Celebrating National Customer Service Week

This year, October 5-9th is National Customer Service Week. That’s right. A full week to celebrate customer service. And, why not? There’s a National Split Pea Soup Week (second week of November) and a National Postcard Week (first week of May). So why not customer service?

After all, not everyone eats split pea soup. And postcards are cool, but increasingly uncommon. But every one of us has engaged with a customer service representative. It’s a part of our daily existence, and has become an even larger part of our lives during the past year. We all have stories (good and bad) about recent customer service experiences, so it’s definitely worth the recognition.

The focus of this year’s National Customer Service Week is Ignite a CX Celebration! The exclamation point is theirs, not mine, but it’s appropriate. According to Merriam-Webster the exclamation point indicates a “strong feeling,” and every business and organization should have strong feelings about their customer experience.

If customers are your organization’s lifeblood, then your customer experience is the circulatory system that keeps everything healthy and happy. And (to continue this analogy to its logical extreme) that makes customer service the heartbeat of your CX. It’s so important, and yet too often exists in its own silo, away from the sales and marketing teams.

The Unique Value of your Customer Service Team

National Customer Service Week provides a perfect excuse to recognize your customer service employees. After all, they’re uniquely positioned to improve your customer experience and drive the business. In many instances, they’re the face of your entire organization, working directly with one of your most valuable assets: your existing customers.

Think about it for a minute. You designate a significant amount of budget trying to get your customers to talk to you. Your marketing, sales, and business development teams spend most of their waking hours trying to devise ways to engage with customers. They understand that customer engagement, upsell, and cross-sell opportunities are out there, if they can only get someone to respond to their email or pick up the phone. Meanwhile, these very same customers are calling, or texting, or Tweeting your support team. And what do we do? Too often we encourage our support teams to end that valuable engagement as quickly as possible.

Customer Service: A Key Part of Digital Transformation

The challenges of 2020 have forced every organization to focus on digital transformation. And, ultimately, digital transformation means delivering a stellar customer experience. The questions every business leader should ask are: How do I make someone want to be a customer, and how do I make them want to stay a customer? That’s the not-so-secret path to success. And modern customer care is a critical component.

Your support team deserves recognition. The resources from PACE (the Professional Association of Customer Engagement) represent a solid start. But your customer service efforts deserve far more than a single week of thank you emails and laser-printed certificates. It’s not easy, but real change will transform your customer experience, and propel your organizations to untold heights.

So, to augment your Customer Service Week efforts, here are a few resources to help you change the way you think about modern customer service and get where you need to be:

First, we gathered insights from global brands, along with our friends at Forrester and McKinsey, and compiled them into an eBook with ten expert tips for elevating your customer service coaching program. You can download it for free here.

Second, these webinars feature some of the best and brightest customer care experts who share proven strategies for embracing modern customer care.

Third, we recently partnered with both Oracle and Adobe to help brands transform their customer service for the future. You can learn more about our integration with Oracle here, and our integration with Adobe here.

And finally, a Sprinklr Coffee Club deeper dive with Tracey Finlay (founder, Business EQ), who shares her insights about how to better understand the behaviors of your agents and customers to truly transform your contact centers.

This week is the perfect time to shift the way you think about modern customer care.

Learn more about Sprinklr’s AI-powered customer service software.