Customer Service Week Resources

Activities • Bulletins • Celebration Stories and Ideas • Downloads • Gift • Puzzles • 

Tie-in with Local Activities

  By Celebration Stories and Ideas, Focus on Fun

Many Customer Service Week celebrations tie-in with seasonal events such as the fall harvest, Halloween, or Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

In Winston-Salem, NC, the celebration at Aon Hewitt tied-in with the local county fair, which takes place at the same time.

The festive mood began as reps arrived on Monday morning and were greeted by their managers with music, balloons, and raffle tickets. The winner of the raffle drawing received tickets to the Dixie Classic Fair.

The fair theme continued each afternoon as managers distributed snacks including candy apples, cotton candy, and snow cones. And a classic hot dog lunch, complete with Customer Service Week cake, wrapped up the week.

Games and activities also had a fair theme. Reps tried their hands at ring toss, corn toss, a duck pond, and Wii games. There was also a little good-natured competition between Aon Hewitt service centers in different parts of the country, to see who could collect the most toys for donation to local children’s centers.

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Trading Cards Feature Reps

  By Celebration Stories and Ideas, Build Stronger Teams

The Customer Service Week agenda from the Philadelphia Water Revenue Bureau is absolutely packed with activities, but two stand out as truly unique.

All week long, team members participated in activities such as treasure hunts, bingo, secret pals, daily quizzes, a pie-toss, and more. Reps were rewarded with “Bureau Bucks” which they used to bid on a wide range of items in the bureau’s silent auction on Friday.

Another highlight of the week was trading and collecting customer service All Star Trading Cards. Each trading card included a photograph of a team member on the front along with their All Star “stats” on the back.

Prior to Customer Service Week, each employee had provided information about themselves along with their personal motto for the card.

During the week, each employee received a pack of five cards. They were encouraged to get together to trade and collect the cards. As manager Phyllis Chase tells us, “Trading proved to be an exciting activity and helped to introduce employees that may not have otherwise known one another.” All Star Cards also played a role in earning Bureau Bucks. At activities throughout the week, an organizer might announce, “If you have a Phyllis Chase All Star Card, you’ve just won 50 Bureau Bucks.”

Finally, Phyllis tells us that the entire budget for this event for 250 people comes from the fund-raising efforts of the bureau. Beginning in January the bureau hosts two events per month. The events both raise funds and keep morale and team spirit high throughout the year.

Some of the many fund-raisers include:

  • 50-50 raffles
  • Two casino trips per year
  • Pretzel and water ice sales in the summer
  • An ice-skating party in the winter
  • A candy sale, and more.

A portion of the funds raised are also donated to a local emergency shelter.

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Training for Everyone

  By Celebration Stories and Ideas, Highlight Training

After a 10 year hiatus, Barton Community College was ready to begin celebrating Customer Service Week again. This time the festivities involved college staff from all of the departments on campus.

To ensure that everyone could participate, the event featured several activities that were repeated throughout the week. For example, the popular FISH! video was shown on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in both morning and afternoon sessions.

And stress reduction training was presented on Monday and Thursday in both the morning and afternoon sessions.

Not only were participants informed and motivated, they were also entered into a prize drawing each time they attended an activity.

The week came to a close on Friday with a one-time only ice cream social complete with photo booth. Plenty of hats, sun glasses, and boas were available to create a special memento of the week.

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Two-Way Communication

  By Celebration Stories and Ideas, Highlight Training

When NorthStar Capital Markets Services held its first Customer Service Week celebration, the week was packed with creative activities that focused on team building, training, and just plain fun.

Two of those activities combined fun with a purpose. The first focused attention on the importance of two-way communication, and the second on vocal tone and quality.

In the first activity, reps were divided into teams of two to complete a series of challenges, which required both trust and excellent communication skills.

In each team, one person was designated the leader and the other was blindfolded. The teams then completed a series of tasks using words only. Here’s what they did:

  1. The blindfolded person was instructed to draw specific shapes on a flip chart. To get it just right, the leader had to give very clear and precise instructions.
  2. The next challenge was based on the party game, Mad Gab. The leaders were instructed to read the following phrases to their partners and to vary their pace and inflection until their partner understood each one. The phrases were:
    • Heaven Iced Hey — Have a nice day
    • Awe Wean Heed Issue — All we need is you
    • Hike Wallet He — High quality
  3. For a more tactile task, the leader guided her blindfolded partner to place a stone in the correct position among other stones on a tray.
  4. And for the more athletic, the leader guided her partner in an attempt to toss a foam football into a bin.
  5. To wrap up the event, the blindfolded rep pushed her partner, in an office chair, through an obstacle course. At the finish line, they celebrated completing the tasks together.

The second featured activity focused reps attention on the importance of vocal tone and quality.

In this “experiment,” reps were asked to call their desks and leave themselves a simple message. Next, reps were asked to leave themselves the same message but this time to stand up, smile and face the person next to them when speaking.

When comparing the two messages reps noticed the difference, says operations trainer, Brenda Knutson, “The participants were shocked at how lethargic and uninteresting they sounded on voicemail. But once they stood up, added the smile and acted as if they were talking to the person next to them, everything changed.”

