Celebration Stories and Ideas

While most Customer Service Week celebrations last for just one week, Jane Leahy keeps the fun going all year long.

At CSC Contact Center Solutions’ four locations, attendance is critical to providing outstanding service and support. For each week of perfect attendance, frontline reps are rewarded with a raffle ticket. They save those tickets until Customer Service Week when they are entered into a prize drawing. The more tickets a rep enters, the more chances to win prizes such as gas cards, gift cards and music cards.

It’s a wonderful way to focus on attendance and on the upcoming celebration.

In addition to the raffle, Customer Service Week is filled with outdoor carnival games and indoor contests like a no-hands marshmallow eating challenge, a limbo contest, and a cake walk, featuring homemade cakes.

Throughout the week, customer care teams at Puget Sound Energy vied to become Olympic Champions. Hosting a wide range of activities in a variety of locations, kept each activity fresh and challenging.

The week began with the opening ceremonies on Monday with an Olympic Torch Relay through the Access Center, Billing, Vendor Collections and Payment Processing departments. At the Opening Ceremony, teams received their flags, T-shirts and goodie bags.

The games began in earnest on Tuesday with a day of trivia contests. Throughout the day staff received questions about Olympic and company traditions via email. Winners received small gifts throughout the day.

On Wednesday, the competition heated up as all 14 teams filled the parking area for activities such as bowling, tricycle races and scooter races. The final event of the day was the Outrageous Run with all of the teams participating in an outdoor obstacle course.

On Thursday evening, the service teams gathered at an indoor go-kart raceway to compete for prizes and enjoy dinner together.

The week came to an end with Closing Ceremonies which included a State of the Business report followed by recognition and awards.

What do Cookie Monster, a swarm of giant bees, and a huge pink ribbon have in common? They were all part of the Customer Service Week celebration at Adecco Staffing’s shared services center in New York.

Michele Lennon tells us that the week was full of activities including a pajama day, ugly sweater day, recognition ceremony, motivational speaker, and a barbecue lunch served by top management. But the highlight was surely the team challenge. Here’s how it worked:

Each of the work teams was assigned a color and challenged to decorate their area with an appropriate theme. The orange team created a fall display with life-sized trees. The yellow team created oversized yellow and black bumble bees in their work area, which was renamed the hive, and the blue team created a Cookie Monster family reunion.

It was a fun challenge, and one which had everyone working together.

Each year, the leadership team at United Stationers plans a full week of theme days, games, food, and fun for over 250 frontline associates.

One on the most popular activities is participating in classic TV game shows including Let’s Make a Deal, The Price is Right, Jeopardy, and Deal or No Deal.

The leadership team skillfully adapts these games to the office environment and creates everything that’s needed from a prize wheel, to questions, to glamorous hosts. In keeping with the spirit of fun, the hosts are “Jack Potts” and “Miss Terry Prize.”

Contestants are alert throughout the day for a call and invitation to “come on down” and play games. Winners may choose from a huge pile of exciting gifts including cookware, a tablet, gift cards, and more.

Additional popular game show activities include Fear Factor, Amazing Race, Jeopardy!, Cash Cab, and Survivor.

“One of the most memorable weeks in call center history!!!”

That’s how Brian Doran described the Customer Service Week celebration at 5LINX Enterprises. And clearly, the organizing committee went all out in planning an exciting week.

Activities, food, and fun were featured each day, but the main event was on Thursday when the department was turned into a carnival complete with decorations, 12 games of chance, and a Sumo Wrestling ring. The inflatable ring and costumes allowed agents to compete against supervisors and the secretarial staff to take on the marketing department in this ancient sport.

Leading up to the carnival was Breast Cancer Awareness Day. Everyone wore pink to show their support. Pink cupcakes were delivered to each work station. And the company’s founder made a donation to the American Cancer Society in honor of his staff.

Scavenger hunts have long been a popular Customer Service Week activity. They can be used to build teamwork, flex creative muscles, and just have fun.

Patty Dillon at HGS creates an annual scavenger hunt for her team that does all this and more. It’s called a Photo Scavenger Hunt and teams are asked to take photos of themselves doing very specific things such as:

• Three team members in one bathroom stall
• Three team members jumping in the air
• Three team members in a blow-up pool

Some of the photos are worth five points, but some are worth as much as 50 points based on level of difficulty and creativity. The team to accumulate the most points wins.

Each team also mounts its pictures on poster board to share with the entire department.

This creative scavenger hunt can be incorporated into almost any celebration. Click the links below to see the rules and lists of photos requested.

Like many people celebrating Customer Service Week in October, Darlene Loiacono used puzzles from the CSWeek.com website.

She selected one puzzle for each day of the week, and presented them in a goodie bag filled with candy treats and a note which read:

• Thank you for not SNICKERING when I handed out these puzzles.
• KUDOS to you for completing them all.
• You are such a SMARTIE pants for working them out.
• Congratulations you are a winner and a STAR.

At the end of the week, all of the completed puzzles were submitted to Darlene for a grand prize drawing.

What a sweet way to start the week!