5 activities for building customer service teams

Providing excellent customer service is one of the most effective ways to retain your clients. Yet, delivering such a quality of service doesn’t happen automatically. Even the best customer service reps need to be properly trained to develop the skills to effectively serve and support your customers.

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More ideas for specific job functions:

• Activities for HR teams
• Activities for sales teams
• Activities for software engineers and agile teams
• Activities for senior management

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What are the skills that every customer service team needs? 

According to research by Zendesk, these are some of the most important soft skills your customer support team needs to deliver excellent service: 

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• Problem-solving skills: A significant aspect of customer service is problem-solving, so teammates need to know how to deal with complex problems and proffer reasonable solutions. 

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• Time management: Your customer service team will likely handle multiple customer tickets at a time, so they need to be organized and know how to manage their time well. 

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• Personalization: Teammates need to be flexible enough to provide personalized service to customers, as this has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. 

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• Clear communication: Customer support reps need to be able to communicate solutions to customers in a clear and concise manner. 

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• Agility: There isn’t always a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to customer complaints, so your teams need to be able to come up with creative solutions that work.

4 team building activities to improve your customer service 

Knowing the skills to hone in your customer service team is just the first step. You also need the right activities to work on them, so here are some effective team building activities for customer service. 

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Customer service team building activities to improve time management and problem-solving 

1. Customer problems 

For this activity, you’ll need to divide your team into groups of 3 to 5 people. Each group should then be given a piece of paper with a hypothetical but complex customer complaint. The group that comes up with the best possible solution in the shortest time wins. You can make the game more interesting by organizing different rounds with increasing difficulty levels.

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The goal of this customer service team building activity is to help teammates practice and develop their time management and problem-solving skills. 

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Team building activities to work on personalization in customer service 

2. Implement CRM software tools and train your CS reps

Building good customer relationships requires good communication skills and emotional intelligence. However, you also need to provide your customer service reps with the tools they need to deliver personalized services.

Customer relationship management or CRM software tracks and manages any previously provided customer data like contact information, account type, previous purchases, etc. This can help your reps better assist your customers. 

Once you’ve implemented a good CRM software, take some time to train your reps on how to use the software so that they can provide quality service. 

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Customer service team building activities to improve communication

3. “Here’s what, this is why“

This team building game for customer service reps helps teammates see that context within communication is important.

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To play, have a person ask their teammate a question like 'Do you prefer e-books or physical books?'. After they've given their answer, have the person ask the same question again, but this time, providing context and explanations. For example, 'Most of the books we sell are available in hard copy and e-book versions. If you'd like, I can help you place your order, so would you prefer hard or soft copy books?'.

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Offering an explanation makes customers feel at ease, and they'll be more willing to provide the information you need to help them. This activity works great as a short ice breaker at the beginning of a meeting. 

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4. Crisis communication training 

When a crisis occurs, the customer service team is usually the first to respond. While your business might not currently be experiencing a critical situation, you can still prepare your team on how to respond in the event of one. By creating a crisis communication plan, you ensure that your team stays ready and can retain customers if a crisis ever arises. 

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Additional resources: Communication team building activities 

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Team building activities developing agility in customer service 

5. “My positive customer interaction”

For this activity, have everyone recall a positive customer interaction they had that week. Each person can then take turns sharing that interaction with the rest of the team, including details of the problem and how they solved it. 

After the interaction has been shared, the rest of the team has to brainstorm better ways to handle the problem that would have left the customer even more satisfied. 

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This activity is great because it helps teammates learn new, creative ways to tackle customer issues from each other. 

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Customer service team building activities get the ball rolling… 

These team building activities for customer service will set your team on the path to delivering better support to your clients. That said, great customer service doesn’t happen overnight. It requires time and constant practice, so ensure that you continuously provide opportunities for your teammates to learn and grow.  

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For more resources on team building, you can check out some of our other articles, including team building activities for work, leadership team building activities, free virtual team building activities, how to improve your online team building, and the best team building apps and software.