Why customer service staff should do puzzles at work

Do your team like doing puzzles?

Do you encourage them to 'play' at work?

Customer service staff who have permission to treat every customer as a puzzle and have the skills, knowledge and resources to solve those puzzles, come to work curious and ready to 'play'. The puzzle you want them to solve is customer expectations and the staff ‘win’ when they indentify and then exceed those expectations.

But what do staff ‘win’?

If you say "they get paid", you're going to find it hard to motivate customer service staff to sustain a desire to go the extra mile over and over again. It takes dedication, education and self motivation to consistently seek to exceed customer expectations - particularly if you are interacting with many customers, every day.

To help you, help your team - ask them this question;

'What motivates you to exceed customer expectations?"

Same may say they like the challenge of working out the service style of each customer. Others may say they genuinely enjoy talking to people and listening to their needs. Some will say they simply like helping people. Others may stuggle to come up with an answer as they’ve never really questioned the idea of being motivated to provide great service - ‘It’s just my job’.

Allow your team to share their thoughts, ideas and strategies on how they stay motivated to exceed customer expectations and let them tell you what they need so they can do more or do better. Encourage your team to speak freely - no ideas or questions are silly.

So back to this idea of allowing staff to play at work. This is not about being unprofessional and silly with customers, it’s about being professionally inquisitive. It’s permitting your team to think like detectives and solve the ‘mystery of what customers want’ or the ‘puzzle of customer expectations’.

It’s about your customers receiving a level of service that delights them and your staff feeling energised by a ‘game’ that has many ways to win.

Providing excellents service is not a ‘one size fits all’ process because customers are different and the sooner your team have permission to think like detectives, the sooner you will have a team of people who come to work ready to ‘play’ and a mountain of customers leaving feeling valued and respected.

Want to help your team become Detectives - Chapter D is all about this is my book - click the link below and download the first chapter for FREE :)

By Cate Schreck - Author of “The A - Z of Service Excellence”