How to eliminate complacency from customer service teams
Complacency in frontline staff exhibits itself in several ways. To help you, help your customer facing team and your customers, the first place to start when seeking to remove complacency is with…you. Take a moment now to reflect on your perception of how your frontline staff feel about their job.
Ask yourself these 5 questions:
Do your customer service/frontline staff arrive at work positive and ready for the day?
Do they engage every customer with positive body language and tone of voice?
Do they maintain the same level of positivity all day?
Do they share with you what customers love, like or loathe?
Do they volunteer ideas about how to improve teamwork?
They’re simple questions that when considered regularly can remove complacency and improve staff job satsifaction - yours and the team.
Staff show you how they feel everyday, the key is to make sure you are looking and listening. Leaders of customer service teams look and listen daily and then share their insights with the customer service team. Managers/Leaders who don’t review customer service standards with customer facing staff and don’t seek staff input into customer service goals and standards, are silently confirming that standards and goals are guidelines - not expectations.
BE CAREFUL: Some of your customer service staff may appear to have great customer service skills and attitudes so they don’t need pep talks, recogntion or time out….but do they do. Even Customer Service Professionals become complacent if the business leaders don’t review, reward or recognise the efforts of customer service staff.
No coach or leader would expect a sporting team to play every week and provide no rewards, recognition or chances to review and practise/train. It’s like expecting people to stay positive and focused during times of change, ill health and personal challenges. It’s expecting people to stop being human. Humans are not robots….obviously, because if they were customer service staff wouldn’t get annoyed, wouldn’t feel stress, wouldn’t want new challenges, wouldn’t ache for time out or feel grateful and inspired by recognition.
Staying positive and focused is difficult long term in any game or any workplace and the fatigue shows up as complacency. Complacency shows up in the ‘little things’ (refer to the 5 above) and if you ignore it can spread and grow and that’s when Lightbulb Training Solutions get phone calls and emails from frustrated Managers/Leaders asking for help.
They start by telling us things like below:
“Why do I have to remind frontline staff to arrive early enough to have a chat, grab a coffee and be ready to start on time and not rush in the door and still be fumbling around 15 mins into their shift?”
“We have this one staff member who is great at their job but co-workers and customers are telling me they make mistakes and come across as rude!”
“I’m sick of hearing staff complain about the behaviours of customers and they themselves are displaying those same behaviours - moaning and complaining”
“My frontline team are split - some are great, some do only the bare minimum and some seem determined to undermine me at every step.”
“It’s like I have to treat some of my frontline staff as kids and they’re adults so why don’t they behave like adults?”
So what can you do to eliminate complacency, inspire consistency and create a frontline customer service team that makes you proud and who thank you for helping them to lower stress and increase job satisfaction? You have an obligation free chat with us! Our FREE Customer Service Analysis is the first step to move customer service staff from good to great, from stress to success or to confirm that you and your team are doing everything to create a remarkable reputation for the business.
Contact us now and make it easy for your team and your customers to sing the praises of your business.