78. Customer Service Meetings Keep You Focused

You should hold meetings for various reasons, including to motivate, train, resolve conflict, solve problems, or reach decisions. No matter why you lead a meeting, always relate your meeting content to your customers. Better yet, plan customer service meetings. Periodically call a meeting at which you motivate your team to give exceptional customer service or at which you solve a problem that is keeping you from giving exceptional customer service. When you hold meetings about your customers, you demonstrate to your coworkers that the customers come first.

Performance Prompts

When holding a customer service meeting, follow this framework:

• Ask a customer service question to get everyone focused.

  • Relate a situation in which you were treated poorly as a customer. Ask what your coworkers would do if they were the employee.

  • Describe a scenario, and ask everyone how they would handle it.

• Motivate your team.

  • Tell your coworkers specifically what they are doing right with customers.

  • Recognize individual performance.

  • Reward team performance.

  • Give team members time to recognize each other.

  • Set new and innovative goals for improving customer satisfaction.

• Solve customer service problems.

  • Clear up confusion when your coworkers handle customer requests in different ways.

  • Cover the results from customer surveys.

  • Discuss any procedures that need to be changed with regard to customers.

When This Happens ...

You are in charge of team meetings and feel you handle that role well. You keep your team informed and work to resolve problems and conflict efficiently and effectively. You do not see the importance of holding specific meetings on customer service.

Try This

What business are you in? Is it the customer service business? If you answer yes to that, the importance of periodic customer service meetings should be very clear to you. Try scheduling a monthly meeting, using the framework above for your meetings. Start by asking a customer-focused question and allow everyone to answer. Getting everyone talking customer service sets the tone of your meeting. Next, motivate your team by recognizing individual and team performance. Motivation gets everyone pumped up. When you are ready to find solutions to problem areas, your coworkers will be in the right frame of mind.

Keep exceptional customer service on everyone’s mind by continually talking about it.