By Amy O’Shea, Project Executive at Catax
Last week, we joined thousands of companies around the UK to celebrate Customer Service Week. With the help of our new Project Executive, Amy O’ Shea, we went all out to make sure this year was one to remember. We dedicated each day of the week to a particular focus and accompanied this with activities or challenges for our teams to take part in.
Monday – Insight: Knowing your customer and how to deliver to them
Tuesday – Capability & Skills: Identifying and nurturing customer service skills in your organisation
Wednesday – Recognition: Celebrate your customer service heroes
Thursday – Leadership: Championing customer service in the boardroom
Friday – Trust: Building brand reputation and trust by delivering on promises
Here’s a rundown of what we go up to:
Monday
We kick started the week with a focus on ‘Insight’. Amy sent Surveys and Quizzes out to our teams, including a Personality Type quiz (more fun than it sounds), to have time for personal reflection. It was a great tool for everyone to learn more about themselves and compare how accurate we thought it was. Some laughs were shared over the accuracy or inaccuracy of peoples results. We also gave everyone the opportunity to add their personality type to our Wonderwall so we could see the variety of characters we have at Catax.
Tuesday
Tuesday saw our Chief Development Officer, Paul Johnson, defend his title in a Table Tennis Tournament against 11 eager rivals from different departments. Each person made donations to play, and Catax donated £1 for every point scored against Paul, who wasn’t letting people score easily! Over two hours, we raised £150!
Wednesday
We celebrated Wednesday by turning our Wonderwall into a hand-written thank you card and encouraged everyone to write a message of thanks to anybody who has helped them out. There were some thoughtful messages exchanged, and it was great to see people taking the time out of their day to write a note and put a smile on someone’s face.
Regardless of experience, everyone enjoys receiving positive feedback and it’s nice to be recognised for your hard work and dedication; plus, we love to brag about our exceptional team! So, we also gave personal shout outs to the team members who were singled out by clients for their exceptional service.
Thursday
On Thursday, Amy lead an array of team-building games and activities; such as blind drawing, story games and improvisation games to encourage stronger communication. It was fantastic to see everyone getting involved and improving as they progressed and speaking to team members they might not have before. A hit with the players was a game that saw teams choose inanimate objects first and be given a scenario which they must use the objects to escape from (scenarios included James Bond-style espionage and alien invasion). It was a perfect exercise to get creative and have some fun!
Friday
Friday was the final day and to finish the week with a bang, we hosted a Prize Giving during our Friday breakfast shout! All week we asked people to vote for a member of staff they felt deserved some recognition, and on Friday we revealed the results…
1st place was Kate Bell (Company Support Executive), 2nd place went to Rachel Brett (Senior Tax Analyst), and 3rd was Leanne Mara (Senior Technical Account Manager).
There were some lovely comments and votes from our staff, and it was great to see everyone getting involved.
The winners also received some vouchers to use at a restaurant of their choice as we believe everyone deserves to be rewarded for their consistent hard work and sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that you are appreciated.
Overall, it was an excellent week filled with activities and challenges for everyone to get involved in (even Directors on crutches). Aside from that, we got an insight into the diversity of skills our teams possess and it reinforced our confidence in their passion, collaboration, accountability, excellence and integrity.
Bring on next year!