Web Extras – Customer Communicator

Manage your time this holiday season — Take this quick quiz to assess your time-management skills and to see where you might need improvement.

Use Customer Service Week to build trust — Building trust with customers and coworkers is an important part of customer service. Click here to access our mini-poster on the “Five Rules of Building Trust.”

Communicate with coworkers — How well do you communicate with your coworkers? Take this quiz to see what communication skills you might need to work on.

Relieve stress and unleash creativity — August 2 is National Coloring Book Day. Try this creative way to relax and unwind with downloadable coloring pages from Dover, a leading coloring book publisher. (Registration is required.)

Tell your service stories — Stories not only engage customers, they can also help build a more customer-centric culture as this month’s “Web Extra” demonstrates.

Keep things light and creative — Reps everywhere are stressed out. Author Michael Kerr shows how humor can help.

Become an effective coach — May 1 is celebrated as “Executive Coaching Day,” but the benefits of coaching — and being coached — should be celebrated from the front lines to the executive suite. Customer service reps, in particular, should look for others who might coach or mentor them and for those who might benefit from their own coaching. Get started coaching with these five tips on how to mentor new or inexperienced coworkers.

Keep workplace conflict in check — Conflicts with managers or coworkers can be more disruptive than conflicts with customers. April is Workplace Conflict Awareness Month and a good time to brush up on conflict resolution skills.

Get yourself motivated! — Working in customer service can be stressful and de-motivating. It’s “Employee Spirit Month,” so we have suggestions from our “Ask the Panel” column on how to stay motivated on the job.

Build better relationships — February is “Relationship Wellness Month,” use the occasion to focus on the relationships you have with customers, and the perceptions that customers have of your company. Try using the LIFE acronym.

Use caution when delivering bad news to customers — Click to visit Evan Horowitz’s website, which offers more advice on delivering bad news to customers, including sample scripts for delivering bad news (scroll to the bottom of the page for access to the scripts).