Where does your inspiration come from? Let me be more specific. Where do you go for fresh ideas to motivate your team? Possibly you have had a rough month or two with weather related heartaches, price increases, technology or attendance issues. For some of you it has been all of the above! Some of you are watching your team’s performance scores like a hawk and others are in a rebuilding phase and want to finish the 4th quarter well so that they can build momentum for 2018. I had the honor of interviewing 3 Customer Service Managers who have invested time and tears in shaping excellent customer service representatives, and in some cases, turning around their teams. They have some great ideas to share which should inspire you to do something different with your team as you press towards the finish line for 2017.
Charelle is ex-military and she ran her team with the chain of command approach and had distanced herself from the individuals on her team. When the team was not achieving their goals, she re-evaluated what she was doing and adjusted her management style. She intentionally got involved with each person on a personal level and noticed that when she showed she cared, everyone performed better.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) Individuals earn wings for every 100 Tooty score and they compete to see who has the most.
2) When customer service representatives, CSRs, achieve their 10th 100 score they are rewarded with a great lunch along with a letterman’s jacket.
3) They love games and frequently play Tooty bingo with a reward of a gift card for the winner. They spent 8 months playing Wheel of Fortune and if a CSR received a 100 score she would have 5 seconds to guess a letter and 10 seconds to solve the puzzle. The winner received a $250.00 gift card.
Rohannah has a big customer service department and moving their average performance score up by 10 points this year has been a monumental accomplishment for all of them. She has created 2 teams within the department led by her 2 lead CSRs. They created smaller teams of 3 individuals who take turns role-playing and scoring each other every month to make sure that when they talk to customers they are doing their best.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) Parking is a big deal. The individual with the best monthly performance score and year-to-date-average will have the CSR of the Month Parking spot close to the door!

Talair has created a team culture in her department by strategically placing customer service representatives in smaller teams so they can help each other and work towards a common goal. Teams are changed regularly to build co-worker relationships. She has found that no one wants to let their team down, so they try harder and do better than if their recognition was focused on individual performance.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) The manager will sing to his CSRs (which I have witnessed) and rewards high performers by having them be his co-manager for a half-day. He makes a big deal of their successes, but doesn’t gloss over failures.
2) CSRs can earn a mini fish tank to have on their desks if they have a 100-average score for a quarter. Talair didn’t anticipate what a motivator this was. The fish-tank-challenge brought them all together and stopped negative conversations as they talked about everything from fish food to decorating.

I’d love to hear from you regarding your teaching and coaching challenges and successes when it comes to training millennials versus GenX and Baby Boomers. We all need to implement more effective training techniques. Please contact me: lori_miller@tootyinc.com and I will be happy to share great options with you for classroom training and interactive webinars for 2018.