During the first full week of October, we celebrate frontline staff during the nationally observed Customer Service Week. The recognition holiday takes place annually and is an important time to express appreciation for employees who interact directly with your customers.

Why is this important? Recent research by The Forum: Business Results through People has found that employee behavior increases customer spending. According to the study, “engaged employees created customers that purchased more, and a key measure of employees’ value was their impact on the income flows from customers.” Employees are more engaged when they feel valued and appreciated for their work! Customer Service Week is a great opportunity to make a big deal about your frontline employees, and hopefully influence customer sales, too.

We take Customer Service Week pretty seriously at Baudville. Our Spirit Team plans five days of activities that all revolve around a recognition theme. This year, our theme was Celebrating our Superheroes. We had so much fun with our theme that we wanted to share it with you. Maybe you’ll end up using some of our ideas for your next Customer Service Week theme!


Our Spirit Team designer created Baudville superhero characters!

Monday – During Customer Service Week, every Baudvillian was treated as a superhero! Employees had the chance to promote their super powers by designing a mask and creating their superhero alter ego. Creative stations were set up throughout the building with mask-decorating supplies including pipe cleaners, jewels, construction paper, and glitter glue.

Tuesday – To fuel the work of the superhero masks, we brought in a soft serve ice cream machine. Staff created their very own Super Sundaes!

Wednesday – Baudville superheroes had the opportunity to throw, shoot, punch, and knock their way through a Superhero Obstacle Course! Competitors donned capes and made their way through the course to defeat the super villain at the end.

Thursday – After all the superhero masks had been completed, teams voted on their top two favorite. The winning masks and their superhero counterpart were featured in a special photo shoot! See the awesome pictures below. 

Friday – First thing in the morning, all employees had a note of appreciation from their manager displayed in a Memo Clip waiting on their desk. The notes were a great day for managers to thank employees for sharing their super powers every day!

As a grand finale to our Customer Service Week, all of our superheroes enjoyed a lunch buffet and voted on the best superhero duo photo from Thursday. Which one is your favorite?

Did you celebrate your frontline staff last week? What was your Customer Service Week theme? Tell us about it in the comments!

----------------------------------- 

Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.

At Baudville, our Spirit Team is busy meeting behind closed doors and completing top secret projects in preparation of Customer Service Week starting next Monday. Who’s the Spirit Team ? They’re a group of employees representing several different departments at Baudville who put on their party planning hats and organize our employee events. Customer Service Week is one of their biggest since they have to plan for an entire week of appreciation and fun.  And they do a great job! Our Customer Service Week celebrations are always a favorite among the Baudville staff.

We’ve found two major benefits to planning employee events as a team. First, it helps distribute the workload among several individuals. Events like Customer Service Week require a lot of work! It can be too much for one person on top of their full time job responsibilities. Second, the additional minds lend to more creative, original, and unique ideas. With a recurring annual event like Customer Service Week, getting new ideas is imperative to making your team feel appreciated during this holiday. If you’re not currently planning this event as a team, consider recruiting a few individuals to help you next year.

In the meantime, you have the entire Baudville team at your disposal to come up with creative Customer Service Week ideas your team will love! If you’re still searching for a few great ideas to celebrate your team, try our five resources for last minute ideas. I guarantee you’ll find at least one idea both you and your team will love!

1. Browse our Recognition Resource Center. We have resources dedicated to Customer Service and Sales recognition, including lots of articles, tips, and ideas on Customer Service Week!

2. Shop our recommended Customer Service Week gifts and themes. Our team has pulled together some of our favorite Customer Service Week gifts to help you start shopping.

3. Call a Recognition Specialist at 1-800-728-0888. Our team is always ready and willing to help you plan your employee recognition event! They have great product and event knowledge that they are dying to share with you.

4. Engage with us – and your peers! – on social media. One of the best places to get ideas for Customer Service Week is from your peers. Ask us a question on Twitter or Facebook, and our
followers will share their ideas, too.

5. Get ideas on Pinterest. One of my favorite places for event and recognition ideas these days is Pinterest! We’ve created boards for all the major employee recognition holidays, including Customer Service Week, to inspire you and give you some great ideas.

-------------------------------

Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.

 When it comes to celebrating Customer Service Week, we recommend taking advantage of the holiday to express appreciation for customer service professionals. Customer Service Week is a nationally-recognized observance week taking place October 1 – 5, 2012. The recognition holiday provides companies the opportunity to put the spotlight on frontline customer service representatives.

We recommend companies start by brainstorming Customer Service Week themes. Using a theme makes the event more memorable, and saves time and money during the planning process. A theme serves as the branding for your event or program. Our designers spend weeks perfecting themes and searching high and low for the newest gift items.

