Tagged : development

in Culture, Customer Service, Development, Management, Reviews

Making Work Great Doesn’t Cost a Lot

Making Work Great Doesn’t Cost a Lot. And it’s completely worth it.

My number 1 rule for work is MAKE WORK AWESOME. Making work great doesn’t have to cost a lot. If you’re ever by our offices, stop on by. You’ll find many of these things there. I love it, and the team LOVES it. It makes our workplace great, creates a relaxed atmosphere where we can break away from the stressful daily work, and doesn’t cost us a lot of money.

(Photos by Brandon Flint - http://www.brandonflint.com/

Before getting to how to make work great without spending a lot of money. Some ground rules to facilitate getting these activities going.

  • Not everyone needs to participate, but have enough of activities that everyone participates in at least a few things throughout the year.
  • Management does NOT have to plan everything. Ask for volunteers to head up activities. Start an activities committee.
  • Encourage people to bring things in. The company doesn’t need to provide EVERYTHING. Team members also feel a vested interest in the activity.

That’s it. Those are the ground rules to keep managers from becoming overwhelmed and frustrated with implementing these awesome ideas to make work great without spending a lot of money.

Cool things that make work great that don’t cost a lot of money:

Host a video game night (provide space for people to bring XBoxes and projectors to play games all night)

Host a book club meeting (bring in pizza and drinks, and suggest a book that may help employees be more engaged at work)

Taco Grab-Bag / Bag-O-Burgers (buy a bag of tacos, or $1 hamburgers for your staff [but be sure to buy more than one per person])

Mini basketball hoop (shoot hoops, play a game of “HORSE”, hold a tournament for most consecutive shots made)

Nerf guns (for epic battles between members and raids on the sales guys)

Nerf footballs (play catch, have long-distance toss into garbage can competition)

Ping Pong Table (I was school champion in the 5th grade so I’m biased)

Sponsor a city softball or basketball team for your company (it’s not that expensive)

Create a FANTASY FOOTBALL/FANTASY BASKETBALL league for your company staff

These are just some thoughts on cool stuff that you can do to develop your team, get people working with each other on a personal level and help them feel more at ease at work, and make work great. This stuff works. People relax, they get to know each other and they work better. It doesn’t cost your company a bunch. It’s easy, cheap, and the return is so much more than just giving out raises and bonuses. Don’t get me wrong, you need to compensate your people. But even with good compensation, if your workplace is laking the items and activities that makes people LIKE coming to work, and make work great, you’ll quickly begin to see less engaged employees.

Start making work great today. Stop by at the store and pick up that basketball hoop, or a nerf football tomorrow and get started. Each little thing makes a difference to your team and helps to get people engaged and happy at work.

in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Excellence

Customer Service is Not Like Star Trek

I admit it, I like Star Trek and hopefully you’ll continue reading this. Customer Service is not like Star Trek! In Star Trek, battles in outer space are centered on space ships’s shields. The first one to lose their shields is destroyed.

Keeping your shields up in customer service is the destroyer. Shielding yourself and your organization from customer interaction is destructive to the customer experience. Lower your protective shield and win the great customer service battle.

Top Sources of Customer Satisfaction Are Related to Customer Experience

Creating positive customer experiences is the key in great customer service. In a recent study, Press Ganey Associates polled nearly 140,000 customers in roughly 230 different establishments in a specific field of service providers. The results were very interesting.

The top 15 sources of customer satisfaction were related to customer interactions with staff members and employee satisfaction among staff members.

It’s almost to say that it doesn’t matter wether the answer for your customer is yes or no, but it’s how you work with and treat the customer that matters. Ok, maybe the answer does matter, but it’s not the only factor. Or at least, not as an important factor as we make it out to be.

Every extra layer between your customers and you is an extra layer to the customer service shield preventing great customer service experiences from happening. Each additional hoop customers have to jump through before getting service adds to the customer service shield keeping your customers from having meaningful, personal, loyalty creating experiences.

Each layer added to the customer service shield saves a little money by reducing the number of customer service issues you have to handle. But in the end, customers are so frustrated by the massive shield keeping them from being able contact you and get things done that they just give up and leave.

Lower your shields! They block good customer service experiences from happening.

We spent thousands and thousands of dollars in marketing and advertising trying to get customers to come to us and give our organization a chance. Once we have them, we then create hassles for the customer at every turn, as if we we’re bothered that the customer is contacting us. Too often, it’s written in some company policy manual that this is the way we have to do things.

Give your front-line employees as much authority as possible. They’re the ones who know best what the customer needs are right then and there.

May your great customer service make you live long and prosper.

Learn from the Nordstrom customer service school and re-write the policies that are keeping up the barriers between your customers, you, and the great customer service experience.

Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.