How To Motivate Your Staff To Provide The Best Possible Service
Customer service is vital to a healthy life of any business. Today, we share with you how you can motivate your staff to provide the best possible service.
At the Betty Brigade, we often work with other companies and services to help make our clients’ lives easier, and the beginning of a year can be a stressful time. That’s why we thought we would share this guest blog by Co-author of the customer service bestseller, “Who’s your Gladys? How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan,” Lori Jo Vest and shed some light on how stress affects business, workers, and consumers. Enjoy!
There is an interesting phenomenon that I will attribute to today’s overstressed workers. Many companies - from large corporations to smaller entrepreneurial enterprises - aren’t able to staff up, so front-line staff members are overworked, stressed out and on edge.If you are one of these organizations, what can you do to motivate your staff to provide the best possible service, in spite of their higher workloads?
Define Your Mission And Values:
Even if you have the right people on board, if no one knows why they’re there or where they’re headed, you’re not going to get anywhere. If you already have a mission statement, does everyone know it? If not, revamp it so that it’s concise and easy to remember. Then take some time to define the core values that will guide all company activities. Examples of core values are: acting with integrity, giving back to the community, being profitable, and having fun. This exercise doesn’t have to be incredibly time-consuming, as there are a plethora of resources available for reference. It’s well worth the effort it takes.
Meet Regularly:
Create a schedule for regular team or staff meetings. Reinforce the company’s mission and core values. It works well to discuss policies and other “big picture” items every two weeks. Depending on your business, try a quick 15-minute meeting at the start of every shift to keep people informed about their work schedule that day. An informed employee is better equipped to provide excellent service.
Talk About The Numbers:
Review company finances with your staff. Be transparent and explain what those numbers mean in staff meetings. Don’t use scare tactics. Instead, rally your troops around increasing sales and decreasing expenses. Ask for creative ideas in employee surveys. Consider offering an incentive of some sort for every employee – perhaps a bonus – when a certain level of profitability is reached, or a specific loan is paid off. Take a look at offering additional financial compensation to any employee who brings in a new customer.
Measure Employee Satisfaction:
There’s an adage that states, “you get what you measure.” Use a survey tool to query your employees every 90 days. Ask them what they’d change if they ran the company. Ask them to rate their satisfaction with company policies, benefits, and practices on a scale of 1 to 10. Then set about improving those numbers by adjusting those things with which several employees are less than satisfied. Blog post by Lori Jo VestCo-author of the customer service bestseller, “Who’s your Gladys? How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan,” Lori Jo Vest has been involved in relationship-based sales and customer service for over 20 years. She has developed extensive marketing, sales, and customer service expertise through her work in business-to-business sales and marketing positions. She consults with mid-sized and second-stage businesses on methods to enhance their sales and customer service efforts through one-on-one awareness campaigns, methods for developing personal connections, and custom strategies for long-term relationship building. You can reach Lori at lori@lorijovest.com.
What do you think? What could you do to help motivate your staff or your coworkers to provide exceptional service, even when times are particularly stressful? Please feel free to comment and share until next time – Keep It Simple!
