Motivate Your CSRs with Real-time Customer “Letters”
By Dr. Jodie Monger – President Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.
Can you appreciate the pride you see in your child’s face when you hang the
spelling test (with the big “A”) on the refrigerator for everyone to see?
Remember the pride when it was your test on display? We all have a sense of pride in
our work and love when our successes are highlighted.
Do you do the same thing for your CSRs? How many thank you letters from customers do
you have posted in your contact center? It’s a good day when a new one arrives
and can take the place of the oldest one. Opening the mail is even better when the
letter highlights someone or something that you did not expect.
Unfortunately, the customer letters of praise are too few and far between and
not because your team does not deserve such praise. Letter writing is a lost art,
no longer a preferred form of communication, particularly for the younger consumers.
As our population ages, the number of letters of praise will become even more rare.
The bulletin board will no longer be the center of enthusiasm and training sessions
may be missing the proverbial spelling test from the refrigerator.
To motivate CSRs, contact center managers must facilitate the gathering of customer
compliments. Unfortunately, too much attention is given to the squeaky wheel (we all
have a few screaming customers) while tens of thousands of satisfied customers never
get around to writing that letter.
We must accept feedback from our customers in the manner in which they choose to do
business with us. How many customers write to you for customer service (could they
even find the mailing address for your department)? How many customers pick up the
phone and use that toll free number for customer service?
The good news is that it’s easy to collect customer feedback! Use your caller
satisfaction program to gather the compliments (and the suggestions for improvement).
A sample of your callers should be invited to evaluate the service they receive before
being connected to the CSR. Upon completion of the normal business, transfer the
callers to a Completely Automated Telephone survey (CATs). When the highest score is
given, the caller can leave a verbal compliment.
Every month, each CSR will receive a report card with their scores and the related
comments. Not only will you have a myriad of customer feedback upon which you can
coach to and answer the question about how you are delivering customer service, but
you will find dozens of little thank you letters to highlight what is being done well
in your center.
As an example, we randomly selected a few customer comments one day via CATs:
You only give me 30-seconds to tell you about this call. It doesn’t give
me enough time for complete justice. What she did for me brings a tear to my eye.
Thank you for your assistance in going the extra mile to help me get my money back.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’ve never been scammed before on the
internet. I always thought it would happen to somebody else, but it happened to me.
Thanks again.
She was wonderful. She was excellent. I’ve always thought highly of (bank).
I now think much more highly of you because of that woman’s dealings with me.
She was courteous, kind, quick, and fantastic. I’ve never had a better bank
representative in all the 60 years of my life. She was efficient, courteous, gentle,
and friendly.
This young man was as sharp as a tack. He was able to identify the problem. He went
to the correct people to find out more information. He explained it to me clearly.
He took care of it. He had some suggestions that were original about how to solve
the problem. I am just delighted. If you can give him a raise or acknowledge him in
some way, I would be so happy. Thank you.
Wouldn’t you want to have your refrigerator plastered with hundreds of letters?
You can have hundreds of customer quotes to choose from each month to praise your team.
Everyone appreciates knowing that a job is well done and wants specifics when it
wasn’t.
