Activities • Bulletins • Celebration Stories and Ideas • Gift • Printables • Puzzles •
Description This is a fun way to refresh skills during Customer Service Week. It can be used at any time to add a little spontaneous fun and training to the day. Consider introducing it during an ice cream sundae break, pot luck lunch, or any other time that people are gathering. This fun activity demonstrates…Continue reading
This fun activity demonstrates the importance of clear communication and some of the pitfalls when instructions are ambiguous. This activity was adapted from The Customer Service Activity Book.
A jacket or sweater which buttons up the front
Ask the group to form a circle around you. You should be wearing the jacket.
Ask for a volunteer or select someone to participate in the activity with you.
Explain that it is not only important for service professionals to listen carefully to understand customers’ needs and wants, but that reps must also speak clearly and concisely so that customers understand them.
Next, explain the activity. Focus on the volunteer and say, “All I want you to do, standing right where you are, is to give me verbal directions and tell me how to put on my jacket. As you say this, take off your jacket, and as you are doing this, pull one of the sleeves inside out. Then, take off the jacket, ball it up and drop it on the floor. What follows is often very funny.
Now, listen very carefully to the volunteer’s instructions and do exactly what they say. Have fun with it. If the volunteer says, pick up your jacket, pick it up as a ball. If they say turn the sleeve inside out. Turn the correct sleeve the wrong way. If they say button the jacket, misalign the buttons and holes, and so on.
This activity demonstrates the importance of precise communication. How can we apply this to our daily work?
Do we provide specific directions, either written or spoken that seem to confuse customers?
| Materials: | City Scramble sheets for each team member. A Customer Service Week Two-in-One Pen to use. |
| Notes: | This challenging puzzle calls on a basic knowledge of geography and the ability to see patterns where many would not. 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: | City Scramble sheets. City Scramble solutions. |
| Materials | Teammates Logic sheets A Customer Service Week Two-in-One Pen to use. |
| Notes: | This is a classic logic puzzle set in a customer service environment. The goal is to use the clues and basic logic skills to solve the puzzle and resolve each customer’s issue or concern. Ask reps to return their completed puzzles. Reward everyone who completes the puzzle with a small prize and enter them in a grand prize drawing. |
| Puzzles/ Solutions: | Teammates Logic sheets. Teammates Logic solution. |
| Materials: | Angry Customer Logic sheets for each team member. A Customer Service Week Two-in-One Pen to use. |
| Notes: | This is a classic logic puzzle set in a customer service environment. The goal is to use the clues and basic logic skills to solve the puzzle and resolve each customer’s issue or concern. Reward everyone who completes the puzzle with a small prize and enter them in a grand prize drawing. |
| Puzzles/ Solutions: | Angry Customer Logic sheets. Angry Customer Logic solution. |
This is an engaging and visual version of the popular Customer Service Week Getting to Know You activity.
Prizes for the winners.
Prepare a list of fun “yes” or “no” style questions for your team. You will need at least 10 questions.
To begin the activity, ask everyone in your virtual meeting to hold up one hand with all five fingers extended. Next, the leader will ask each of the questions. If a participant can answer “yes” to the question, they put down one finger. The participant to put down all five fingers first is the winner.
Here are some sample questions to get you started:
Make time at the end of the activity to dig into some of the responses. For example, “Everyone who adopted a pet. Tell us about who you welcomed into your home.”
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A Meme contest lets individuals share their sense of humor and everyone share a good natured laugh.
See links listed below.
This activity is based on the Make Your Own Meme Contest at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont. With a few simple steps, it will work in virtually any office.
Choose six to eight photos that will spark ideas for your team. We recommend selecting photos from Creative Commons licensed material. These images are in the public domain. This means that you can share, use, and remix these images. Learn more and select images at https://search.creativecommons.org
Ask participants to create one or more Memes using the photos provided. For inspiration, provide some recent popular Memes or the samples from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont.
To produce high quality memes, participants should use one of the following meme creators. These sites allow participants to upload the photo of their choice and to add their text to the image. Next they can email Memes to the activity organizer. Two popular sites for creating Memes are:
https://filmora.wondershare.com/meme-maker
https://www.kapwing.com/meme-maker
Finally, share the best Memes with everyone on the team. Announce the first, second, and third place winners or allow the group to vote for their favorites.
Everyone knows and loves Mad Libs. Now you can play our customer service focused Mad Tips. They’re just as much fun but with a service twist. Use Mad Tips to start a training session, during an informal get together or anytime your group is ready for a good-humored laugh.
Mad Tip Sheet – New Team Member
Mad Tip Sheet – Customer Experience
A small gift for each participant to take away
This activity works best with teams of six to eight participants. Have each team arrange their chairs in a circle or around a conference table. Give one person the Mad Tips sheet and a pencil. This person is the team leader. Choosing an outgoing person for this role will add to the fun.
Next, the team leader will go around the circle and ask each person to fill in one of the blanks. The leader must not give any clues.
When the Mad Tip sheet has been completed the team leader will read the resulting service story aloud.
Dispersed teams can easily complete this activity using a video conferencing tool such as Zoom, Webex, or Google Hangouts.
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| Materials: | Sudoku sheets for each team member. A Customer Service Week Two-in-One Pen to use. |
| Notes: | Sudoku are fun puzzles in which players insert the numbers one to nine into a grid consisting of nine squares subdivided into a further nine smaller squares in such a way that every number appears once in each horizontal line, vertical line, and square. Reward everyone who completes a puzzle with a Customer Service Week Scratch Off Card. |
| Puzzles/Solutions: | Click here to print Sudoku 1 sheets. Click here to print Sudoku 2 sheets. Click here to print Sudoku 3 sheets. Click here to print Sudoku 4 sheets. Click here to print Sudoku 5 sheets. Click here for all of the Sudoku solutions. |
| Materials: | Name Game sheets for each team member. A Customer Service Week Two-in-One Pen to use. |
| Notes: | In this puzzle, reps are asked to discover customers’ names based only on their initials. Fortunately, all of the customers are famous people and there are no wrong answers. Reward everyone who completes the puzzle with a Customer Service Week Scratch Off Card. |
| Puzzles/ Solutions: | Name Game sheets. There are multiple solutions to this challenge. |
