Business Content // How Team Building Can Improve Customer Experience*

Team building exercises have a long list of benefits, including improved employee morale and a better customer experience. All too often, targets and hectic schedules mean that employees working in contact centres or other customer service roles end up spending their entire shift facing customers, with very little time dedicated to team building away from the workplace. However, the companies who are looking at the bigger picture and making time for such activities are starting to see significant benefits from team building activities.

Keeping your employees happy has so many different benefits like reduced turnover of staff and with that comes cost savings of recruiting new staff. Team building exercises can go a long way in setting up a happy working environment. If you have happy employees, they are more prepared to give that bit extra. So that could mean taking that call just before the end of shift and giving the same customer experience as they would an hour earlier. Or it could be giving off a happy and approachable attitude when speaking to customers, at all times.

Credit

How Employee Morale Impacts Customer Experience
Customers pick up on an employee’s mood, whether it is their body language or how they hold a conversation. Something as simple as asking a customer how their day is going can do wonders, as long as it doesn’t feel forced. When an employee feels happy in their job, customer interactions shouldn’t feel forced or fake.

Company Loyalty and Belonging
Another way that team building can help the customer experience is through employees feeling an increased sense of belonging and loyalty towards the company. Sometimes, particularly with large corporate businesses, employees can feel like a number rather than a valued person. Taking some time out for a team to go and do something fun together will help them to get to know each other and feel like part of a group rather than just an individual.

Taking Accountability
If employees feel more attached to a company, the way that they communicate with customers will reflect that. For example, if a customer is complaining, the employee is more likely to take accountability for the problem, empathise and resolve the issue rather than blaming the company or a colleague. They are also less likely to say to the customer that they should speak to a manager or submit a complaint. And unless you are monitoring all customer conversations, you could be surprised at how often your employees separate themselves from the company when things go wrong!

Credit

The Power of Collaboration
What team building also does is open up more opportunities for people to help each other out, collaborate on projects and seek advice from people that they may not have felt comfortable asking before.

Team building activities that encourage teamwork and solving problems as a group transfers straight back into the work environment. That issue that one person has been struggling to resolve can become a shared problem that is quickly resolved within a well-oiled team. People get to know each others’ strengths and weaknesses, so if they need help that would benefit from a particular skill or experience, they know who to go to straight away.

So as you can see, there is a multitude of massive company benefits to be gained from investing in your people with effective corporate team building activities. You don’t even need to spend that much time on it. Even a 20-minute slot each week could get you the improved customer experience results that could take your business to the next level. When you listen to customers, it is not the fancy technology behind the scenes that impresses them or annoys them, it is the contact that they have with people that work for the company.