Keep ‘Em Motivated – 10 Tips to Increase Your Customer Service Team’s Morale

When it comes to providing excellent customer service, no amount of digital marketing tools and strategies can beat a highly driven customer service team.

A great team can mobilize your business in achieving target goals and in reaching significant milestones. As your front liners who directly interact and transact with the clients, they are the very foundation that can build your company up into a customer service giant in this competitive industry.

Therefore, it is necessary to keep your core healthy and intact by making sure that your customer service team is much satisfied and motivated.

Your people are like chess pieces who can help you to either win or lose the game. Their performance can dictate your success, especially in securing tight customer relationships and maintaining high customer loyalty and retention.

To move your pieces wisely, you must create ways and tactics where both strong and weak parts can conquer the opponent’s king.

You cannot expect your customer service team to perform well if you haven’t laid out clear plans to follow and look forward to.

You must align them with your vision and manage them wisely by boosting their work and personal morale.

To help you learn how to motivate your customer service team and start winning the game, here are ten useful tips that you can adapt to your business today.

10 Tips to Increase the Morale of Your Customer Service Team

1. Show your appreciation through your words

You will never know how strong the impact of your words is to your team. A simple remark or an act of praise can quickly re-charge them from their monotonous routines and challenge them to do even better.

Everybody needs words of affirmation from time to time to let them know that they are doing just fine and feel that their work is appreciated.

It is proven that employees whose bosses are too unappreciative have higher chances of getting easily burnt out from their work and being convinced to resign.

Therefore, you should make an effort to show your people that they are highly valued by uplifting and motivating them with your words.

2. Give out incentives!

If words are not enough to make your team push their limits, let a decent amount of incentives work for you. After all, you must give credit to whom credit is due.

Incentives are an excellent lubricant that can help your staff move their engines swiftly in reaching their target destination. Let them aim for the price, but focus on helping them improve their skills along the way.

Giving out rewards and bonuses can especially help unmotivated agents to step up their game and eventually excel by providing the highest quality of customer service they can give to the clients.

3. Build some healthy competition

Aside from incentives, one of the best ways to motivate your customer service team is by fostering healthy competition. Keep the floor moving by hyping up your staff to participate and to rise to the challenge!

Give them the spotlight to flaunt their skills and the opportunity to showcase their best customer service techniques.

This is also the perfect time to set your standards and show them how things should be done through a model employee. Use a friendly competition to let your team assess and reflect on their performances.

In this way, they will be pushed to improve and catch up with whoever is the cream of the crop.

4. Do regular team building activities

Develop a strong camaraderie among your team members by conducting regular team building activities inside and outside your workplace. Make it fun and exciting by organizing events that are out of the ordinary (Beerpong is a must!).

Plan and use some of your long weekends in scheduling out of town trips to enhance your team’s relationship and increase their camaraderie towards one another. Let your bonding be fruitful by injecting some lessons on customer service principles and strategies here and there.

Remember that your goal is to help your team get closer naturally in an environment where they can be comfortable.

5. Maintain a work-life balance

One thing that makes an employee stay in a company for a long time is the level of respect the company has on its employees’ work-life balance.

If you respect their time, they will surely appreciate the customer’s time and yours by being on time and upholding a high standard of work ethics in submitting their deliverables.  

A motivated team is always composed of individuals who are not overworked and underpaid. Employees who are “all work, no play” slowly lose their diligence because of the creeping feeling of being exploited.

Their skills and talents will be wasted because of this lack of mutual respect within the organization. Do not let your team lose its spark and start taking their work-life balance in the highest regard.

6. Listen to their feedback

One of the most effective ways to motivate your customer service team is by giving them a voice to be heard. Let them speak up to point out the things that should be changed and improved.

Show them that their concerns matter to you, and their suggestions will significantly benefit the company. Quickly respond to the things within your influence that you can quickly solve and accomplish.

You can also increase their collaboration by guiding them to brainstorm and form feasible solutions with their raised problems. With this, you are also boosting their morale in contributing more ideas to the table.

7. Coach them!

You must receive feedback, but ultimately, as their manager, you must provide feedback to them. Coach them as much as you can but do not tolerate spoon-feeding.

Guide them in performing standard protocols and make sure that they get every detail into their system. Schedule one-to-one sessions to assess their skills and to make sure that no one is left behind.

Provide at least monthly feedback to the team to set up general and specific goals for the next month. Challenge them by continuously but slowly increasing their expected output and making it happen through your unfaltering guidance.

8. Set up clear goals

To keep your team going, they should know first where the destination is. You should establish a clear set of goals where they can align their mindsets with.

It is also essential that everyone in the team agrees with your company’s vision and that everyone is on board the same boat. This will ensure that all efforts are synchronized and that the work quality is all within the set and agreed standards.

Motivation comes when you know the specific things that you want to achieve. Make an effort to instill your goals in your team members and make sure that they know what the company is striving for.

9. Develop an organized system

Let it be your goal to have a fool-proof system where your employees can put their trust with. Customer service is not rocket science. You can work with several fundamental concepts and customer service protocols in setting up your system.

Since new strategies are springing up now and then, you should be flexible in changing and rewiring your order to match the market’s current mood.

An organized system can help your team deal with difficult situations with utmost grace. It can help them perform their tasks confidently, knowing that the whole organization follows a template that upholds and provides excellent customer service for the clients.

Therefore, you should develop a system that your team will be proud of and will be satisfied with using. 

10. Value their personal growth

Besides work-related training, it is vital to help your team achieve their personal goals by letting them attend classes and seminars for their own growth. Do not block their dreams and aspirations.

Instead, you should support them and help them strike a balance between work and play. Let your team bloom where they are planted.

If possible, you should provide brown bag sessions that can introduce them to different hobbies, which they can use to manage their stress levels and increase their mindfulness.

These people work for you, and you should invest in taking care of their mental health and overall welfare. Surely if you value them this way, you can expect excellent outcomes from your customer service team. 

Now that you know a couple of tips and tricks on motivating your customer service team, you should make a winning move and adapt these strategies to your company.

Suppose you have given enough effort to boost your team spirit and provide opportunities for personal development among your team members. In that case, you can expect amazing results in the quality of their performance. What are you waiting for?

Start challenging and hyping up your team today and expect great things for your business in the future!