Customers will always need service and service will always need customers.
The cycle continues for people and businesses everywhere, day in and day out.
And those on the front lines, taking the demands and turning them into answers for customers, may often feel passionless and simply “part of a cog on a wheel”.
I recently created a survey for the customer service team at Phone.com, asking about the types of incentives and recognition that keep their motivation running.
The responses were interesting (I’ll go into them in more detail another time) and it appears that what it comes down to, what people truly need to keep the motivation high is:
P A S S I O N
When you have that flame burning strong on the inside, it shows with your actions on the outside.
But, when you go to work, answer phone calls, emails and chats for people who really didn’t want to call and talk to you in the first place, keeping the passion flame is then challenged.
We are reading the book, Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl in our customer service book club. He says,
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.-Victor Frankl
Ultimately, the power of our own passion lies in our own two hands. Sure, we can look at our duties with customers as if they were leeches, sucking life out of every pore. Or we can look at them as opportunities to enrich our lives. Your job in customer service might just be a stepping stone to a larger goal. There is so much knowledge to gain, even in the job you didn’t wish you have to go to every day.
The choice is yours.
