members who want to learn more about industry trends and build their customer service skills
• Subscriptions to industry organizations or publications, such as the National Customer Service Association and CRM Magazine.

Host a Q&A with your customer service team

Your customer service team knows better than anyone the importance of making customer service a part of the companywide culture. The same values and customer service skills used to engage customers should also be reflected in the behavior and interactions of other departments.

Use Customer Service Week to give your team the proverbial floor and encourage customer service team members to discuss their ideas about how to spread a customer-first culture through the company.

The key here, though, is to make sure such a forum isn’t a burden on your customer service team. The last thing anyone wants is one more thing to do.

With that in mind, consider providing sample questions for the other departments to ask and allowing the customer service team to ask their own questions of the other departments. Even playing games that draw people’s attention to customer service needs and having a pizza party or breakfast meeting can help create a more festive atmosphere.

If your team is remote, you can easily take this idea online. Send treats to employees, encourage them to bring their cup of coffee, and focus on creating an environment where people can freely talk and learn from each other. You can even use breakout room features to put people into smaller groups so they can discuss ideas related to customer service in an intimate setting.

Conclusion

Customer service reps keep your business moving forward. These valuable workers not only solve problems for customers but also represent the brand well and in a very public way. Whether they work from a contact center or home, recognize the hard work your customer service team puts forth. Customer Service Week is the perfect time to do this.