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Two-Way Communication (Remote ready)

  By Activities, Skill-building

Description

This classic communication exercise illustrates the importance of two-way communication in a very visual and often humorous way.

Materials

8-1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper for each participant

Directions

Have participants arrange their chairs classroom style or around a table.

Give each participant a sheet of paper. Ask them to close their eyes and follow your directions as noted below:

No one may ask questions during this activity.
You must keep your eyes closed during the activity — no peeking.
Fold your sheet of paper in half.
Tear off the upper right hand corner.
Fold your paper in half again.
Tear off the lower right hand corner.
Fold your paper in half.
Tear off the upper left-hand corner.
Fold your paper in half a final time.
Tear off the lower left-hand corner.
Unfold your paper and hold it up.
Open your eyes, look at your paper and compare it with the others.

Remote Tip

Dispersed teams can easily complete this activity using a video conferencing tool such as Zoom, Webex, or Google Hangouts.

Discussion

Take a few moments to discuss the importance of effective communication and to ask participants for examples of how this applies to their daily work with customers.

  • If you were given the same directions, why is everyone’s paper different? (Remember when you communicate with others, they may not receive the message you sent. Individual perceptions vary.)
  • Would two-way communication have resulted in all of the papers being more similar?
  • What does this mean to you as a communicator?
  • How does this activity relate to our daily work with customers?

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Virtual Backgrounds (4 designs)

  By Downloads, Activities

Select your favorite virtual background for online meetings and events during Customer Service Week. Download and use on Zoom, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, and more.

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Customer Service Week Virtual Background 1 (Full HD 1920x1080)

1 file(s) 379.92 KB
Download
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Customer Service Week Virtual Background 2 (Full HD 1920x1080)

1 file(s) 111.23 KB
Download
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Customer Service Week Virtual Background 3 (Full HD 1920x1080)

1 file(s) 244.72 KB
Download
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Customer Service Week Virtual Background 4 (Full HD 1920x1080)

1 file(s) 86.14 KB
Download
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What Comes Next? (Remote ready)

  By Puzzles
Materials:What Comes Next sheets for each team member.

A Customer Service Week Pen to use.
Notes:Sometimes customers can surprise even the most experienced reps. So reps should never assume they know what is coming next, EXCEPT when doing this puzzle. Here puzzlers are asked to complete familiar phrases that customers may use.

Reward everyone who completes the puzzle with a Customer Service Week Scratch Off Card.
Puzzles/Solutions:What Comes Next sheets.
What Comes Next solutions.

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What Did You Say? (Remote ready)

  By Puzzles
Materials:What Did You Say? sheets for each team member.

A Customer Service Week Pen to use.
Notes:Working with customers across town or across the globe, reps will encounter a range of accents and dialects. Listening carefully to ensure accurate understanding is essential. In this puzzle some fun homophones highlight the need for excellent listening skills.

The last question on the puzzle sheet asks participants to create their own challenge. Gather these and share them with your team.

Reward everyone who completes the puzzle with a Customer Service Week Scratch Off Card.
Puzzles/
Solutions:		What Did You Say? sheets.
What Did You Say? solutions.

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Who’s Who Match Up

  By Celebration Stories and Ideas, Build Stronger Teams

Games and contests are an important part of every Customer Service Week celebration. When we play together and laugh together, we build strong bonds, which last through the most stressful and difficult moments.

One of the contests that has been a part of just about every Customer Service Week celebration is the “baby picture match” in which team members try to match coworkers to their baby pictures. We’ve seen lots of variations on this theme but the folks at the James Madison University Computing HelpDesk, which provides support to JMU students, faculty, and staff, have come up with a fun new twist.

For several weeks leading up to Customer Service Week each frontline employee’s smile was photographed. The photographs were posted during Customer Service Week and everyone tried to match the smile to its owner. What a great way to draw attention to the importance of smiling when we work with customers over the phone or in person.

In a second contest, team members were asked to match each of their coworkers with one of the superlatives listed below. After the entries were tallied, each team member was presented with a prize and certificate recognizing their superlative.

  1. Most likely to work at the helpdesk forever
  2. Most likely to be president of an IT company
  3. Best Helpdesk smile
  4. Best Helpdesk customer service
  5. Most talkative
  6. Most knowledgeable
  7. Mr. Congeniality
  8. Ms. Congeniality
  9. Most talented
  10. Funniest jokes
  11. Biggest gossip
  12. Most likely to be seen at the helpdesk when they aren’t working
  13. Most spirited
  14. Most creative
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Word Bingo

  By Activities, Team Building

Description

Bingo is always popular and it’s perfect for customer contact centers because reps can play right at their desks.

Materials

Bingo Cards
Prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners
CSW Scratch Off Cards for all participants

Directions

In each of the boxes, type a word or phrase your reps are likely to hear during the course of the day, such as the names of your products or services. Each time a rep hears one of these words, he or she marks out that box. The first rep to mark out an entire row (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally) shouts “Bingo” and wins the round.

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