At John Hopkins Healthcare, a relatively simple and low-cost Customer Service Week activity helped focus attention on service goals and brought the team closer together.
The only materials needed are 5″ x 7″ cards with each rep’s name and a border of stars, plus a hole-punch.
Here’s how it worked:
Without any prior explanation, supervisors and managers began punching holes in the stars and initialing rep’s cards.
Customer service manager, Nancy DiLeo, tells us that this drove reps crazy with questions, “Is a hole punch a good thing? How many holes can I get? Why are you doing this?”
As the week progressed, supervisors and managers began dropping hints as they punched and signed their way through the department. Compliments such as “Hey that was a great ending to a call” or “Thanks for helping the new rep with that tough problem” could be heard throughout the department.
By Wednesday, supervisors and managers were asking groups of two or three reps questions on departmental policies. Every correct answer earned the rep a hole-punch.
The mystery was finally solved on Friday when all of the cards were turned in and reps received tickets for prize drawings for each hole-punch they had received.
Nancy summarizes the benefits of the activity this way, “We might have started out on a mission to punch holes and have some fun; what we really got was a deeper connection with our team. It’s carried over into the weeks since our celebration; supervisors stop and listen and talk with reps a lot more now.”