We have over 100 recognition themes, and our recognition experts recommend customers choose a different theme for Customer Service Week each year. The popular Customer Service Week theme for 2012 is You Rock, a new addition to the Baudville repertoire that is designed for a diverse workforce.

When you’re planning your Customer Service Week celebration, remember that sincere appreciation of frontline employees is an important part of customer satisfaction and retention. Research shows that happy employees lead to happy customers and happy customers generate more revenue.  Customer Service Week themes make the appreciation more memorable and effective, and therefore has a greater impact on customer satisfaction.

Managers looking for unique Customer Service Week themes should visit our Recognition Resource Center for articles, videos, and newsletters. All the resources focus on planning effective Customer Service Week celebrations that will increase employee and customer satisfaction.

At Baudville, we’ve seen firsthand the value celebrating exceptional customer service can bring to an organization.  We want to help our customers have a similarly great experience with their celebrations!

We recognize Customer Service Week with a week-long celebration that includes the entire company because we believe every employee plays an important part in the customer experience. We celebrate our customer service excellence every year, and it all starts with great Customer Service Week themes!

-------------------

Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.

Customer Service Week 2012 is October 1-5, and it’s always a big celebration at Baudville because we believe every member of our team has a part in providing an excellent customer experience. We take great pride in the service we provide our customers, so we celebrate Customer Service Week as a whole company! Our celebration always includes a Customer Service Week theme, activities, prizes, and often a lunch for the team to enjoy together. As you can imagine, our events are pretty memorable!

In our latest Recognition TV webisode, I asked four of our Customer Service Representatives about their favorite Customer Service Week ideas, tips, and celebrations. Here’s a summary of what they had to say:

 
Meet our Customer Service All Stars! From left to right, Mikki, KJ, Amanda, and Amber.

KJ’s favorite Customer Service Week theme was Made in Michigan from our 2011 celebration. She loved the team ArtPrize competition and playing corn hole with her teammates during lunch.

Mikki knows that Customer Service Week is important because treating employees well will make them want to do more for the company and the customer! She gives some great insight into the recognition event in our Recognition TV webisode.

Amber’s favorite part of Customer Service Week is getting a handwritten note from her manager. Baudville managers often write a personal note to each of their employees during Customer Service Week and have it waiting on their desk first thing in the morning. Take a tip from Amber and write a note to your staff!

Amanda loved our Hollywood celebration when employees were given a movie ticket to a showing of short Pixar movies and a gift of a Star Performer Twist Top Tumbler. She still has the personal award she received from her manager displayed at her desk! 

To hear all the tips from our Customer Service Representatives and get our high five Customer Service Week ideas, watch the full Recognition TV webisode. It’s the shortest webinar you’ll watch – it’s only 9 minutes long!

-------------------- 

Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.

This year, Customer Service Week is October 1-5, and it will be here before you know it! The summer is flying by and because Customer Service Week is the first full week of October, it has a habit of sneaking up on us!

We have two new themes for Customer Service Week 2012 that provide great gifts and supplies for your celebration. You Rock is my personal favorite because the theme includes several fun and low cost gifts for your team. You can give employees a small gift every day of Customer Service Week. For example, the Give ‘Em a Hand Pens can be the gift on Monday, and you can end the week with the You Rock Lollipop. Use the Tokens of Appreciation throughout the week as part of an ongoing game or competition. Plus, this theme easily lends itself to a myriad of activities. You can play Rock Band, host a karaoke or lip sync contest, play rock and roll trivia, and much more! 



Also new for Customer Service Week 2012 is our star-filled We Appreciate You theme. This is a great theme because it clearly expresses appreciation for your team – the objective of Customer Service Week! Start the week by giving each member of your team the themed Twist Top Tumbler with a personal thank you note tucked inside that identifies their special contributions.




Our Spirit Team has been thinking ahead to Customer Service Week 2012, and you should, too! To help you get started, here are some free resources that will help you make this year’s celebration better than ever before!

• Shop for Customer Service Week
• Customer Service Week blog posts
• Customer Service Week Articles in the Recognition Resource Center
• Customer Service Week board on Pinterest
• Customer Service ePraise cards

Want help planning your Customer Service Week 2012 celebration? Call our recognition specialists at 1-800-728-0888 or email them at service@baudville.com.

------------------------ 

Cori is Baudville's in-house Recognitionista (she's officially a Certified Recognition Professional, too)  and a member of the Millennial generation. Get her employee recognition tips and special discounts by liking Baudville on Facebook.